The first in a multi-part series, all about our contributors’ favorite local breakfast spots. Yum. Look for the second installment next Sunday.

Photo by staceyviera.

I love breakfast. There, I admitted it.

As I type this, I’m thinking about said breakfasts I love — some carved from the various kitchens of my childhood at the hands of my mom, others cobbled together in my head from diners, greasy spoons, and neighborhood joints from anywhere and everywhere. I think about eggs over-easy, four slices of crunchy toast, some hash browns or home fries coated in ketchup, and a couple of slices of perfectly cooked bacon. Or a short stack of pancakes, drenched in butter and syrup. Or the simple sweetness of french toast, coated in powdered sugar and highlighted by the slightest hint of cinnamon. With the morning news as a sidekick, and a constantly refilled cup of coffee as the only measure of how long the meal has taken, how can you go wrong?

That’s the thing about breakfast — regardless of whether you prefer to make it at home or have a favorite place that makes your morning meal, everyone understands it. Breakfast, in whatever form you believe it to be, is our most tangible dining ritual.

So color me surprised that Esquire’s “comprehensive” list of the 59 best breakfast spots in America featured nary a D.C.-area presence. Are we really that behind the curb for this, the everyman meal, the most important meal of the day?

I kindly asked my friends who contribute here for their thoughts. To no surprise, Washington and her surrounding areas do have great breakfast places. Plenty of them, in fact. Here’s some of our favorites.

American City Diner

Photo by jim_darling.

5532 Connecticut Ave. NW
A Favorite of DCist’s: Aaron Morrissey, weekend editor

Sure, it’s all the way up Chevy Chase. But there’s nowhere in the District proper — at least which I’ve encountered — that so accurately replicates those weekend morning meals of my young life as well as the American City Diner. Sure, its got the fifties decor, and the jukeboxes, and the malt machine; but baby, this is a breakfaster’s paradise. They’ve got everything — from steak and eggs, to lox and cream cheese, to the simplest of pleasures: crunchy home fries. The coffee never stops; it’s almost as if the servers — many of whom appear as if they’ve made a fine career out of serving eggs, bacon, and waffles — have a honing device implanted in their heads, set to alert them at any quarter-filled cup of joe with a smile. (Now that is technology that I can believe in.) The place gets its fair share of folks from the surrounding residences on weekend mornings, but that’s nothing unusual. The real beauty of American City’s breakfast is its healing power after a long, soul-crushing weekday, when all you want is a little taste of home — something comforting to get you from right now to tomorrow. American City delivers on that potential connective power of breakfast — that’s why it’s one of the best.