Breakfast in Gainesville When You Don't Eat Meat

The difference between one dish and a real substitution

A lot of breakfast menus handle vegetarians with a single omelet and call it done. 43rd Street Deli's menu treats tofu and tempeh as swappable across a whole set of dishes, not as one token item. The Tofu or Tempeh Stir Fry comes with broccoli, red onion, peppers, mushroom, squash, zucchini, carrot, and tomato in a soy sauce, served over brown rice with a biscuit or toast on the side. The same tofu or tempeh option shows up again in the Spinach Red Pepper Wrap, the Egg and Cheese Wrap, and the Breakfast Quesadilla, where it stands in for the ham, bacon, or sausage those dishes are usually built around.

Tofu and tempeh are not the same ingredient wearing two names. Tofu is pressed soybean curd, mild and soft, mostly there to take on whatever seasoning surrounds it. Tempeh is fermented whole soybeans pressed into a firm cake, and the fermentation gives it a nuttier, denser texture along with a slightly more assertive flavor of its own. In a stir fry with a soy-based sauce, that difference matters. Tofu leans on the sauce for its flavor. Tempeh brings some of its own to the table.

Beyond the stir fry

The Black Bean Cakes are a separate vegetarian option built from the ground up rather than adapted from a meat dish: two grilled cakes topped with ranchero sauce, cheddar, diced tomato, and green onion, served with two eggs, a side of grits, hash browns, or home fries, biscuit or toast, and sour cream. On the lunch side, the Vegetarian Reuben and Allee's Reuben both swap tofu or tempeh in for the usual corned beef, and Terri's Veggie Sandwich, named for the restaurant's co-founder, layers tofu or tempeh with lettuce, tomato, onion, cucumber, cheese, and avocado.

• Tofu or Tempeh Stir Fry, with a full vegetable lineup over brown rice
• Black Bean Cakes with ranchero sauce, cheddar, and two eggs
• Vegetarian Reuben and Allee's Reuben, both built on tofu or tempeh instead of corned beef
• Terri's Veggie Sandwich, layered with tofu or tempeh and avocado
• Vegan Pancakes and gluten-free bread, both available as direct substitutions

For pescatarians, the menu opens up further

If fish is on the table but meat is not, there is more here too. The Salmon Stir Fry runs alongside the Tofu or Tempeh Stir Fry on the same part of the menu, grilled salmon over the same vegetable base in the same Asian marinade, served over brown rice with a biscuit or toast. The Salmon Benedict does the same thing for the benedict lineup, Asian-marinated salmon standing in for the usual grilled ham. Among the omelets, the Portabella-Spinach-Cheese and the Mediterranean, built from fire-roasted red pepper, spinach, and feta, are both meat-free without being an afterthought, and the Vegetarian omelet, loaded with peppers, onion, mushroom, spinach, tomato, and a choice of cheese, is a full plate on its own rather than a stripped-down version of a meat omelet.

For gluten-free and vegan guests too

Vegan Pancakes are their own listed item rather than a special request, and gluten-free bread is available as an upgrade on sandwiches that would otherwise come on a standard bun or hoagie roll. A gluten-free version of the French toast is on the menu as well. None of this replaces talking to your server about a specific allergy or intolerance, but it does mean the kitchen already has the substitutions built into its regular rotation instead of scrambling to improvise one on the spot. For a table where one person eats meat and another does not, that is the difference between everyone ordering off the same menu and someone settling for dry toast.

It is worth saying plainly what this adds up to: a table of six can sit down together here, one person ordering the tofu stir fry, another the vegan pancakes, someone else the Big Boy with all the meat it can hold, and nobody is eating a compromise. That is a harder menu to build than it looks, because every substitution has to actually taste like it belongs on the dish, not like an ingredient was subtracted and nothing put in its place.