Falai Panetteria

Daddy said he had never thought of baking eggs. In fact, he is quite sure that, before he came to New York, he had never been to a restaurant that served baked eggs. His first baked egg was at Brown, a cafe one block from our apartment, serving baked eggs in cast-iron skillets and Intelligentsia coffee. But thats a meal for another day.

Back to Falai.

On a recent walk into the East Village we stopped in at Falai Panetteria, a white-walled corner cafe with old fashioned Italian posters. I suppose it's meant to feel like you are in some little corner cafe in Italy, perhaps by the sea.

As you can see from the photo, the baked eggs at Falai were served in a little white casserole dish with a lid. Inside the dish was something like a scramble, with spinach and red peppers mixed in. Much to Daddy's delight, the centre of the dish featured a barely cooked egg yolk that broke and spilled yummy, gooey yolk about the dish. A nice and seemingly wholesome, if not entirely healthy, way to start the morning!

Daddy is still not sure if baking has surpassed poaching as his favourite way to have eggs, but it does offer a better way of integrating other ingredients while retaining the yummy broken yolk.