Café breakfast sandwiches remain flavory

One of my teachers says he does not believe in the mission of The Café. School shouldn’t have a concession stand, he says.

He has a point. It’s school, not a movie theater. And I could imagine how The Café might hypothetically distract a student from, I don’t know, being in class.

That being said, students love The Café. We’re hungry, and it has food. So for now, school comes equipped with its own snack bar, stocked with chips, energy drinks, and yes, breakfast sandwiches.

You’ll wonder if the only thing The Café truly sells are breakfast sandwiches, and once they’re all out, the masses flee to greener pastures, to hidden stockpiles of advisory snacks deep within the catacombs of Wilson Hall.

Only now, three months from graduation, have I realized how much I’ve missed out on by rarely going to The Café and almost never indulging in their breakfast sandwiches. Most of The Café’s food is standard concessions fare—sweet and salty nothingness, unfulfilling calories. Pringles manage to be oily and somehow leave you more hungry than before, Nutri-Grain bars feel like a rip off, and gummy bears at 10:00 a.m. feel immoral.

But a toasted English muffin, two slices of soggy egg, melted cheese, something buttery, something warm—warm!—is the perfect mid-morning snack. It’s not quite hot but rather heated, probably warmer than anything else you’ve eaten today, definitely warmer than the early-March air that isn’t even that cold and yet envelops you with a slight shiver as you eat.

The café breakfast sandwich is not eaten; it is scarfed. It is not a meal. It is a food that occupies the liminal space between blocks of time, between locations, between Centennial and Wilson Hall. 

Everyone who buys a sandwich is grateful for having done so; the reason being that eating something of substance before lunch is a battle for every student. There never seems to be enough time before school to make a real breakfast. And a lifetime seems to pass before lunch starts.

So when you get your hands on a warm cylinder of food, real food that doesn’t come in a bag but is rather wrapped in thin, paperish aluminum foil, you are grateful—grateful and salivating. You thank whatever being above has given you this gift, you take a sip of a Sparkling Ice + Caffeine,  and down the sandwich in the little time you have. 

“You never see a sandwich there at the end of the day,” Sixth Former Julian Caesar said.

It’s true, The Café runs out of sandwiches fast. Sometimes you’ll get there as early as 10:30 a.m., as I did on a recent Wednesday, and find The Café deserted, no people or breakfast sandwiches in sight. You’ll wonder if the only thing The Café truly sells are breakfast sandwiches, and once they’re all out, the masses flee to greener pastures, to hidden stockpiles of advisory snacks deep within the catacombs of Wilson Hall.

Each sandwich costs $4. An egg and cheese costs the same as a sausage, egg, and cheese. Given that an Egg McMuffin is $4.99 and an Egg Cheese Biscuit is $3.19 at the McDonald’s in Ardmore, the price of a café breakfast sandwich is not ridiculous.

The sandwich bread changes every so often. During my week of observations, the English muffin reigned supreme. Croissant and biscuits are also favorites, and the bagel also makes an appearance in the rotation.

“I just wish there was some consistency,” Sixth Former Harvey Pennington said. Pennington lamented the rotation of the bread of the sandwiches; he eats them around once every two weeks.

“I think the croissant is the rarest one, like out of all of them,” Caesar said. “It’s like a collectible.”

Whatever bread they use doesn’t really matter. The English muffin was satisfying, with its ridged terrain. But any assortment of bread-iness to surround the egg-iness will result in scrumptiousness, I’m sure.

In the end, it comes down to one thing a Third Former said to me.

“I guess it’s like…flavory,” Third Former Hessikaya Jones Williams said.

His friends laughed at his word-choice as he said this. But “flavory” is a real word, and it’s fitting. 

Merriam Webster defines the word as “rich in flavor—used especially of teas.” The breakfast sandwich merits the use of the word “flavory,” for it warms the soul just as an Earl Grey might.