11th St. Diner, South Beach, Florida

Thankfully this old school diner in South Beach exists or else I wouldn't have eaten anything good on my stay there recently for work. I'm sure there are good restaurants down there but I didn't eat at any. I invited Liz to join me but she missed the last flight out from Toronto. So this review is solo.



So, at the corner of 11th and Washington in South Beach, you'll see what looks like one of the old silver bullet camping trailers with a nice covered patio. Great first impression. When I got inside, the decor reminded me of the Stem restaurant at Queen and Spadina here in Toronto.



The service was fairly quick when I sat down. I decided to order one the specialties, which I assumed was the ones highlighted. I got the Sam's Scram Eggs, which was 3 egg whites, scrambled with turkey, onions and carrots. It also came with home fries, which weren't bad, and wheat toast. I also got an orange juice, which being in Florida, I thought would be better, and a coffee, which was straight up juan valdez or something generic. The eggs were really good and I didn't have to douse them in ketchup when things go bad. The order to food receivership time was accelerated when the cook brought out my food. Wow. I thought it was because I ordered one of the specials but he was out a few times for other tables.



Overall, the food was good, the service above average and the cool atmosphere put my visit up into the upper echelon of breakfast tour stops. I give 'em 7.5 out of 10.

Fran's Diner, College & Yonge, Toronto

Before heading into work, my friend Greg and I made our way to Fran's Diner.  This place has a couple locations in Toronto, the Yonge Street location arguably being the most famous, but lacking the style or cleanliness of the location nearby the Eaton Center.

One thing I love about Fran's is that their standard bacon & eggs dish is awesome.  They buy a pre-made hashbrown that's deep fried (a brand that I've actually come to recognize at several Toronto breakfast joints) but still very tasty.  Their eggs are usually spot-on and the bacon is as thick as it is salty.

Harry joined us soon after and ordered french toast, which oddly took 3x as long as ours did and seemed to greatly inconvenience our server.  After stopping just short of needing a megaphone to get her attention for more coffee, we decided to just leave.

Hard rating this time, because it's like we had 2 breakfasts back to back.  Mine and Greg's was great, but averaged out with Harry's experience, Fran's gets a surprising 5/10.

Pizza Napoli Restaurant, Santiago, Chile

Thanks to my friend Andrew who's been driving me around in Santiago, Chile for work, I found a restaurant right around the corner from the Radisson that served a breakfast that resembled something back home in Toronto.
Honestly, I don't know if it's that I miss home a bit or I was hungover, but the runny eggs with ham strips tasted pretty good. I think it was a combo of both. The meal also came with a delicious banana and orange juice(jugo) and a great cafe latte. I don't know if I could've ordered bacon with it because it wasn't on the menu photo I pointed at. Typical gringo tourist.

Overall, a 5/10.

I think the address is 499 Torre Sur. It's just beside the world trade center beside the Radisson on Av. Vitacura.

Village Inn, Toronto

Had breakfast at this place for convenience sakes.
The french toast was dipped in the thickest, most awful half scrambled egg mix, and then just fried like an over-easy egg. My breakfast came served with an ashtray full of butts, which you will see the waiter was far too lazy to pick up for me.









...and about 20 minutes later, I've eaten the most disgusting french toast of my life. Our very first 0/10. Good job Village Rainbow!

BOOM

The last time we went to Boom, the service was mediocre. But we weren't doing this blog then so they lucked out and get a "get out of jail free" card.
It doesn't happen that we sample the same food at breakfast. It helps give a more broad review of the fare offered by said restaurant. But personally, I've had my fill of greasy eggs breakfasts for now. It was time to expand my breakfast horizons, even though french toast is pretty typical breakfast food. Well, it can be mundane, but sometimes french toast, with a little creativity, can be the shit.
A couple of years ago I was introduced to Boom's "Crunchy French Toast". If you haven't been here, it's basically french toast with corn flakes on it. Simple, but you'd never think of it. That was pretty ef'n good. But this time, since we'd both had that, we went for the other flavours.



Liz got the Chocolate and Banana french toast, which was "amazing", she said. Just look at the picture and you know you can't go wrong with it.



I got the simpler strawberry french toast. There's nothing wrong with keeping things simple and to the point, as in this case. Fresh fruit on french toast is always a winner.
The rest of the Boom experience was pleasant. Coffee service was quick and tasty. Not the best coffee I thought, but I did just drink coffee in Amsterdam for 2 weeks prior. No big deal though.
Great food. Service was good... this time. Price is a bit more than average. $30 for two people.
Overall, I give Boom a 7.5 out of 10.

