A breakfast sandwich is always a filling, satisfying way to begin the day--or, occasionally, end the night. One of the things I truly missed when I left New York City was the glory of the corner bodega breakfast sandwich. So, I'm always interested when one of the local West Coast, drive-thru, fast food franchise joints comes up with a new combo of bread, egg and cheese. The two most recent entries, Dunkin' Donuts' Egg White Turkey Sausage Flatbread Sandwich and Carl's Jr.'s Monster Breakfast Sandwich lie proudly at opposite ends of the spectrum. A clear-cut rivaly of health vs. indulgence, but what of taste?

McDonald's may be rolling out premium coffees to compete with popular coffee chains, but now coffee chains are introducing their own breakfast sandwiches. The Associated Press revealed that Starbucks is expanding its efforts to sell hot breakfast sandwiches in stores. For the past three years, the coffee company has been testing and retesting various combinations of ingredients for their english muffin sandwiches, including black forest ham, peppered bacon, sausage, cheese and, of course, eggs. Some of the more popular combinations include Eggs Florentine with Baby Spinach and Havarti and Herbed Sausage and Egg with Sharp Cheddar. The sandwiches are delivered to stores every morning, as are their pastries, and heated up in special counter-top ovens. It takes about 3 minutes to heat up a sandwich, only slightly longer than it takes to get a latte.

The hot sandwiches have been tested in Washington, DC and Portland, OR, as well as in selected other stores. Starbucks will be increasing the number of stores that sell the sandwiches from 250 to 600 over the course of the year, expanding into San Francisco stores in early April and Chicago in the fall. The egg sandwiches retail for $2.95. For comparison, McDonald's charges $1.99 for their Egg McMuffin and Dunkin Donuts charges $2.74 for their breakfast sandwich.