Tri Tip Grill Adds Toasty to the Permanent Menu

midtown toasty

Two weeks ago, I issued a challenge to Tri Tip to out toasty Dunkin Donuts’ new Big ‘N’ Tasty , and they hit back with the Midtown Toasty— 3 strips of bacon, a fried egg, melted cheese on 2 toasted pieces of challah bread for $3.99 . Tri Tip owners promised if they sold 100 of these sandwiches they’d add it to the menu. Despite Ash Wednesday and a Lenten Friday potentially driving down demand for this sandwich, the Midtown Toasty prevailed and according to the cashier I spoke with, it is now a permanent part of the menu. Seeing as I lay down the gauntlet on this one, I hit up Tri Tip to see how the Midtown Toasty stacks up.

Much as I’m a New Englander through and through (ergo a Dunkin lover–Butternut donuts, represent!), they didn’t really have a prayer against a restaurant that would cook your sandwich to order.

midtown toasty

Starting with the bread, Tri Tip’s challah was fresher and didn’t overwhelm the filling the way that Dunkin’s Texas Toast did. The egg was fried up to order and the bread was grilled on both sides to order as well with plenty of butter. The bacon was crisp rather than floppy and the cheese was gooey and actually melted–takeout egg and cheese sandwiches where the cheese is a last minute afterthought that they expect to melt in transit are a pet peeve of mine, what if I want to dig into that sandwich stat?

midtown toasty

Yes, you can get other bacon and and cheese sandwiches from lots of corner delis, but again the quality of the ingredients at Tri Tip stands out. I just went for the classic Toasty, but if you’re so inclined you can substitute Tri Tip for bacon; a win for beef lovers.

That said…there’s still some room for improvement. I don’t shy away from the salt shaker, but this is one salty breakfast. I’m not 100% sure, but it seemed to me that bread may have been grilled in salted butter (plenty of salted butter) on both sides. Add in the salt from the bacon and the cheese and it kind of overwhelms an otherwise very tasty experience. And this may be solved easily enough by just grilling the bread in unsalted butter. If you’re seriously into salty food, you won’t have a problem, but for others it may be an issue.

I still not so secretly would love to see a bacon egg and cheese on French Toast (that’s what initially lured me to try the Dunkin sandwich in the first place–I thought it was on French Toast). I recognize that they would probably have to charge more for a “French Toasty” since an order of two slices of their Bourbon French Toast goes for $5. But that would be a pretty unique breakfast sandwich. What do you guys think? Anyone else pro-French Toasty? Maybe I should enter it in the Certe Sandwich Challenge

Tri Tip Grill, Rockefeller Center Concourse, North Side, (212) 664-1003

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