Masala Lab may serve some of the most intricate breakfast dishes in town, with nuanced layers of flavor and texture. This Indian American breakfast cafe from Deepak Saxena of Desi PDX pours coffee into colorful mugs, sipped by customers while they wait for dishes like coconut milk tikka mole shrimp and grits or creamy, farm greens “saagshuka” with baked eggs. Wash it all down with the house chai, served hot or iced.

This homey all-day cafe’s brunch menu includes heavy-hitter favorites like caramelized-sugar-encrusted French toast with berry jam; a plate of eggs with creamy black beans, potatoes, and pickled onions; and a breakfast sandwich teeming with pillowy mounds of cantal-cheese-fortified scrambled eggs. Next to these sweet or savory mains, diners can add fresh, seasonal add-ons like tender beet salads with Aleppo pepper and sesame or barley with celeriac and pecorino. Leaving without dessert would be criminal.

The patio at Tin Shed has always been a breakfast hangout, even pre-pandemic. Neighbors would sit out among the plants, tucked away on Alberta, with piles of eggs over cheesy grits or raspberry jam scones. For those seeking a pile of potato cakes, eggs Benedict, and a passionfruit-pineapple-orange mimosa, this is the mid-week brunch spot to hit. Pups are also welcome, with their own curated brunch and breakfast options like chicken thighs with sweet potatoes.

This Williams bakery makes some of the city’s finest laminated pastries, whether they’re savory meat croissants, or simply served plain, shatteringly flaky and exceptionally buttery. Any of them would make a phenomenal breakfast, which folks can pair with an espresso or a knockout hot chocolate. It’s always worth it to grab a dessert from the cold case while perusing the other pastries.

Eclectic from start to finish, Cameo Cafe serves a mashup of American and Korean flavors in a diner space with quintessentially funky Portland decor. Cameo is still offering its omelets and hash browns, waffles, pancakes, or other American classics, but those in the know, head straight for the bindaetteok, a massive Korean pancake of veggies, beans, and ground rice, served with bacon and eggs.

This Beaumont charmer of a breakfast cafe delivers the goods: Benedicts topped with everything from cured ham to braised pork shoulder, jammy shakshuka, and an egg-and-cheese on a house buttermilk biscuit. Plus, those looking to live it up mid-week will find a selection of boozy brunch beverages like classic bloody marys. The restaurant’s second location is in a Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard building with a breakfast legacy — the former Cup & Saucer space.

Bernstein’s Bagels likely makes the city’s best bagel — chewy but not too dense, dotted with little bubbles to indicate the right level of snap. They come with bagel-sized layers of inventive schmears, like ones swirled with cinnamon, honey, and brown sugar-macerated raisins; alternatively, those looking for something even heartier can opt for breakfast sandwiches with eggs and prosciutto, ordered for carry-out. It’s best to arrive early, however; these days, Bernstein’s sells out more often than not.

Inside the Glisan convenience store J&T’s Market, Adrian Flores tops cheeseburgers with bacon and eggs, piles plates with huevos rancheros, and ladles bowls of birria de chivo. On the weekends, menudo lands at picnic tables outside the store, sipped alongside horchata and, in some cases, energy drinks from the fridges inside. But for mid-week workers, the selection of breakfast burritos is a real draw, filled with everything from chorizo and potatoes to ham, sausage, and bacon.

Back in the day, Hunnymilk served customizable plates of both sweet and savory brunch items, side-by-side in a single meal. However, during the early days of the pandemic, Hunnymilk switched things up and became something of a doughnut shop: The menu is still a choose-your-own-adventure of sweet and savory dishes, but now its entire menu involves some sort of fried dough. For instance, one meal might involve popcorn chicken-and-waffle doughnuts with a yuzu dip and an apple pie ‘churro-nut’ with whiskey caramel apples and crème brûlée custard. Breakfast comes with a choice of tea, coffee, juice, or drinking chocolate, but those looking for something stronger can upgrade to a cocktail.

