Panclog

Herbert Egg
July 21st, 2023
Overland Park, KS

Urban Egg is new to the Kansas City area but it has been in Colorado since 2002. Start enjoying their story on their website.

Should you schedule a breakfast date for yourself? Absolutely! But should it be at Urban Egg? That is what your good pal the Breakfast Buddies AKA the Panclog-ateers are here to figure out for you.

Location/Environment: Urban Egg has one location in the Kansas City metropolitan area (So Far!). This is in a nice upscale strip mall just across the street to the south of Town Center. Which would probably be characterized as a nice outdoor mall? They have a spacious parking lot that is shared with the rest of the strip mall. It is wide open at 7 AM. Feel free to confuse your friends by backing into a parking spot. The decor was nice with a fairly open dining room that has the standard booth seating around the perimeter of the dining room and tables with chairs in the center. Which style seating do you prefer?

Service: Service at Urban Egg was nice. Multiple servers past by the table to check on us and to refill the all-too-important coffee cup. The main server made a few nice suggestions when asked their opinion on the menu.

Menu/Selection: Urban Egg has standard faire for a breakfast-brunch-lunch spot. They have the seemingly rare and always exciting pancake flight. Their benedict section is seemingly extensive. Neither of the boys enjoyed the biscuits and gravy on this trip, but they are truly worthy of note. Check out the menu at this nifty link.

Traditional French Toast with a side of Bacon (Brentley)

On a cool for July Friday morning Jared and I met for a scheduled excursion to a new to us breakfast place, Urban Egg. Well slightly new to me, I had the distinct pleasure of joining another good friend at the restaurant earlier in the week. Jared and I went with the distinct intention of panclogging the restaurant, but luckily, we were able to see beyond a critically focused mastication and had a lovely conversation. For those that do not attend a breakfast or brunch with us misses out on a lively conversation filled with laughter, deep emotions, and direct support for all those in attendance.

We arrived at Urban Egg as they were opening for the morning, along with a few other sets of folks. We were all seated at various booths along the walls. As patrons moved in and out, additional parties were seated in booths rather than the several tables in the middle of the floor space. I find this curious and brought it up with Jared as it is a mystery to me. Why do restaurant staff seat people at booths when a table is clearly the superior option. I must be missing something. Jared suggested most folks prefer to sit in a booth. I am baffled. What I think we can all agree on is the booth style seat along a wall, with individual tables and with single chairs opposite, is clearly the worst option.

The general ambience of Urban Egg is bright, airy, and friendly in a Plano, TX sort of way. That statement would cause me a little trepidation, but the serving staff more than makes up the difference, as they are genuinely friendly and interested in your enjoyment of the Urban Egg experience. The color scheme is pleasant and inviting, featuring yellows and greens, with fun, mostly food base, artwork. The restaurant features a full bar, like many other new breakfast eateries in the area. Even older breakfast eateries seem to feature a bar as well, Pegah’s on 87^th Street is proof of that.

Before I dive into what I ordered to eat, I need to comment on their coffee. Urban Egg has developed a blend with The Roasterie, a local Kansas City coffee roaster. And it is Fair Trade Certified. All good things. The coffee tastes fine, if not sadly bitter. But it is nothing to write home about. I was happy to have it, as always, black as the pre-Big Bang universe. But then I discovered a discouraging bit of news. Plain, black coffee costs $3.99. Urban Egg has a lot of misplaced pride invested into their special blend considering they charge roughly 4 bucks. A cup of coffee that surges past $2 should trend quickly to transcendence in flavor.

My advice to you, dear reader, is if you plan on a trip to Urban Egg, carve out a couple hours and consistently hound your server to refill your cup of joe. For the more inventive amongst our loyal readers, may I suggest manufacturing a super long straw to dip directly into the carafes sitting on the burners.

I have been to Urban Egg twice and ordered different items on both occasions. On my prior visit, I had a lovely breakfast and conversation with the illustrious EDubs. We met on a Saturday morning, to a full restaurant, which was exceedingly noisy. Maybe it’s my hearing issues, but, c’mon restaurant community, you don’t need to be as loud as a Manowar or Hanover concert (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudest_band#:~:text=1976.%5B29%5D-,1984%20and%201994,-%5Bedit%5D).

