halacha - Eating before Davening with a Minyan, or Davening at home and not eating till later?

You wake up in the morning and are famished. In order to have strength to go to Shul you need to eat prior to Davening. However, if you were to Daven without a Minyan at home you would not have to eat prior to Davening. What should you do? Eat before Davening with a Minyan? Or Daven without a Minyan and avoid eating before Davening? (sources please)

Answer

Your question is addressed in a Biur Halacha O.C 89 "v'chen". A person who is eating for strength (because he experiences weakness) may eat before davening even if he could just as easily waited until after davening- since his intent is for his health.

However, he continues quoting, the best practice is to not eat before davening, even if this will disallow him from davening with a minyan because of his weakness.

I would qualify this with the assumption that davening first and eating later would not have an effect on his attention. If it does, perhaps we would defer to the Aruch haShulchan 89:25 quoting the Rambam that you must eat, and the Bais Yosef saying that it is optional (presumably because we don't have great attention anyway).