The return of all-day breakfast

Last year, I got my friends hooked on Pulley Diner’s omelets.

Made of thin layers of perfectly-cooked egg folded around toppings of one’s choice such as spinach, mushrooms or ham (and, of course, topped with a heaping helping of cheese), these omelets were some of the best I’d ever had. My friends and I would often head to Pulley Diner around dinnertime and order them — a salty, cheesy 6 p.m. omelet, complete with a side of hash browns and some toast with jam.

Upon returning to campus this year, I was psyched for these omelets again. No matter how hard I tried to make similar ones at home, I could never quite achieve that Pulley’s je-ne-sais-quoi.

But then, tragedy: Pulley’s canceled its all-day breakfast this year with the Aramark Corporation takeover of Miami dining services. Breakfast was to be served, well, during breakfast time — ending at 10:30 a.m.

As someone who is rarely on-campus before 10, this could not have been more devastating to me personally, and to many of my peers, who I knew to hold Pulley Diner breakfast more dear at 10 p.m. than at 10 a.m.

After nearly two months of school, however, the official Instagram account for Miami University’s dining services announced in a post on Monday, Oct. 10 that they had listened to the student body’s wishes and brought back our beloved all-day breakfast services.

Many Miami students were clearly thrilled, with the post racking up 119 likes by Wednesday, Oct. 12. This was over twice the amount of likes as obtained the post before, which announced dining events upcoming throughout the month of October (46 likes), and the post after (52 likes), which gave further information into one such event — “Here’s the Scoop,” an ice cream event at Western Dining Hall.

If breakfast is more well-liked than ice cream on this campus, you know the student body missed their all-day breakfast opportunities.

With that being said, as with nearly everything food-related on this campus, there were still some changes made to breakfast at Pulley Diner.

These changes have been around all semester long, but only for the early-morning crowd — not for the night owls.

As someone who had not had the chance to go to Pulley’s for breakfast yet this semester (read: I like to sleep in), I took the opportunity to grab a quick breakfast-for-dinner bite on Monday night — the old-turned-new all-day breakfast’s first day of operation.

Many “plain” favorites from last year, such as eggs and toast, are gone. Hash browns in their totality are no more, with all breakfast items on the GrubHub app reading, “Served with tater tots.”

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Luckily, some favorites have stayed – pancakes and omelets, for instance — and new contenders have arrived to the (literal) table. Breakfast sandwiches and a tomato, avocado & turkey bacon scramble can now be found on the Pulley Diner menu.

On Monday night when I went, omelets were completely out of stock. Considering the amount of people I personally know on campus who would kill for a Pulley Diner omelet, especially on the first day back for all-day breakfast, this was unsurprising.

Side note: the days of build-your-own omelet are gone, with only three pre-made options now offered: a cheddar omelet, a western omelet and a turkey sausage omelet. There goes my perfect order of mushrooms, spinach and American cheese.

At least you can still add Oreos to your pancakes. Maybe I’ll have to get those more often.

With the lack of omelets on Monday night (which has, thankfully, since been rectified), I tried one of the breakfast sandwiches — a sausage, egg & cheese muffin, sans sausage. I am a vegetarian, after all.

It was solidly mid — my egg came over hard instead of scrambled, and I was given French fries instead of the promised tater tots, but other than these minor issues, it was a breakfast sandwich, and I ate the lot.

At 7 p.m. on a Monday, that was all I could ask for.

Will I be visiting Pulley Diner every night for breakfast-for-dinner this semester? No — but at least the opportunity has returned to campus, and my late-night cravings for an omelet can finally be satisfied.

For those of you who missed the all-day breakfast as much as I did, you can now find breakfast sandwiches, omelets, scrambles & breakfast sides available all day at Pulley Diner in Armstrong Student Center. Head over there today to get your fill of a late-night breakfast snack.

Thank you, Miami Dining! Thank you, Aramark!

radwanat@miamioh.edu