Royal Cafe
701 E. Main StreetDaycare is expensive. We got out of it for so many years because J worked 3 AM to noon and I worked 3 PM to midnight. We rarely overlapped at work so there was always someone home to take care of the kids.
That all changed a couple of years ago when I moved to a shift that was 9:30 to 6:30. We started hiring a nanny for three hours in the morning until J got home at noon.
Then it changed again earlier this year when J changed jobs and now works a more traditional 8:00 to 5:00. Now we need someone all day so we put the kids in a center. It’s expensive enough during the school year but summer…..dayum.
We’re trying to cut down on some of that expense with the help of J’s mom. She agreed to take L every so often on a Monday or a Friday so we could save a little bit of money.
This past Monday was one of the days L was going to Nana’s. B was really jealous and since the kids are going to my parents next week and then on vacation, J’s parents aren’t going to see the kids for a couple of weeks so she agreed to take both of them.
They got me up around 9:00 Sunday morning and asked if we could go to Nana’s and Grandpa’s early. I said I didn’t care as long as I could stop for breakfast somewhere. I wanted breakfast food.
I picked the Royal Cafe because it’s pretty close to my in-laws place and it wouldn’t be that far out of the way on our way to their house.
Royal Cafe is on the eastside of Centreville just inside the village limits on East Main Street or M-86. The parking lot is kind of shared with Firm Foundation Ministries so it looked like there were a lot of cars in the lot when we pulled in but they were all still in church.
J’s parents decided to meet us there so we asked for a table for six when we walked in. A waitress said they were cleaning off a bigger table and it’d be just a second. It turned in to ten minutes before someone realized they had forgotten about us.
The dining room is a big L with smaller tables near the front and the tables for larger groups around the corner. The decor is pretty simple with brown carpet flooring, hanging lights, and white walls adorned with large posters and hand painted lettering.
Our waitress started us with drinks while we looked over the menus. We put our order in at about ten minutes after 11 but didn’t get it until about five minute after noon. It was really frustrating to spend that much time on breakfast and luckily, we were able to keep the kids distracted enough that they didn’t realize they didn’t have their food yet.
We chose off the breakfast side of the menu but lunch was offered. I picked the Steak and Eggs. I asked for the 8 oz. New York Strip to be cooked medium but it came out pretty well done. It still had that great, salty crust from the griddle though so it wasn’t all that bad. The plate came with two eggs that came out a nice and runny over medium, two slices of toast and a big heaping of crispy, delicious hash browns. I greedily gobbled up the hash browns then took some from L’s plate as well because I knew she wasn’t going to eat. They were really good.
J and her mom both ordered the Royal Waffle Special. This is a pretty simple Belgian waffle dusted with powdered sugar. It comes with one egg and two bacon strips which they both asked to be extra crispy.
There was no kid’s menu options so we ordered what we thought the kids would like off the regular menu.
For B, we got Silver Dollar Pancakes. B will gobble up pancakes in the morning like you wouldn’t believe. We had to get enough butter on each one though to make him happy but once we did that, he started eating. He didn’t make it all the way through all six but he ate enough to make us happy. We also got him a side of bacon but he only ate one piece. That just meant bacon for me.
L did the Two Eggs and Bacon. She got her eggs scrambled and her bacon crispy. The plate also comes with toast and hash browns. Like B, she would pretty much eat butter right out of the tub if we’d let her so she took some of the extra butter with his meal and added more to her toast before eating it. She ate all of the eggs and bacon but wouldn’t try the hash browns. J and I helped her finish off that part of her plate.
The bill for our meal was just a little under $60. We had to add it up ourselves at the table so we knew how much of a tip to leave. It had all of the orders and prices on it, but it hadn’t been added up. They do that at the cash register back near the entrance where you pay but my Mother-In-Law wanted to leave a cash tip instead of putting it on her card and didn’t know how much to leave so we broke out the iPhone calculator.
We all really enjoyed our breakfast at Royal Cafe but an hour and a half meal at breakfast time is really long. Most breakfast places try to get you in and out so they can flip the table but we didn’t have that experience here. We’d go back because the food was really good and the location is great for where my in-laws live. I really liked the hash browns and places that do good hash browns always jump to the top of my list when we start talking breakfast.
SW Michigan Dining 