Introduction to the Snakebite Breakfast Sandwich
In the pantheon of sandwiches, those of the breakfast variety seldom get the same level of imaginative reinvention as their cold-cut cousins. And it’s understandable why. There’s beauty in the no-frills egg + cheese + protein formula. But at Goodfriend Package in East Dallas, nothing is off limits when it comes to pushing the boundaries of the breakfast sandwich. This anything-goes approach has yielded arguably one of the best breakfast sandwiches Dallas, and maybe even Texas, has seen.
On the sandwich shop’s butcher-paper-and-Sharpie menu dedicated to frequently changing specials is the Snakebite — a personality-packed specimen of a sandwich for which we have Goodfriend’s assistant general manager Patrick Staton to thank.
The Snakebite breakfast sandwich at Goodfriend Package came about because of an erroneous jalapeño bagel order.(Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer)
The Accidental Creation of the Snakebite
It all started with an accidental order of jalapeño cheddar bagels. Earlier this year, Goodfriend struck up a partnership with Starship Bagel. It was too good of an opportunity to pass up, said Goodfriend owner Matt Tobin, even if it meant selling fewer of their own house-made biscuits. Goodfriend staff came up with a few sandwiches to make with Starship’s plain and everything bagels, but when jalapeño cheddar bagels accidentally wound up in their regular order a few months ago, Staton decided to make a limited breakfast special to put them to use.
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The Making of the Snakebite
Staton toasted one and slathered half of it with raspberry jam and the other with a gently spicy cream cheese he made by folding in chopped poblanos he roasted, seeded and skinned. Then he took breakfast sausage, topped it with raw jalapeño slices and cooked it smash burger-style on Goodfriend’s signature flattop to get thin, crisp edges before adding a slice of American cheese. Alongside it, he fried a broken egg and some bacon.
He then layered it all with structural integrity in mind: the jam-covered bagel half, a sausage patty topped with jalapeños and molten cheese, egg, bacon as a grip layer and the other bagel half, coated in poblano cream cheese. It is, by design, the breakfast sandwich version of a jalapeño popper.
The Approval and Naming of the Snakebite
Staton handed the sandwich to Goodfriend’s stoic and discerning general manager, Brian Bell.
“He’s a man of few words,” Staton said of Bell. “He was quietly chewing and nodding, so I knew I had a winner.”
With head nod approval secured, Staton’s creation had the green light to get scribbled onto the restaurant’s paper menu of specials that hangs above the register, but first the sandwich needed a name. He said somehow the restaurant’s jocular and very unofficial theme song, “Snake Farm” by Ray Wylie Hubbard, led to the name Snakebite, and it stuck.
Assistant general manager Patrick Staton works the grill at Goodfriend Package, Monday, June 30, 2025, in East Dallas.(Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer)
The Popularity and Future of the Snakebite
The Snakebite was never supposed to last longer than the time it took to get through the “oops” order of jalapeño cheddar bagels. It found instant popularity, though; so much so that Goodfriend decided to keep rolling with it as long as people kept ordering it.
“Oh, is that how it went down?” said Starship owner Oren Salomon when he was told Goodfriend’s first order of jalapeño cheddar bagels was an accident. “This all makes a lot of sense. I remember seeing them order those and I wondered why. Then they called and asked for them in every order.”
Salomon only makes jalapeño cheddar bagels one weekend a month, so he had a decision to make. After some vacillation, he agreed to make them regularly solely for Goodfriend, which means it’s the only place in town where they’re available daily.
The jalapeño cheddar bagel plays a key role in the Snakebite. Each bagel is topped with half to a whole jalapeño and about 2 ounces of freshly grated cheddar, not the pre-shredded stuff that comes coated in anti-caking additives. The generous amount of cheese means the bagels, which are not flipped during the baking process, essentially fry in a puddle of the cheese’s oil run-off. They are flavor bombs in their own right.
“It’s not really a part of the traditional bagel canon, and at first I didn’t really want to make one,” Salomon said, “but I remember eating it and thinking, ‘This is
