Townhall in Cleveland-- Worth the Hype?

A late post from Thanksgiving 2021 Travel to Cleveland, Ohio. A  few more are still in the backlog-- but local content takes priority. Enjoy!
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Another morning came during our visit to Cleveland, Ohio where my husband and I would be on our own while his siblings slept in to enjoy their holiday to its fullest. We didn’t know where to go for breakfast, but we most certainly did not want to be the types that went to Starbucks while on a mini vacation. A cursory google search for favorite brunch restaurants in town lead us to Townhall down by the West Side Market. It appeared on every list I checked, and it provided us an opportunity to stop by one of our favorite locations in the city again if we wanted to bring something along for the Ohio State game that afternoon.

Townhall has been around long enough that I have vague memories of driving by the front of the restaurant and staring at it longingly. It was a very superficial fascination with the decor out front more than anything, because I had no idea what was inside it. This trip, I was able to find out because my husband left me in charge of these outings. We walked around the market and into the cafe side of the restaurant to order.

This is where it can get somewhat confusing if you’re an out of towner. There is a dedicated restaurant side which I believe has a wider menu and an easier way to order alcohol if that’s your thing during brunch. We didn’t realize that, and we went through the cafe line by ordering at a kiosk. We couldn’t get our drinks through the kiosk, so my husband went to the front to get himself a coffee and myself a Great Lakes IPA-- I am the type that wants a drink at brunch.

Townhall has a great menu with options for all types of eaters, including vegans. That variety is certainly what catapults the restaurant up to the top of many lists across the internet. We went for two of the most common types of brunch dishes, eggs benedict and the egg sandwich. Both can be ordered with rosemary roasted potatoes which are only available during actual brunch hours. We decided to go that route.

Despite how beautiful the eggs benedict were when they arrived at the table, I was most intrigued by the rosemary potatoes and wound up finishing those so quickly that I didn’t really eat the benedict. My husband helped me out with a half. I did get a chance to taste the hollandaise with the potatoes, and found it to be one of the smoothest and most well seasoned of any I’ve had in awhile. The bacon is so thickly cut it may as well be advertised as pork belly, and the poached eggs flowed when my husband cut his.

Listed on the menu as ‘Eggwich 3.0’, the egg sandwich sounds very basic. Scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, cheddar, and rosemary aioli. My husband absolutely demolished his sandwich. I was lucky to get a picture of it at all. The hashbrowns had such a great crunch that I could hear them from across the table even as the crowd rolled in behind us.

​There is a crepe station situated between the two sections of the restaurant where I believe you can watch them make your crepes during brunch, which is a very fun way to spend the morning. The best part of crepes is watching them be made. It may be on the list to check out the next time we’re in town. 

Breakfast in Cleveland has not disappointed anywhere we went during our entire trip, and I would most certainly make the trip into Ohio City to visit Townhall again. They do a ton of charity work in the community that raise them up to the top of the list for me in combination with their delicious food. I’d love to see what they do outside of brunch hours, but that breakfast was fabulous.