Grilled Cheese Dumpling (on spoon filled with tomato soup)

Beauty and Essex is the perfect place to get your Boozy Brunch on without all the ear-piercing music, awful food or drunk AF girls in micro mini’s trying to navigate the cumbersome cobblestone streets of the Meatpacking in their stilettos (I’m talking to you, Bagatelle).

While watching these intoxicated gals hold onto one another for dear life is certainly entertaining, I definitely do not desire to step foot inside one of these places to experience just how loud the thumping music sounds from the inside. I would need to be sufficiently wasted beforehand.

The star dish at this sorta hidden (but not really) LES hotspot would have to be the Grilled Cheese Dumplings. I mean, need I go on? No? Well, fine. I won’t. Just to spite you.

My other favorite dish were the chilaquiles. Loved the spicy green sauce that came with it.

B & E has an extensive menu, and I don’t think anyone disliked their meal. Some items (such as the Juicy Lucy sausage biscuit) were on the smaller side, so perhaps do some research ahead of time if you’re a hungry hungry hippo.

The service was friendly, the drinks were fun and potent and the place is spacious and gorgeous. No matter what time of day you show up, you can’t go wrong. Unless you’re having some sort of personal crisis that day, and then everything will suck, regardless.

I can’t help you there.

Essex St
New York, NY 10002
b/t Stanton St & Rivington St
Lower East Side
(212) 614-0146
beautyandessex.com

You enter the restaurant through an upscale pawn shop. My friend appears beyond delighted that I’m snapping her photo.

Beauty Elixir
Hendricks gin, cucumber, strawberry, sparkling rosé

Grilled Cheese, Smoked Bacon &
Tomato Soup Dumplings – $16

Hmm, no clue what this was. Roasted red peppers on toast?

Fried Chicken Biscuit Bites
tabasco honey butter, red cabbage slaw – $15

‘Juicy Lucy’ Sausage Biscuit
housemade pimento cheese stuffed country sage sausage

‘Eggs Benedict’* 14
jamon serrano, hollandaise

Maryland Crab Cake BLT
romaine, tomato, crispy bacon, old bay aioli – $19

‘Everything Bagel & Lox’ Pizzetta
american paddlefish roe, caper berries, cheddar cream cheese – $16

Chilaquiles*
hand pulled chicken, sunny side up egg, cotija cheese, pickled red onion – $17

Lemon Blackberry Pancakes 12
sweet ricotta

Black Bottomed Butterscotch Pot de Crème
coconut Chantilly – $14