Over the past few years, Australian cafés have been opening up around all around NYC. There’s the Bluestone Lane chain that is conquering every beautiful nook and cranny in the city, the beloved Two Hands, the newer Coco & Cru and there’s Ruby’s! How the frick did I not know about Ruby’s? I mean they have two locations already (please open another on the Upper East Side! Please!). 

Take all of the people out, and the café, sans a palm tree painted on the corner of one of the walls and the neon sign bearing the café’s name on another, is clean and simple. Sit back, and let the food be the sole focus of your meal. The beautiful part of my visit is that I ordered a ton of the dishes from different parts of the menu and can safely say that any time of day, breakfast, lunch or dinner, it's the perfect place for an escape from the midtown chaos. 

The food is clean, fresh, flavorful and bright. Even when indulging in the Egg Sandwich stuffed with a hashbrown off of the Brekkie menu, you won't find that processed over greased feel. Instead, each bite softly crumbles into your mouth and the hashbrown squished amongst the bread, egg, roasted tomato and arugula melts away on your tongue.

For salad lovers, let me rephrase, for those looking to be healthy and have a salad for lunch, they have an amazing salad menu. I had the Farro & Haloumi salad with shrimp added to it. Sharing it with a friend was really frickin’ hard. I had my go-go-Gadget arm on reaching across the table for bite after bite of it while holding hope that my bites were faster than hers so I could eat the most. 

From the shrimp added to my salad to the chicken added to the delicious large bowl of Pesto Pasta, there’s something amazing about how they grill. As I ate each grilled bite, I felt like I was teleported to the outdoor grill at my family's country house. In this way, it's so far above par for city cafés--my god!

Before I get to your reading capacity and you start skimming, there's one last important thing to note. Since the menu has so many delicious options for any and every time of day, if you work or live in the area, it's easy to make Ruby’s your daily default--DO IT! Sounds like brilliant to me! There are dishes for every mood, season and time of day. Seriously, if it were in my hood, I'd be all over it all of the time! Now, stop reading and go see what I'm talking about!