Critic's Review
I got the idea of trying Ally's for a Saturday afternoon breakfast without checking to see that they close at 2pm. 2pm is a weird closing time; is lunch over at 2pm in South Florida? Needless to say that I made a fairly long trip for nothing; the door was locked and chairs were on the tables.
I tried again today, and got here at 1:25. There were 4 booths empty; the hostess questioned whether she could give me one. "It's Late", I said, as I sat down. With 4 booths they'd better give me one.
The place is small, there are a lot of people working for a 50 seat restaurant.
They write the specials out on a yellow pad; the way it was done in the 80s before we had the LaserJet. Pretty aggressive for such a small place.
I knew I was having coffee, so I ordered that. Decent coffee, and it comes in a big cup, so they don't have to keep topping it off every 4 minutes. I didn't even need a refill for this big boy.
I ordered 2 over easy with home fries, sausage links and rye toast, because that's what I usually order.
My order came out in 2 minutes. I'm not kidding.
Under 4 minutes from ordering Coffee to food on the table. I suppose that's impressive, except when you crank out food that fast, there are consequences to pay.
Obviously, the eggs were flash cooked on a grill that is way too hot to cook eggs. The sausages looked like they must have been really good when freshly cooked, but these had all of the fat pre-cooked out of them and maybe warmed up for a minute. The potatoes were largely unseasoned and too soft for home fries; an interesting counterpoint to the eggs. The toast was the only thing freshly cooked, although its difficult to even make toast in under 2 minutes.
Conclusion
The service was friendly and they really roll here, but there is no love in the food. It's cranked out short order food, which puts it in line with a diner. I was hoping for something closer to home cooking here, but it's really no different than any other breakfast place.
The 2pm closing time tells you a lot. They're more interested in getting home than running a restaurant.