808 College St., Toronto, Ontario

Coentunnel, Amsterdam

I had to take care of some import/exporting business this morning. So a trip to the Coetunnel at 2 Deccaweg near the UPS in Amsterdam was the only option.
The only breakfast items on the menu were Omelettes. I takes a lot to impress me with an omelette because it's not that hard but you can really ef it up and plus, I can whip up good one once in a while.
Liz had the cheese omelette with fries. Apparently all the cheese was delicious. I got the ham and cheese. At first I thought I would get a spinach omelette but my dutch is brutal. It was alright I guess. I was hungry so I ate it. That's how good it was. Pretty blah. The best thing about the meal was the fries and mayonaisse.

Service is horrible and the food made by a 5 yr old. Plus, the price was in euros. Great.
3/10.

Bredero's Cafe

...sorry, address unknown
Nieuwmarkt, Amsterdam

After 2 somewhat unsuccessful breakfast excursions, today we happened upon Bredaro's Cafe. We were on our way to the Pannekoeken-Upstairs in the center of town but found it to be closed, much to our dismay. NOTE: If you ever come here, don't rely too heavily on the Lonely Planet guide. So far, it's let us down twice in terms of wrong business hours published. Pretty disappointing.



Next to the Diablo sex store, it's a stark contrast from the surroundings. Lots of people walking by, including one especially entertaining woman, so the patio view was great. Plus, today was the first sunny day in about a week, and made for great photos.

I ordered the bacon, mushroom and cheese pannekoeken (pancake) and Harry got the traditional English breakfast. And, much to our surprise, both were pretty tasty! The problem we have now is distinguishing HOW tasty: is it only in comparison to the other let-downs or does it come to a Mel's or Coach House or Purple Onion level of breakfast-perfection?







Of all, I'm going to hit this up with a 6/10. Harry's breakfast was huge and he said it was some of the best bacon he's had. Mine was great too but didn't blow my mind. Plus, as the roster of 'bacon-and-egg' dishes we've eaten rises, the bar becomes harder and harder to push.

However, thank you to Bredero's for thus far, our best ont bijt experience in the Netherlands.

Easy Restaurant

1645 Queen Street West
Toronto, ON

We visited Easy a while ago, but somehow the review didn't make it up yet (as have a few) so while sipping some wine in Holland, I'll let you know how our meal went.

Mediocre, at best, after several raving reviews. Sometimes I start to wonder if we need to really stick to the 'house specialty' to get the best experience but a breakfast joint should do everything pretty well.

Big points for the crunchy french stick pieces that we got instead of the usual toast. I was pretty 'meh' on my eggs benedict: the hollandaise was yellow as a canary, thick, greasy, and believe it or not, completely flavourless. That is what stood out to me: how incredibly free of flavour such a rich looking dish was. Even the potatoes, which looked heavily spiced, just tasted like the orange grease that they came in. Plus, the poached eggs were full of water and so everything just became a mush. I hate when you're looking forward to a meal that much only to be forced to leave half of it untouched.

Harry's omellete was good.

The place smells like a damp basement and was pretty unclean. The service was extremely friendly and cheerful, mindful and gave us a TON of refills on our coffee. The orange juice was tasty.

I am going to go again to try the huevos divorciados that they even advertise on their website, easybreakfast.com.

Meh. 4/10 this time. Sorry guys, we really, really wanted to love you but just couldn't do it.

Sara's Pancake House

Raadhuisstraat 45
Amsterdam

I had decided late last night that I was going to give pancakes another shot. I've hated them since I was young, and try to stay away from them at all costs. But, I read on some travel website that you have to get them once in Holland, and so we picked Sara's as our first shot.

Service was terrible, but what I will say is that it seemed to be a staff of one taking care of the entire place. She seemed far too frazzled and a mysterious man would surface occasionally from the basement, wiping tables and giving people menus with a glaze over his expression.

I could tell pretty quickly that the woman was overwhelmed and knew it would be a bit. However, I didn't expect to feel as though I had ruined her entire day by paying her our patronage. She threw her hands up and complained loudly, scolding the skulky dude on the regular.

First we watched our coffee go to the table next to us, and when denied was dumped out. Finally the waitress/cook/floor manager came over and asked what the problem was. I told her there was no problm, we just hadn't been offered them. We then received espressos in their place and one too many orange juice. Bad start, but forgivable to a degree.

I started to get more uncomfortable when people were up and leaving after not being acknowledged for 10 - 15 minutes. At another point, the waitress barked at some customers coming in that she was closed, when she obviously was not. Just tell them it's a long wait, don't boot out a paying customer.

Harry's food arrived, the Canadian pancake, and it looked awesome. Mine arrived but wasn't what I had ordered. After some arguing with the girl, I finally agreed to eat what she had prepared and insisted I had ordered. This is when she took the food away from me and said "No, only a minute for another one."

Harry's was delicious and like a thicker, savoury crepe. Not what I expected from a pancake house. Mine was small, and I was pretty hungry soon after but tasty.

