To Brack DeFries and Chris Morgan eggs are the name of the game, and have been for over four years. Since first starting their popular Bay Area breakfast sandwich pop up Egg Pals, they’ve been serving massive, double fried-egg sandwiches at farmers markets, cafes, wine bars and even ramen shops. What started as a small venture, where they only sold around 60 sandwiches a day, quickly grew to 200, with extensive lines trailing down sidewalks. Now the pair are preparing to open up their first brick-and-mortar restaurant, Egg Palace.
Egg Palace will open up in the former TrueBurger space at 4101 Broadway, with a soft opening planned for November. It’ll be open five days a week, with the restaurant name being a fun accident, stemming from customers mishearing “Egg Pals” as “Egg Palace.” After hunting for the right spot, DeFries and Morgan settled on the Temescal area, finding it ideal due to EggPals’ existing audience base in that neighborhood.
“It’s like right next to Mother Tongue, where we do pop ups twice a month right now. In that neighborhood is where we’ve done probably like 70% of our pop ups. So we have a kind of built-in regular crowd already there, so it made total sense when it happened,” DeFries said.
Some offerings will be familiar as DeFries and Morgan plan to feature their regular lineup of breakfast sandwiches, including the popular Egg Pal ($13), a bacon and egg sandwich with cheese, pickled onions and herby mayo, the Vegg Pal ($12), a vegetarian option with seasonal vegetables and the Pickle Pal ($12), which features housemade mixed pickles. They also plan on offering a couple of seasonal options, and adding a more budget-friendly sandwich to the lineup…