Last night Russ and I had the pleasure of hanging with a handful of serious(ly awesome) type nerds because of the TDC competition judging (which my good friend Jason was also in town for) so it turned into a several drinks evening and warranted what Russ hilariously refers to as “changing the oil”—when you get up in the middle of the night, drink some water, pee, drink some water, take a few Advil, and go back to sleep. I rolled out of bed a bit past 10 and my body beckoned for greasy salty food. Nothing feels better after a night of revelry than a ridiculous brunch. I would nominate brunch as one of the better inventions of the 20th century. Few people appreciate it as much as I do, but in my opinion eggs, bacon and a few strong coffees after a relatively late night is “double rainbow” to the max. I actually own the url “brunchisawesome.com” and before I decided just to roll my opinions about brunch into this site, I was planning on making an entire blog in praise of The Best Meal.
There are about a billion wonderful places to go for brunch in Brooklyn, but Roebling Tea Room beckoned this morning, or really one of their signature dishes did—the baked cheddar eggs with cheese grits, fennel raisin toast and apple butter. Fucking amazing. Roebling Tea Room is awesome for a lot of reasons: their food is delicious, their patrons are all mysteriously good-looking (seriously go one weekend and try to find one unattractive person, it’s off-putting), they have an extensive tea menu making them a great non-alcoholic meet-up option, and they have totally mastered the oh-so-Brooklyn “we’re a factory on the outside but a hunting lodge on the inside” thing.
Roebling is one of the better places to take out of towners, I think whoever designed the space was of the same opinion as I was when building pillow forts as a kid—make the outside as unassuming as possible and make the inside a palace of comfort and warmth (for Roebling, the whole urban rustic thing and for me something more Aladdin-inspired complete with my mom’s asian-y floor pillows and christmas lights). It was a bit crowded this morning, but the wait was only about 25 minutes which is decent compared to a number of places in the neighborhood (though we did have a 45 minute wait a few weeks ago here, so it’s a bit of a crapshoot).
Living in New York makes you incredibly patient when it comes to food. I don’t think most people have a problem waiting the better part of an hour for a decent meal because you know that whatever you’re getting isn’t going to be Reconstituted Frozen Food Substitute that will basically pickle you with chemicals. The unfortunate side effect of all of the amazing fresh organic food at the ready is it becomes much harder to justify giving in to cravings for shitty-delicious American classics like Doritos and Pop-Tarts (wow, now I want a pop-tart).
Anyway, Roebling Tea Room: highly recommend.