Not sure how Harry felt overall but I think he enjoyed the meal. I'm going to give it a 3 / 10 simply because the atmosphere and resentful service took away from what should have been a fail-proof meal.

Overall Price: Jesus Christ, 25 Euro!

Barney's Breakfast Bar

Open: 7am - til late

Haarlemmerstraat 102

Barney's is known for serving an all day breakfast in both a single bar as well as a coffeeshop next door. We walked into what felt like madness. The place was busy as hell so instead of give up on our empty stomachs, we braved the outdoor patio. After all, we'd be referred there by a few websites and the overall allure of the adjoining coffee shop was just too much.

After a tram ride on car 13, we were treated to a menu of yummy coffee (seriously, so good) and the promise of bacon & eggs. A classic that is easy to compare to what we get at home.

This meal was below average. Very sub-standard at best. For how nice the location was and how quaint the interior, the food seemed to be glorified McDonald's. The hasbrowns tasted like frozen egg-rolls. The eggs were quite un-cooked and the bacon, even less-so. The toast was good, and Harry thought the scrambled eggs were pretty awesome. Just don't go for the fried. I guess I'm not big fan of 'sunny side up' no matter how you do it.

I think we decided to pin this place with a 5/10. BUT, have no fear, Barney's coffeeshop redeemed the breakfast bar with an impressive roster of Cannabis-cup winning marijuana strains including Willie Nelson, which I'm pretty sure won 2005's cup. Smoked amazing and made for a great day of sight seeing. So big ups to this.

The price ran about 8,50 Euro per meal plus 2,00 Euro coffees. Pretty disappointing.

DID SHE OUT DO THEM ALL?

Since I've had french toast at a few different places now, I'm allowed to give my opinion on which is the best. Unlike a few weeks ago, I was a freedom toast virgin.

Bonjour Brioche was pretty awesome except for the size(just too much left to waste), and Mel's is straight up, no frills, but always good. Oh, I can't forget Boom's Crunch french toast which is quite delish also and a little walk on the wild side with some corn flakes for texture.

But come on, have a look at the picture and I'll explain why I think, this is the BEST french toast I've had so far on the Breakfast Tour.

First of all, this isn't from a restaurant but from the kitchen of the better half of this blog. That's a bit of bias but well justified. It started off with some delicious dutch crunch bread (wow, I'm really doing well segwaying into next weeks blogs!), delicious raspberries, strawberries and bananas from the grocery store, a bit of whip cream, and lastly, free range eggs. Top it off with some pure Canadian maple syrup for the dressing. Sounds like it's kicking ass already, eh? But wait..

I was expecting, you know, one slice with some fruit on top, and I would've been quite delighted with that. But man, not a triple threat that was thrown in the oven to bake apres le point of no return that others would've been satisfied! Mon dieu!

Sorry everyone, you'd better step up your game.

BT rating: 9.5 out of 10.
Total cost for two with smoothies: $18.70.

MEL'S PART DEUX

Even though there's been an entry praising the accolades of Mel's Deli up on Bloor, I took some nice photos of the Big Baby Breakfast ce matin avec mon ami Chad which I wanted to put up.

We both had the BBB except substituted the pancake for french toast. The pancake honestly doesn't do much for me anyways. The BBB is the equivalent of the lumber jack super breakfast some where else. 2 meats, 3 eggs, les pommes de terres, fruit and the aforementioned french toast.

The only thing not up to snuff was Chad's bacon but that's a personal opinion.
Farely cheap. With orange juice and coffee, two meals came to 29 bucks plus tip.
8 out of 10.

Auntie's & Uncle's

This absolutely darling little gem of a hole is just north of college at 74 Lippincott St. You wouldn't know it to see it. You wouldn't neccessarily walk by and think that it looks like a tasty place to eat. Well, I mean, see for yourself:



...as soon as I saw the sign, I was pretty excited to take some pictures and eat some FRANCH toast.

The inside of this place felt like my Uncle Ronnie's house in Harrow when I was a kid. Granted the weather was familiar as well: it was not the sunniest of October days and the entire cemented restaurant felt damp, cold, and somehow cozy. Apple-picking weather? Maybe only us townies know these sensations.



So look at that. THAT ^^^^^^^ !!! And please try to ignore the fact that I had shaky picture syndrome this day - but isn't it awesome!? Our server kind of looked like the Beave, too, so it helped even more.

But what's important:



...was this. I'd like to introduce a new member of the "ULTIMATE FRENCH TOAST" family. This was amazing. I even had a dream about it that night, where the chef (who was some female-version of Ghandi) was explaining the importance of the perfect thickness challah bread slices. (Seriously)

Poached, fresh pears are served with it and they're not sugared at all, which is such a treat. The nerve of some places to serve fruit cocktail with french toast! I know what you're thinking - blasphemy - but I promise, it really happened.



