As mentioned in our previous review of Vertex Sky Bar, both before and after our Centennial Trail backpacking trip, we stayed in downtown Rapid City at the historic Hotel Alex Johnson. Looking at the various options for breakfast, a simple look out the hotel window showed us that there was a very popular breakfast spot right across the street: Tally’s Silver Spoon. Even at 8am they had a healthy backlog of diners waiting out front for breakfast, so we decided to check it out.
Tally’s has been a restaurant in one form or another since 1930, and the modern version of it is basically “upscale diner”, with a combination of classic diner breakfast, lunch, and dinner dishes, with several elevated with modern fusion twists and local ingredients. It’s clearly popular, since our visits were quite busy and vibrant. Despite the business, our flexibility in seating helped out here: in addition to their many tables, Tally’s offers both counter seating at their bar, or seating at a very large communal table outside the kitchen. So we ended up having only a few minutes’ wait before seats at the counter opened up.
For our breakfast, we both latched onto the same menu special, a Mexican skirt steak Benedict. This was a classic example of a simple dish hitting on all cylinders. The big star was the skirt steak itself. Skirt steak is an extremely lean and flavorful cut of meat, but it’s also extremely easy to either over- or under-cook, resulting in a rubbery mess. Tally seared this to perfection, maximizing the tenderness while getting a good sear on it. Adding in a good Mexican spice rub, and building this up as a Benedict using a chipotle-flavored Hollandaise sauce, this turned into a nice flavor explosion with each bite, and was one of the most memorable meals of the trip. Accompanied by Mexican-spiced hashbrowns that were perfectly executed with a nice crisp on them, and this was a thoroughly satisfying meal.
At Offbeat Eats, I’m way more likely to look for variety in my travels, so typically I’ll eat at a couple different spots as I visit a new town, but I enjoyed Tally’s so much that it got the rare repeat visit from us on the tail end of our trip as we recovered from our 50+ mile hike along the Centennial Trail. We enjoyed our return trip as well, myself with a very well-executed biscuits and gravy with hash-browns: a good, not-too-sweet biscuit with great crumb, a smooth and flavorful gravy without being glue-y, and more of the perfectly crisped hashbrowns. Carol did well, too, with a vegetable breakfast: a medley of fresh vegetables, fingerling tomatoes, and eggs.
Really, I can see why Tally’s is so busy: it’s truly a Rapid City gem, and one of the best breakfasts in town. I know it’s going to be on my hit list if I come back to check out more of the Black Hills.
