This city has plenty of restaurants that offer lame brunch prix fixes with sloppy egg dishes and weak mimosas — these places give brunch a bad name. Here's a guide to 15 new restaurants that are serving non rip-off brunch menus with great food. Seek these places out if you like breakfast, lunch, or both:
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New York's 15 Hottest Brunch Restaurants, Spring 2013

The Marrow
Harold Dieterle's West Village restaurant recently started serving a brunch menu that includes one of NYC's best new burgers. If you want something sweet, you can order some of Ginger Fisher's excellent pastries, or ricotta toast with honey and huckleberries. For savory dishes, the entree list includes a peekytoe crab frittata, pain perdu with duck liver mouse, and homemade bratwurst. The dining room is lined with huge floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto charming stretches of Greenwich and Bank Streets, making this an ideal place to dine during the day.
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Maysville
If you are hungry (or especially hungover) get the mighty pulled pork sandwich at this great new Southern restaurant. The meat is smoky and very juicy, and it comes topped with a lightly dressed chopped kale salad. And, although this is listed as an entree, the plate of crispy grits with smoked ham is a great dish to share in addition to the main courses. Check out the full menu here (PDF).
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Hearth
After a decade in business, Marco Canora just started serving bunch at his East Village Italian restaurant. The menu includes a Bev Eggleston pork blade steak with eggs, veal meatballs with polenta, pig trotter with poached eggs, and several vegetable-based entrees. The brunch menu offers a great taste of Canora's cooking at a very reasonable price, and the space has a nice, airy feel during the day time. Check out the menu here.
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L'Apicio
The brunch menu at Joe Campanale and Gabe Thompson's East Village restaurant has a little something for everyone. You can get Italian pastries, salads, pancakes, fried chicken, pastas, and egg dishes. The brunch menu also includes one dish made with that cheesy starch that Pete Wells loved so much: polenta with shrimp, bacon, and tomato.
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Pig and Khao
On weekend afternoons, Leah Cohen's fun new Lower East Side restaurant serves dinner standouts like the sizzling sisig and the Chinese sausage salad, plus more brunch-oriented dishes like steak and eggs, pain perdu, and donuts. Bottomless mimosas are $15. Pro Tip: Sip some of those in the backyard when the weather gets nice.
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Rosemary’s Enoteca & Trattoria
Carlos Suarez's super-popular West Village Italian restaurant offers many of the pastas and salads from the dinner menu plus things like eggs Benedict, eggs with spicy tomato sauce, and smoked salmon on focaccia. Right now, Rosemary's is very manageable at brunch. This is a great place to take the lady, fellas.
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El Toro Blanco
For brunch, Josh Capon and John McDonald's hot new Mexican restaurant serves things like steak and eggs, chilaquiles, huevos rancheros, hot honey apple cakes, and baked brioche with bananas and pecans. Much of the lunch menu is also offered on the weekend. Don't pass up the fresh guacamole with warm chips.
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Chez Sardine
In addition to Japanese dishes like miso-baked oysters and shrimp okonomi, Chez Sardine also serves brunch favorites like eggs Florentine, a croque monsieur, and baked eggs with goat cheese and ramps. Although the stellar salmon roe pancake from the dinner menu did not make it on the list, during brunch Chez Sardine offers a "giant pancake" made with apples, bacon, and maple syrup. Chez Sardine might have the coolest dining room of any of the Little Wisco restaurants.
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Salvation Taco
During brunch, Salvation Taco serves two of the best dishes from the lunch and dinner menus: the chicken thigh torta and the stellar lamb naan tacos. You can also get chilaquiles, a steak and egg burrito, a Spanish tortilla, or assorted fresh baked pastries. This is a cool choice for a long, boozy brunch, or a round of midday cocktails with Mexican bar bites. Brunch drinks are $10.
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Willow Road
The brunch menu at this stylish new Chelsea restaurant includes things like brioche French toast, slow cooked eggs with oats and bacon, mac and cheese with ramps, and a spiced lamb sandwich. And if you want something on the healthy side, Willow Road's brunch menu includes salads, fruit dishes, and fresh pressed juices. This is also a good place to pop into if you want a drink and a snack after a stroll on the High Line.
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Calliope
Calliope is the French-influenced restaurant from husband and wife team Eric Korsh (formerly of Waverly Inn) and his Ginevra Iverson (formerly of Prune). For brunch, Calliope serves German pancakes, several egg dishes, a burger, and a rabbit and pork terrine. The menu also includes three kinds of house-smoked fish, which you can order individually for $10 each, or all together for $26.
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Gran Eléctrica
On the weekends, Gran Electrica serves a brunch menu with things like tacos, huevos rancheros, chilaquiles, buttermilk pancakes, quesadillas, and pastries. The critics love the Colonie team's light-and-fresh approach to regional Mexican cuisine, and the restaurant has an excellent cocktail list. If you're traveling from Manhattan, remember that this is just two blocks away from the East River Ferry terminal in Dumbo.
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M. Wells Dinette
Hugue Dufour's critically-acclaimed new diner inside Moma P.S.1 does not offer a brunch menu, but the restaurant always serves a mix of hearty savory items, salads, and pastries, and it opens at 10 a.m. on the weekends. An average menu might include an egg & tomato pot, a Caesar salad, bone marrow with escargots, blood pudding, veal Stroganoff, and Paris brest for dessert.
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Littleneck
This stylish, year-old Gowanus seafood restaurant just introduced brunch (or "weekend lunch"). The menu includes a duck egg sandwich with fries, fromage blanc pancakes, a burger, a smoked haddock omelette, and shrimp and grits. And if you want a clam belly roll or a lobster roll, of course you can get that too.
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ABV
The chef at this hip Uptown wine bar peviously worked at Morimoto and Momofuku Ssam Bar. Right now, the kitchen is serving a small, but interesting brunch menu that includes dishes like eggs Benedict, breakfast tacos, brioche French toast, a meatloaf and fried egg sandwich, and a spring frittata.
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