The Dish That Survived Being a Joke
For about five years, avocado toast was less a breakfast than a reference. It got blamed for the housing market, it landed on a hundred menus belonging to places with no business making it, and a genuinely good piece of food spent half a decade as a running gag. Then the joke got old and the dish stayed, which is usually the sign that it was never about the trend.
It stayed because it is a well-built breakfast: good bread, a fat that carries flavor, acid, salt and something green, assembled in about two minutes. The problem was never the idea. The problem is that it is unusually easy to do badly, and most of the versions people formed their opinion on were bad ones. Here is the difference, and how to order ours at Pier 69 Market on the Bay Ridge waterfront.
What Actually Makes a Good Avocado Toast
Three things, and only one of them is the avocado.
The Bread Does the Work
This is what separates the versions worth ordering from the rest. Avocado is heavy and wet. Put it on a thin slice of soft bread and you get a structural failure inside three minutes: the middle collapses, the whole thing bends when you lift it, and you finish it with a fork. Ours is on thick-cut sourdough for exactly that reason. The thickness holds the weight, the crust gives you something to push against, and sourdough carries a faint acidity that cuts a rich topping before the salt and lemon get involved.
If you want the broader picture of how the breakfast counter is built here, the waterfront breakfast guide walks through the rest of it, and the breakfast page has the full lineup.
The Avocado Has to Be Ripe Today
There is no technique that rescues an underripe avocado. Too firm and it tastes like nothing and refuses to spread. Too far gone and it turns grey and sweet in a way nobody wants at seven in the morning. The window is short, which is why the dish rewards places that go through volume. A cafe serving a handful a week is working from whatever is in the box. A cafe serving them all morning is working from fruit chosen for today.
Seasoning Is Not Optional
Plain mashed avocado on bread is bland. It needs salt and it needs acid, and the version that skips either is the version that convinced a lot of people they did not like avocado toast. The fat in an avocado is a carrier: it takes whatever flavor you give it and spreads that across the whole bite. Give it nothing and that is precisely what you taste.
Avocado is fat and fiber and almost no protein. That is why avocado toast alone leaves you hungry by eleven, and why the egg is the real decision.
The Hard Boiled Egg Question
Ours comes with the option of a hard boiled egg on top, and this is the choice worth thinking about rather than defaulting on.
Avocado is fat and fiber with very little protein. That combination satisfies in the moment and fades fast, which is the whole explanation for why people eat avocado toast at eight and are hungry again at eleven. An egg fixes it, and it is the cheapest way to turn a pleasant plate into a breakfast that carries you to lunch.
So the rule is simple. Add the egg when the toast is the meal, when a long walk on the promenade follows, or when this is your last stop before a busy afternoon. Skip it when you are also ordering something with substance, like a smoothie or an acai bowl.
If protein is really what you came for, the breakfast sandwich guide is the more useful page, and the healthy eating guide covers how the juice, smoothie and salad sides of the counter fit together.
Breakfast Order or Lunch Order?
Both, and the difference is what you put next to it. Breakfast runs through the day here rather than stopping at eleven, so avocado toast is as available at two in the afternoon as at seven in the morning.
- As breakfast, it goes with coffee and nothing else. Add the egg, keep it simple, eat it at the counter.
- As lunch, it works better as half a plate than the whole thing. A cup of soup in cold weather, or a salad in warm weather, makes it a real midday meal rather than a snack you talked yourself into.
- As a late order, it is one of the better things on the menu at four in the afternoon.
Worth knowing in the other direction: avocado is also available as an add-on to our grilled cheese, which is a richer proposition entirely. If that is where you lean on a cold day, the soup guide covers the pairing that goes with it.
What to Drink With It
Avocado toast is savory, fatty and mild. That narrows the drink list more than you would think.
The best match on our counter is a cortado or a flat white. We pour La Colombe, and both carry enough milk to round off the espresso without turning the cup into dessert next to a savory plate. Black coffee drinkers should take a straight drip. The combination to avoid is a sweetened or flavored latte, where the sugar fights the salt on the plate and neither wins. The cappuccino versus latte breakdown and the cortado versus flat white guide sort out which of those you actually like.
If you are not drinking coffee, the two that work are a green tea from the Rishi tea side of the counter, where the bitterness does the same job the acid does on the plate, or a cold-pressed juice with something sharp in it. Ginger and lemon against avocado is a better pairing than it sounds.
Thick Sourdough at 10 Bay Ridge Ave
Avocado toast with or without the hard boiled egg, alongside La Colombe coffee and Rishi tea. Open from 6 AM on weekdays and 7 AM on weekends. Order ahead for pickup or have it delivered.
Taking It Out of the Building
Honest answer first: avocado toast is best in the first few minutes, because the bread is doing structural work and time is the enemy of that. It still travels better than most hot breakfast, and two things help. Order it with the egg, which gives the plate something that does not degrade. And carry the container flat rather than upright in a bag, which is the most common reason a takeout breakfast arrives rearranged. If the plan is coffee and a walk, eat the toast before the walk, not along the promenade. The waterfront walk guide covers that sequencing properly.
Pickup and delivery both run through GetSauce, and the Bay Ridge delivery guide explains how that works here. If you are staying to work, the work-from-cafe guide is the one to read: avocado toast is one of the better things to eat one-handed over a laptop.
Avocado Toast for a Group
It earns its place on a group order for one reason: it covers the people a tray of egg sandwiches does not. Most office spreads are built around meat and bread, and there is always someone at the table quietly eating nothing. Two or three avocado toasts solve that without anyone having to ask.
Group orders run through our catering page. Call (718) 777-6969 with your headcount and your timing rather than guessing, and we will tell you what makes sense and when the order needs to be in. The office breakfast guide and the office catering page cover the rest of that week; the brunch guide is for a weekend table rather than a conference room.
Where to Find Us
Pier 69 Market is at 10 Bay Ridge Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11220, open Monday through Friday from 6 AM to 9 PM and Saturday and Sunday from 7 AM to 9 PM. The phone is (718) 777-6969, and pickup and delivery both run through GetSauce. We are a waterfront cafe a few minutes from Owl's Head Park, the Shore Road promenade and the NYC Ferry landing, serving La Colombe coffee and Rishi tea. The full breakfast section is on the menu, directions and hours are on the visit page, and anything we have not answered here is on the FAQ or a phone call away.
