The Green Apple sits behind a green storefront at 19 West Main Street in Waterloo, and it has become the definitive breakfast spot in the northern Finger Lakes. Gold for Best Breakfast in 2025 is the latest recognition for a diner-style restaurant that takes the most important meal of the day more seriously than most.

The breakfast menu is anchored by scrambles and omelets — a wide range of them, built to order with the kind of ingredient combinations that go beyond the standard ham-and-cheese formula. The kitchen treats eggs as a medium rather than a commodity, and the results are plates that look like they belong in a brunch-focused cafe rather than a small-town diner. The environment is clean, cozy, and entirely unpretentious — exactly the vibe you want at 8 AM when coffee is the priority and the day's plans are still coming into focus.

Waterloo often gets bypassed by visitors heading to Seneca Falls for the museums or Geneva for the lakefront, but The Green Apple is reason enough to build it into your morning route. It is the kind of place where the regulars have their usual booth and the server remembers how you take your coffee, and where the food is good enough that the tourists who do find it wonder why it took them so long. For breakfast in the Finger Lakes, the locals have spoken — and they chose the green storefront on West Main.