Clinton St. Baking Company

A Short Stack Worth the Line

3.5 of 5

The line outside 4 Clinton Street is a New York rite, like a bad apartment or a good bagel. People stand on the sidewalk on a Sunday for pancakes and nobody thinks that is strange, which tells you something about New York and something about the pancakes.

The pancakes arrive with warm maple butter and cost twenty dollars, which sounds like a joke until you eat them. Buttery, tall, a little crisp at the edges, the kind of plate that makes the rest of the menu seem like a distraction. The classic eggs Benedict is clean and well made at twenty-one. The bakery side matters too. Muffins, scones, a carrot cake and a blueberry cheesecake sit behind the counter for anyone who needs to pick a pastry for the walk home.

It is a bakery first, and you can taste the baker in everything. There is a reservation system now, which beats the old way of standing around hungry. If you want to skip the crowd entirely, go on a weekday when the room is calm. A second branch lives at Time Out Market in DUMBO, but the original on Clinton is the one worth the trip. It is a restaurant that earned its fame by baking well and cooking honestly, and the fame has not changed the recipe. That is rarer than it sounds.

Order this: Pancakes with warm maple butter, Classic eggs Benedict, A muffin or scone from the bakery case, Blueberry cheesecake
The damage: $$
Go: A weekday, off peak
Find it: 4 Clinton St, New York, NY 10002