And ok. Let's stop for a second. Can we just LOOK at this sandwich? For the love of Christ Aunties and Uncles, have a heart and take it easy on us! Harry always seems generally unimpressed and unaffected by things (aka calmest dude ever) so I'm not sure if he took as much an aesthetic interest as I did but he seemed to enjoy it nonetheless.

If the food wasn't enough, and the decor didn't send me over the edge, I have to return to Aunties and Uncles if only to reshoot this picture on a day unafflicted by SPS (the aforementioned Shaky Photo Syndrome)



I want to give it a 10/10 but I feel guilty about doing it only a month into this blog.
9/10.

DANS LA BOUCHE

So a few months ago I went with my friend Dan to get some Ont Bijt (dutch for breakfast) at Dans Le Bouche over on Mont-Royal in Montreal. If you don't know any french, Dans Le Bouche means "in the mouth". You know, putting food in your mouth, or if you have a different sense of humour, you might think something else. Having that sense of humour, we joked around about the name but didn't really think anything of it.

Fast forward to this past weekend. Since Liz and I were in Montreal again, we needed to explore new things and we decided a trip to DLB was in order. So, since Dan and I couldn't read french at all, Liz, who is pretty fluent in francais, discovered that our little joke about the name of the restaurant wasn't unfounded. The names on the menu gave it away. Le triangle armoureux, le dejeuner triple xxx, armour savage, the list goes on. Funny, eh?

Any who, I got the dans la bouche breakfast. It's the typical bacon and eggs breakfast. Not the best but the potatoes were above average. Liz got the eggs joey, a variation on eggs benny. She didn't seem very impressed by it. The eggs were a bit raw and disgusting. Also, there was a couple out on the patio that looked like they were gonna get it on at any second. Nothing like watching tongue fights with your breakfast.

The bottom line is there's much better joints in Montreal for a good start to the day. 7 out of 10.

Bonjour Brioche

So Harry tells me this story...
Some dudes have this placed called "Hello Toast." He calls them 'partners' so I don't know if that means business or romance, but regardless, they have some falling out and it ends badly. Partner One pushes out Partner Two, who isn't quite fond of the cold treatment. So Partner Two goes a few doors down, opens "Bonjour Brioche" (Hello Toast en Francais) and there you have it; delicious revenge.

And delicious, well, that doesn't even begin to describe our breakfast.

I felt that this place was a 9.5/10

Perfect portions, imgainative (very much so!) dishes, fair prices, excellent decor, wonderful taste in art, and a nice secluded area that makes you feel like you're the only person who's ever discovered this gem (save for, apparently, Bill Cosby who's signed photo with a 'thanks' hangs on the wall.)

I had the tart. I ordered zucchini, bacon and cheddar but got sausage, mushroom and cheddar. At first I didn't want to bug them about it because first, part of the review is just letting the restaurant do its thing and act as a complete observer, and secondly, because our waitress was pregnant and I simply had a hard time asking a pregnant woman to fix my meal for me.

However...
this was a blessing in disguise as it was delicious.

We went to this place as a recommendation from a friend of Harry's, who suggested that their Baked French Toast make it on to our Tour. Harry's french toast looked like a squishy pile of about 10 pieces, mushed into a loaf. While it looked appetizing, it was too big and could have been halved. Such a delicious dish should go unwasted!

We will be back.

Also: I apologize for the photos. My camera was on its absolute last leg and I snapped all three of these in about 10 seconds before it died.

Sadie's Diner

I first went to Sadie's with a little bff i like to call SBD a few weeks ago.
My friend Stu had told me all about it and I really wanted to test it out. I was pretty impressed the first time I went: the decor is amazing and you feel like you're cuter just for setting step in the place (maybe that's why Stu liked it so much... i keed, i keed)

I haven't been in the back yet, but unless my terrible vision deceives me (which happens often), I think they have a pretty impressive collector's spoon display in the back. Amazing.

Now to the breakfast. Today I went sans Harry, so this review is one-sided.

Overally? 7/10 on the food but this time, I'm giving a special 10/10 for enjoying being there. The coffee is certified organic fair-trade, and don't think that means you don't get what you pay for: holy shit! I have never finished one cup from them and this is coming from Little Miss 4-Cups-a-Day. The fresh squeezed juices are delicious and the fact that you wait a little bit for them is kinda... I dunno, endearing?

No meats here and anything can be made vegan. I like meat, but I also like this idea. Their veggie bacon tastes much better than you can do yourself at home, somehow, which I think redeems them. I've laughed to myself a couple of times that they've gone overboard on the diner-decor to make up for the lack of bacon in an otherwise "Greasy Spoon."

Go to Sadie's. Their hours are awkward for most but if you can make it in you'll vow to be a regular from that day forward.