March 10, 2026
Provided image/Middle Child
Middle Child's take on the McDonald's McGriddle includes two house-made mini pancakes, two smashed sausage patties, cheddar cheese, scrambled eggs and a chili-maple dipping syrup.
It started with an all-caps Instagram post the day before New Year's Eve. Middle Child, the Center City sandwich shop known for its pastrami, egg and cheese, had created its own version of the McDonald's breakfast staple the McGriddle — and it would only be handing out 40 of them.
The new year came and went with no further word of the "MidGriddle." Then, last weekend, it reappeared at Middle Child Clubhouse, the brand's Fishtown restaurant. The staff made and sold about 300 sweet and savory sandwiches, each a towering stack of scrambled eggs, smashed fennel and brown sugar sausage patties and melted cheddar cheese between two house-made mini pancakes. There's also a chili-maple syrup on the side.
Now, the clubhouse is gearing up to serve another batch this Thursday through Sunday while supplies last.
"We hadn't put a new breakfast sandwich on in a while," said Matthew Cahn, the owner of Middle Child restaurants. "... And I just wanted to put something on that was a little, a little freakier and a little bit more maximalist, even though it's not that crazy. Also people really love the pancakes and so I just wanted to have kind of a different outlet for the pancake itself. That's kind of how we landed there."
Cahn, who opened Middle Child in 2017 and the Fishtown spinoff in 2021, admits he loves "knocking off fast food." Middle Child has riffed on the McMuffin and Happy Meal in years past, and branched out beyond the Golden Arches with a Taco Bell-inspired brunch (think reuben Crunchwrap Supreme). Given this rich tradition of drive-thru homages, the MidGriddle seems inevitable. But it is a departure from Middle Child's typical fare. As Cahn jokes, it's their first breakfast sandwich "that only has, like, two eggs in it." Their classic egg sandwich has four to five. And the fluffy egg brick they use on the MidGriddle sparked a bit of an identity crisis for the staff.
"Some of our cooks were really mad that we were doing a sandwich that had a pre-made egg on it," Cahn explained. "Because we scramble every egg to order right now. So there were mixed emotions around that. But I think that ultimately, obviously we're not the only one, many places make pre-made eggs. And I think what's actually interesting about this one is we're trying to adopt a little bit of like a Japanese egg custard.
"There's a lot of liquid in it. So the eggs are really snappy, really like Jell-O and not dense, where there's almost more milk in it than egg. And then we do a really gentle steam bath takes about 45 minutes to cook like one batch of eggs."
Cahn says they'll be making about 300 MidGriddles again this weekend, and hope they can ramp up production enough to make the sandwich a regular offering. The main obstacle is planning production and distribution around the Center City shop, which does not have a griddle.
"(We're) trying to get the hang of production and see what it's like, and then take it from there," Cahn said. "It might end up having to be one of those things where it's just a limited number per week. Or if we can work through the production, then hopefully it's something that we could offer all the time at both locations."
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