I actually drive through Troy, NY quite a bit. The “Collar City”, from its history in making collars back when that was a thing, is also home to RPI, and it’s right on the optimal path between our home in NH and either the NY Thruway or I-87 (if I’m looking to get to NJ while avoiding NYC). What I usually find, however, is that I’m not usually driving through around mealtimes, so I usually don’t stop in town. But our June-July vacation had us departing and driving to Ohio leaving early in the morning from NH, which resulted in a rarity for us, passing through Troy right at breakfast time. We used it as an excuse to visit Manory’s, which has been on our hit list for a few years.
Manory’s, established in 1913, is Troy’s oldest operating restaurant, situated in downtown at the corner of Congress and 4th. It’s just downhill from RPI, making this one of the school’s off-campus breakfast haunts, as well as drawing in a good cross-section of townsfolk as well. The menu here is your basic “American Diner” fare, with the usual “serves breakfast all day”, which is why we were visiting. The breakfast menu has a nice selection of the usual suspect: large omelets, breakfast plates, pancakes, waffles, and one of my traditional favorites: the biscuits and gravy. It’s been a while since I’ve had a good biscuit and gravy plate (I don’t usually make it at home, and the pandemic had cut back severely on restaurant outings), so I indulged in an order of biscuits, gravy, and eggs.
I always love the simplicity of Biscuits and Gravy: to be good, it simply needs to have a good biscuit (flaky, with a good crumb, and not stale) and a good gravy (sausage-forward, without being too gluey). Manory’s version is quite good: the biscuits were solid, and, while I usually don’t like it when the biscuits are sweet, here there was just enough sweet note in the biscuits (and not in the gravy) for it to result in a nice sweet-and-savory combination. Add in some decently scrambled eggs and a half-plate of deep-fried-style home fries, and this was a pleasant breakfast.
I enjoyed Manory’s, and was glad to have a chance to finally check them out for breakfast. Hopefully on a future trip I’ll be around town during lunch to try out that menu.