On that day, I ordered the Dutch Apple Pancakes and a side of sausage patties. It was nice to see that a restaurant finally delivered 3 reasonably sized pancakes rather than one giant tablecloth sized pancake spilling off the sides of the plate. The pancakes had small bits of Granny Smith apples and were drizzled with royal icing, toasted streusel powdered sugar, with a too small scoop of cinnamon butter. The cakes were nicely flavorful, albeit exceedingly sweet. The best way to describe the taste, they were cinnamon swirl pancakes with bits of apple included. I enjoyed them a lot. The sausage was fine, but not exciting.

For the official Panclog day, I opted for the Traditional French Toast and a side of bacon. The plate included three large pieces of bread, cut on the diagonal, and arranged like a pinwheel on the plate. The petals of the pinwheel surrounded a tiny carafe of maple syrup. The toast had a healthy dusting of powdered sugar adding additional sweetness to each slice.

The French Toast itself was delicious. They seemed to hit the desired custard texture sweet spot nicely. I was a little disappointed to see that some of the maple syrup found its way on to the plate overwhelming the flavor of several bites with maple “goodness”. As many of you know, I am more pro-jelly than pro-syrup. What was missing from the plate was a pat or ramekin of butter to truly dress up the toast. French Toast is best when it is swimming in butter. There was a slight buttery flavor to the bread, that I suspect came from the grill, rather than from any additional adornment. Certainly, I could have asked for some additional butter, but I was too concerned about maximizing my coffee intake. The bacon was pleasant; however, I would expect thicker slices of bacon from this type of establishment.

Would I go back to Urban Egg? Absolutely. Does it enter the regular rotation? No. While nearly everything about Urban Egg is good, each item is $1-4 more than any other commensurate breakfast place.  

Gourmet Pancake Flight (Jared)

The Panclog is the best excuse to start the day off with breakfast with a best buddy. Especially when your buddy owes you breakfast because you are a superior fantasy baseball manager.

It is so nice to have a great friend who whenever we discover a new breakfast spot in town, we immediately inform the other of its existence and its ability to be panclogged. I’d be honored to have more people who notify me of places that I need to eat at. Is there anything better than catching up with good friends over delicious food? Not much!

My first thought of Urban Egg is that I thought it was going to be yuppy. It was nice but not stuck up. As for what you have probably noticed by now, we think the pricing is a bit higher than the standard. The quality of the food is good, so you are not getting ripped off. It is nice to be the first location outside of Colorado.

I tried the Gourmet Pancake Flight! A flight is a variety of items that I believe began in breweries. You can try a plethora of items without committing to a full pour/stack. The first time I saw a pancake flight on a menu was at Snooze in Denver. But I am so happy to see this phenomenon of a menu item be spread around the breakfast world.

For my pancakes, I chose Cinnamon Swirl, Dutch Apple, and Fred’s Hawaiian. All 3 were delicious! The Cinnamon Swirl pancake was very similar to the uber popular cinnamon roll pancakes, but it wasn’t as sweet as those cakes typically run. There were nice globs of cinnamon sugar that was cooked into the pancake itself. All of these pancakes had some ingredients inside the cake. Which I tend to believe elevates the whole meal other than making the topping the only flavor enhancer.

The Dutch Apple pancake was another cinnamon treat. It had bits of apple in the batter and streusel and icing on top. It was a treat. This was my least favorite of the three, but don’t hang your head fans of Apples from the Netherlands. It was quite tasty.

Now onto my favorite, the Fred’s Hawaiian cakes. It featured toasted coconut, sweet pineapple pieces, and an amazing vanilla anglaise (cream sauce?). This was a real treat. I wish I could have shared it with Brent. But it would have threatened his health. For all of the pancakes, we received a small ramekin of syrup. (You could upgrade to real maple syrup for $3.49). I asked for a bit more syrup, but found myself not needing it much at all. All 3 of these cakes had enough natural moisture from the cake and sauce that the syrup wasn’t necessary.

The coffee was plentiful. And at $3.99, we certainly tried to drink our fill of the glorious beverage. It was nice to have multiple servers walking by making sure our mugs were filled.

I’d be quite happy to go visit this brunch spot again. It may be a bit out of my normal route, so I don’t think it’ll make the regular rotation.

Gourmet Pancake Flight: $12.99
Coffee: $3.99

For my random song of the post, I recommend an uplifting song about how you should do the things you want to do as you will run out of time. Panclog readers, may I present to you “10 Things” by Paul Baribeau.

Overall: Urban Egg is an slightly upper scale bruncherie that is worth a try. Enjoy it with a friend.

Grade:
Brent:  B-
Jared: B+

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