Millbrook has five places to eat breakfast, which for a town of 9,400 is either impressive or excessive depending on how you feel about the Kettle’s pancakes. We ate at all of them, several times, and organized this by what you are actually in the mood for.
If you need to be fed before six: the Kettle Diner
Opens at 5 a.m., six days a week, and has since 1974. The Kettle is not the best food on this list and does not claim to be. It is the only place that will serve you eggs before the sun comes up, the coffee is refilled without being asked, and the counter is where you find out what happened at the council meeting.
A word about the pancakes: they are enormous and they are not good. Order the eggs.
If someone else is paying: Verity, on Third
The most ambitious kitchen in town does breakfast Thursday through Sunday. Sourdough from their own starter, eggs from a farm on Orchard Road, a mushroom toast in the fall that is genuinely worth the twenty minutes you will wait for a table. Expect $18 to $24 a person.
If you have children: the Grange Cafe
High chairs, crayons, a menu that includes both a $4 kids’ plate and an actual espresso machine, and enough ambient noise that nobody notices yours. The breakfast burrito is the best single item on this list.
If you want to sit alone with a book: Ninth Street Coffee
Pastry and a short egg menu, no table service, nobody hurrying you. Two hours on a laptop is fine here in a way it is not at the Kettle. The croissants come out at 7:15 and are gone by 9.
If it is Sunday and you are hungry: Marisol’s
Only open Saturday and Sunday, only until 1 p.m., and worth arranging your weekend around. Chilaquiles, huevos rancheros, and a pozole on Sundays in winter that has developed something close to a cult.
People drive from Ashford for the pozole and then get annoyed that we are closed Monday. We have been closed Monday for nine years.
Marisol Vega
The short version
- Before 6 a.m., or for gossip: the Kettle Diner, 88 Water Street
- Special occasion: Verity, 12 Third Street
- With kids: the Grange Cafe, 40 Third Street
- Alone, with a book: Ninth Street Coffee, 9 Ninth Street
- Weekend only, go early: Marisol’s, 210 Water Street