Brian Nosek is into numbers. He’s also into breakfast.
Nosek, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, is a well-known champion of “open science,” a movement to make academic research and its findings accessible to everyone. “A lot of the public perception of psychology is about treatment and management of wellbeing,” Nosek says. “But a substantial portion of the field, of academic psychology, is about strong methodology.”
For his latest data project, Nosek commissioned two research assistants: his daughters, 14-year-old Haven and 12-year-old Joni.
“We love breakfast,” Nosek says. “My spouse sleeps in, and we have time in the morning to do stuff on the weekends. So it’s often, ‘Let’s go have breakfast somewhere.’”
But how to decide where to dine? Nosek says he and his daughters used Yelp as their go-to info source. But it didn’t tell them everything they wanted to know. Specifically, Nosek says Yelp doesn’t say much about the quality you can expect for your money.
The Noseks set out on an egg-zamination of their own. The researchers would eat at 50 places “known for their breakfast.” They would rate every restaurant on taste, presentation, menu, ambiance, and service. They would consider each variable in the context of price.
And in the spirit of open science, they would publish their data for all the world to see, explore for themselves, and perform new analyses.
“We wanted to share our ratings to tell other people about our experiences—give recommendations and inspire people to do fun projects like this on their own,” Haven Nosek says.
No word yet on whether anyone has taken the Noseks up on crunching those numbers. But, from the researchers’ perspective, the conclusions are in. The team’s number one overall breakfast spot in the area? Fill up your gas tank—it’s Thunderbird Cafe in McGaheysville, on Route 33 just outside of Massanutten. “It was really my style and yummy,” Joni Nosek says.
Quirk Cafe, Croby’s Urban Vittles, Guajiros Miami Eatery, Fig, and MarieBette Cafe & Bakery round out the top five overall. (Fig and MarieBette tie for fifth.) Quality Pie earns a special honorable mention from the lead researcher; it lands third on taste but suffered overall due to ambiance issues during COVID.
RIP to the breakfast joint that was top-rated on taste, Bluegrass Grill & Bakery. Charlie & Litsa’s South Main Street Cafe in Culpeper comes in second on the taste dimension. That’s the measurement where you find some traditionally heralded local breakfast places: Oakhurst Inn Cafe and Espresso Bar ranks fourth; Ace Biscuit & Barbecue, Blue Moon Diner, Bodo’s Bagels, and Fox’s Cafe (also now closed) all tie for the fifth taste spot with an average rating of 9.3.
Chains tend not to fare well with the self-styled “Breakfast Bunch” (or the three “Munchateers,” if that’s your taste). Not a single restaurant with multiple identical locations makes their overall top-10 list. Not even Bodo’s. IHOP rates reasonably well on taste and menu, and Taco Bell scores a surprise eighth in the service dimension.
For the eldest Nosek, the most surprising takeaway from the project was how little cost seemed to matter to his intrepid research crew. Presentation and ambiance are modestly correlated with what the Noseks spent, but taste, menu, and service are only slightly related. Donuts, for example, did well because of their affordability. “They’re delicious deathtraps and great value,” Nosek says. Duck Donuts drops in at third behind Thunderbird and Croby’s on the top-10 best value list.
Indeed, the research study sample on the whole is relatively low cost, Nosek says. Across all 50 restaurants, the Munchateers spent $9.91 per person on average, and that was for a hungry group trying multiple things. All in the interest of science, of course.
“I have a love of science and methodology, and I wanted to share some of that with [my daughters],” Nosek says. “The big debate is how much do we want to add new places to the list versus looking at test-retest reliability. I think we will definitely replicate our breakfast study.”
Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled Culpeper.