The bacon, egg and cheese: Every morning, thousands of New Yorkers head to their local bodega to pick up this breakfast of champions. The sandwich — just three ingredients cooked on a flat top grill together and piled onto a roll or bagel — is a city classic, with gooey cheese, soft eggs and crispy bacon perfect for eating on daily commutes around the city.
Win Son Bakery in the East Village takes that same delicious combination of flavors, but wraps them in a soft scallion pancake.
Scallion pancakes are a staple in Taiwanese cuisine, a type of savory flatbread infused with minced green onions. This innovation on the sandwich comes from founders Trigg Brown and Josh Ku, who bonded on their love of Taiwanese food and opened the Win Son restaurant in 2016 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
They expanded into a bakery across the street from the restaurant in 2019, and as of March 19, opened their first Manhattan location on Second Avenue just three minutes away from NYU’s Second Street residence hall. Inside the simplistic white exterior walls, you’ll find a bustling fast-casual restaurant and bakery decorated with vibrant plants and artsy light fixtures.
The famous scallion pancake wraps come in seven flavors, from mortadella and pickled pepper to chicken chopped cheese. But the most classic is the bacon, egg and cheese — which has an alluring cross section featuring the rich ingredients.
There’s a reason why this flavor profile has persisted for so many years: The subtle sweetness of the egg pairs perfectly with the salty bacon, and the cheese provides a delicious flavor base. Win Son captures this blend perfectly, and its scallion pancake is no joke either. Even bites with less of the filling are delicious, allowing you to savor the salty, oniony flavors of the chewy flatbread. At $15, this sandwich isn’t as cheap as other options in New York City — but you also get the experience of a sit-down meal rather than grab-and-go bodega style.
New items to the East Village location are two bian dangs, or boxed lunches — one with fish and the other with pork. Similar to Japanese bento boxes, the fish bian dang comes in a quaint, wooden box with a red-and-white ribbon. Resembling a Christmas present, it delivers the same amount of amaze and excitement when opened.
A succulent fillet of steamed mackerel sat on top of seasoned rice, with a vibrant side salad and boiled egg to its side. The fish was juicy — my chopsticks tore into it with ease — and perfectly seasoned, melding with the rice. The salad, featuring snow pea leaves, chives, edamame and tofu skin, had a sesame kick, and cutting into the egg revealed a jammy, medium-boiled interior.
Win Son offers a variety of other savory dishes, from burgers to salad, often refined through a Taiwanese lens. The fried chicken in its sandwich, for example, has a breading resembling classic popcorn chicken and is served inside a milk bun, a type of enriched Taiwanese bread.
Light and crunchy, the fried chicken milk bun had a simple, yet addicting salt-and-pepper flavor that balanced well with the lettuce, peppers and white onion. The generous side of fries was similarly airy and well-fried. Although the milk bun was a unique choice for a sandwich, its soft texture didn’t support the chicken or sauce well — it ended up collapsing, leaving the sandwich messy but still delicious.
Outside of savory dishes, Win Son also serves pastries and drinks like a more traditional cafe. But don’t think that it’s just another basic coffee place — its uniqueness is evident in its latte flavors which include black sesame, five spice and caramel jujube. The pastries decking out the glass display case are similarly intriguing, with items such as a red rice donut, and its ice cream flavors include caramelized soy and strawberry coriander.
One of Win Son’s most popular pastries is a twice baked bolo bao, which comes in either chocolate-peanut or almond. Bolo baos, or pineapple buns, are another type of enriched bun with a crunchy topping, and Win Son stuffs that bun with fillings to make a behemoth of a pastry. The chocolate-peanut variety was sweet and rich, with a shatteringly crispy texture akin to a croissant.
But the best dessert I tried was the simple millet mochi donut. This variety of donut uses glutinous rice flour to create a satisfying chewy texture — in Taiwan, this bouncy and soft texture is revered as “QQ.” Win Son beefs the donut up with millet flour from a type of cereal grown in Taiwan, creating a truly unique flavor profile that was both salty and sweet.
Taiwanese farmers have been cultivating millet for over 4,000 years, so it’s no wonder Brown and Ku chose to include this flavor in its restaurant that serves many Western classics with Eastern twists. Biting into the donut, I felt the dedication to their culture that they put into every item at Win Son.
Contact Ethan Li at [email protected].
