I was looking for a nice breakfast that opens early morning, and located near Carnegie Hall. After some searches, I came across this spot. They are a cafe and also a shop. We went late Autumn, so it was decorated for the season from inside and out.
The inside is not big, but rather small and narrow. The staffs here are mostly friendly and welcoming. At this place, you can either purchase some gourmet food items, or baked goods to go, or dine in for breakfast and lunch. The interior is bright and clean, very well organized.
To the left of the entrance is their bakery, offering organic breads, pastries and tarts, and few other baked goods. You can order these things to go, or for dining in at the table. And they all looked really nice and appetizing for sure.
But their main signature items are their Petrossian’s caviar, foie gras, and smoked fish. They had all sorts or rather, all different levels of each items. The price can be pretty high, depends on what it is that you are looking for. Makes a really nice, luxurious gifts for someone special.
But, we were there for an early breakfast. We were lucky enough to get a table at the back dining area, which is really small. They have around five tables or so, if you get there during busy hours, you might not get to be seated right away.
We started off with some nice hot drinks. I ordered Earl Grey Tea ($5), and my husband ordered Cappuccino ($4.50). It is kind of interesting that a tea cost more than cappuccino, but then again, the tea comes with a pot. So, you get more amount of tea than the cappuccino. And they were both good, nothing special but good.
After we ordered our food, I walked towards the entrance to look at their decadent desserts in the window showcase. They didn’t have a name, description or price of the items, but the female staff at the bakery section came over to help me. She told me what they were with a smile, and when I picked one, she offered to bring it over to my table.
And this is what I chose. A gigantic cream puff with caramel vanilla cream filling. This thing was really awesome, and I mean, AWESOME! The caramel flavor was strongly present, and the amount of cream was insane. I could see vanilla bean in the cream, and it was just a delight. My hubby and I love cream puff, so this was the perfect dessert to start out the day.
As for food, there were four of us, and two of us ordered French Toast, and the other two ordered Eggs Benedict. One of us was very particular with French Toast, which made it kind of funny… It is called “SFT” which stands for Savory French Toast ($18). It comes with French Toast sandwich with scrambled eggs, maple syrup and bacon. The picky eater wanted just the French toast, without eggs and bacon. You can see the difference between the two photos below here. Just the French Toast, and SFT.
My husband who wanted SFT just the way it is, and our waiter said jokingly “I can just put the extra eggs and bacon on your plate” and my husband jokingly responded “Yeah that will be great!” Guess what happened? They actually did exactly that! So, he got the SFT plus extra eggs and bacon. How awesome! I got to have some of that, so that was really nice…
The SFT was big and satisfying. It is a perfect dish for indecisive person who can’t choose to go with sweet item or savory item. Well, you can have both with this dish! The bread was fluffy and sweet, egg was light and bacon had good salty flavor that went great against the sweet flavor.
I ordered Eggs Benedict ($19) which comes with English muffin, smoked salmon, and hollandaise sauce. Since they are selling the smoked fish here, I thought this would be a really nice one. It also came with a side salad which was really nice and fresh.
The portion was smaller than I thought it would be, I thought we get more smoked salmon or something… And the smoked salmon was not that good. It didn’t have great flavor, I don’t know it is supposed to be that flavor, or if something was off… It was not as great as I wanted it to be. Maybe I had too high of expectation? But then this feeling was shared among the table, so it was not just me. The egg was cooked nicely, but then I was also thinking “where is the hollandaise sauce?” Hmm…
At the end, our waiter brought us a small cup with their homemade hot chocolate sample! It was really nice, thick yet creamy, sweet without being too sweet. I really enjoyed that.
Overall, it was a nice breakfast, SFT was good, and the dessert was excellent. The complimentary hot chocolate was a nice surprise. Our waiter was really nice and polite, he took a good care of us. Since the cream puff was so amazing, I would love to go back for some afternoon tea with desserts…
Petrossian Boutique & Cafe – 911 7th Ave, New York, NY 10019