As its name suggests, grits and gravy are the stars of this Southern-inspired diner opened by Mumbo Gumbo owner Brandon Stevens. Grits here are buttered and creamy or fried and glazed with molasses, while gravy comes in a few varieties — sausage, red eye, country, and smothered onion — for slathering over buttermilk biscuits, chicken fried steaks, or chicken fried pork chops. Like any solid breakfast spot, bottomless coffee is available, but bottomless sweet tea is a refreshing alternative.

From pastries prepared with traditional Japanese ingredients to perfectly symmetrical katsu sandwiches, house-baked bread is the common denominator at this chic Japanese sandwich shop and patisserie in downtown Portland. While the classic katsu sandwiches — filled with juicy breaded pork loin, chicken, fish, or eggplant — can make for a savory breakfast or brunch meal, breakfast sandwiches of sliced milk bread, egg, bacon, and American cheese or creamy egg salad and crisp lettuce provide more traditional options. Baristas here make drip coffee and steamed milk drinks like lattes with Good Coffee beans, served alongside matcha lattes and Japanese teas.

This cozy Buckman cafe tops its chicken and waffles with bacon butter or hot chile honey, serves its baked French toast with maple creme anglaise, and bolsters its house-made corned beef hash with poblanos and perfect poached eggs. The cocktail menu is no afterthought, with a lengthy selection of spritzes and coffee cocktails.

New Mexican cuisine can be hard to find outside its native state, but this Southeast Morrison cafe keeps Southwestern transplants and local Portlanders satiated with its menu of New Mexican breakfast and lunch classics. The breakfast burrito — stuffed with eggs, potatoes, and pinto beans — comes smothered in a choice of New Mexican red or green chile; pros know to order it “Christmas” for both. Here, huevos rancheros arrive on top of crispy corn tortillas with cheddar cheese, pinto beans, potatoes, and red, green, or Christmas chile. Migas, stuffed sopaipillas, tacos, and New Mexican-style diner breakfasts of eggs and sides round out the breakfast offerings.

This food cart-turned-restaurant has been a Hawthorne mainstay for years, and with other locations in Pioneer Courthouse Square and the Prost food cart pod, these sandwiches show no signs of stopping. The “Sriracha Mix-A-Lot” — a fried egg with choice of protein, avocado, Havarti, tomato, and sriracha — is a typical crowd-pleaser, as well as the classic “Yolko Ono,” a fried egg with house-made pesto and a sausage patty. Sandwiches can be made vegetarian or gluten-free, with tons of add-on options from hash browns to the shop’s Holy Aioli. Boozy standbys like mimosas are available, as well.

La Osita, the breakfast cart with some of the city’s best breakfast burritos and tacos, is still going strong. The chorizo-stuffed Osita breakfast burrito with a hearty dose of pico de gallo is a smart choice, but it’s hard to beat the “brunch taco,” with thick slabs of Applewood bacon and tangy pickled onions with fried eggs. The cart takes walk-up orders for takeout, but that’s soon to change as a brick-and-mortar location is in the works.

This Scandinavian breakfast cafe is a Portland gem, with locations everywhere from Hood River to Southwest Oleson; however, it’s hard to beat the original cafe, where folks wait for a table with cups of cardamom coffee or breakfast cocktails made with Scandinavian aquavit for a regionally appropriate breakfast tipple. Brunch should start with the cheerful little ebelskivers — spherical, fluffy pancake balls topped in powdered sugar, followed by pans of lost eggs or lefse.

This Brentwood-Darlington cafe has been something of a poorly kept secret for weekday brunch, mastering midcentury brunch nostalgia. Yep, Mehri’s has your standard Benedicts, chicken-fried steak and eggs, house-made biscuits slathered in sausage gravy. It also bakes cinnamon rolls and gives them the French toast treatment, stuffs pancakes with fruit compote, and makes the bread for toast in-house.

The cerulean walls of this homey Richmond cafe sport pop culture-themed art, Donnie Darko or Bill Murray looking down at the locals cutting into smothered breakfast burritos or smoked Chinook salmon Benedict. The menu tackles a wide range of breakfast fare with aplomb — scrambles piled over potatoes, puff pastry-wrapped “breakfast dumplings” filled with eggs and sausage, shrimp smothered in butter-wine sauce over cheesy grits. The coffee cocktail options here are extensive, as well.