New Year's Day - The Tavern Royale

New Year's Day was a lovely blustery freezing day to be alive. We awoke at a late hour wherein I promptly jumped on Em's bed, groggily proclaiming "I'm hungy" (sic). A quick phone call to The Royal Tavern confirmed that they were serving brunch until 5pm, which is good, because at the rate we were moving, it was clear we weren't going to make their normal brunch cutoff of 3.


The Royal, as we lovingly call it, is not a new restaurant for us. We go there probably once or twice a month for brunch (or twice in one week, whatever) and I pretty much get the same exact thing every time. Behold, the tempeh club, in all it's glory:

With three perfect layers of crispy vegan bacon, succulent grilled tempeh, lettuce, tomatoes and basil aioli on pullman loaf, I could easily eat one of these things every damn week. And sometimes, I do! Only problem is, with 3 fat layers, you really gotta face that thing:


The meal is beautifully rounded out by some of my favorite fries in this city, complete with a veganaise-based (or is it just straight up Veganaise?) dipping sauce, which as you can see in the picture, gets a shot of sriracha to spice things up a bit. The ante could only be upped here by the introduction of another meal, whereupon Em and I "go halfsies" and each order one meal, then swap plates halfway through. It's a great way to get to try two things off of a menu or a good compromise when you just can't make up your mind. Emily got the new tofu scramble with yet more succulent tempeh, juicy as hell roasted roma tomatoes, spinach, tofu and some herb concoction that blew my hungover little mind. Top it all off with a killer bloody mary and this New Year ain't looking so bad.


Aside from waiting nearly 35 minutes for a table (we had a group of 7, what did we expect?) and subsequently quietly yelling at the table of 10 to "finish their damn coffee already", we had good service and the food was as delicious as always. We left our waitress a big old New Year's tip for dealing with our cranky asses (yeah, we broke a creamer, but it wasn't our fault! And so what if we play with our food?) and being pretty charming at that. Then we headed home to surf the couch, watch some flicks and maybe, just maybe, crack that last bottle of champagne.