This week I reached out for a Western Egg Muffin Melt, part of the new breakfast menu at America's No. 1 early-morning fast-food chain ...

You thought McDonald's? Nope, it's Subway, with 25,000 restaurants coast to coast, practically on every corner. The Golden Arches has barely half that many locations.

Here's the Western Egg Muffin Melt blueprint: a scrambled-egg omelet, Black Forest ham, green peppers, red onions and American cheese on a light wheat English muffin.

Total calories: 180. Fat grams: 7. Dietary fiber: 6 grams. Carbs: 19 grams. Manufacturer's suggested retail price: $2.

A terrific deal is the Western Egg Muffin Melt and a 16-ounce cup of Seattle's Best coffee -- a Starbucks product -- for $2.50. It may be fast food's best morning buy.

Subway, tops in sandwiches for years, opened its doors for breakfast last month, and overnight it became the biggest breakfast chain in the country, too. It was like when Dunkin' Donuts began selling bagels in 1996. One minute past 6 a.m. that day, Dunkin', by the sheer volume of 1,400 shops nationwide, was the biggest bagel baker in America. Size matters.

Breakfast has become the furious battleground in fast food. In recent months, Burger King expanded its breakfast menu, even bragging that it "stole" the blueprint for its knockoff of the Sausage McMuffin with Egg. Wendy's has announced plans to boot up breakfast. And now here's Subway, taking dead aim at McDonald's ownership of the most important meal of the day.

Subway has a complete menu of breakfast sandwiches in various sizes and shapes, but the cornerstone is the Western Egg Muffin Melt, which looks, sounds and tastes suspiciously like McDonald's iconic Egg McMuffin.

There are important differences, however. McDonald's cracks a fresh egg for its McMuffin sandwiches. Subway scrambles and cooks its omelets off-campus and delivers them, pre-cooked and portioned, to its restaurants. Big advantage to McDonald's.

McDonald's toasts its English muffins like you toast them at home, so they're crispy on the edges. Subway constructs its sandwiches, then pops the whole thing in a superfast oven for all-over baking. Round 2 goes to McDonald's, too.

Subway uses Black Forest ham in its Western Egg Muffin Melt, which has more flavor and salty pop than that razor-thin slice of Canadian bacon that McDonald's slaps on its Egg McMuffin. Split decision to Subway, because its Black Forest ham tops McDonald's Canadian bacon, but McDonald's sausage patty evens the score. For flavor, value and fill-up-ability, nothing touches McDonald's Sausage McMuffin with Egg in the morning.

And if you stuff a hash-brown patty inside the Sausage McMuffin with Egg, well, you've got a Fast-Food Hall of Famer. I don't know why McDonald's doesn't serve breakfast 24/7. Breakfast is what it does best.

But with 25,000 restaurants, which is more than McDonald's and Burger King put together in the U.S., Subway is going to put a dent in its rivals' breakfast bottom line.

One advantage for Subway: Customers can customize their breakfast sandwiches with any or all of Subway's veggie toppings and sauces. And Subway offers more choice in sizes -- from the Western Egg Muffin Melt to a $5 footlong breakfast sandwich on that fantastic, fresh-baked bread.

Kudos to Subway for offering all of its breakfast choices with egg-white omelets, which cuts the fat almost by half. And some respectful golf applause to Subway for its commitment to using eggs laid by cage-free chickens. These chickens are allowed to run around the farm, and they're cooped up in the henhouse only at night. Free-range eggs account for only 4 percent of Subway's total egg buy now, but that will increase as more suppliers are identified.

(c) 2010 by King Features Syndicate.