brunch Archives - Curiously Carmen

Gram Cafe and Pancakes – Brentwood

June 1, 2022

The husband and I have been eyeing Gram Cafe since they opened in Canada. We loved the fluffy pancakes in Japan, having been to A Happy Pancake in both Tokyo and Kyoto. Fluffy pancakes aren’t as common in Canada, so we were excited to try it when Gram Cafe finally opened at the new Amazing Brentwood!

Gram Cafe is a chain cafe from Japan, which originated in Osaka. They have been slowly opening up a few locations around Vancouver. This review will be for the Brentwood location. At the time of writing, there is also one in Aberdeen Center and in East Vancouver on Kingsway.

Gram Cafe is located on the street level of the Amazing Cafe, entering through the outside. It is across from Sephora and H&M. As a general rule, I try not to visit restaurants immediately upon opening (usually I like to wait a few months for the restaurant to iron out the kinks) but we were too excited this time around.

The cafe was tastefully decorated and felt spacious. However, I found the chairs to be a bit uncomfortable.

We ended up waiting a really long time for our pancakes. I also noticed that the table next to us, who were here first, did not receive their pancakes until after us (when they ordered the same thing). This wasn’t that surprising considering it’s a new place, and more on that soon below.

Fluffy pancakes: I went with the fluffy pancakes and ordered whipped cream and strawberries as sides. I found the fluffy pancakes to be alright, but definitely not comparable to the ones in Japan. They weren’t as jiggly here, when I shook my plate the pancakes didn’t jiggle. Taste wise, they were not bad. For the price, I probably wouldn’t order again.

Apple and tea cream pancakes: Surprisingly, the husband didn’t get fluffy pancakes! He changed his mind last minute when he saw the Earl Grey whipped cream, which the fluffy pancakes didn’t come with.

As mentioned above, the wait was really long for both our dishes. To add to it, my pancakes came about twenty minutes before the husband’s. At first, I only had a bite but then my food was getting cold and I was getting hungry, so we ended up sharing it together. Also as mentioned, even though we sat down after, the table before us didn’t get their fluffy pancakes first.

The husband thought that the pancakes themselves were nothing special, but the Earl Grey whipped cream was delicious.

All in all, Gram Cafe definitely had some growing pains to experience as with most new restaurants, so I won’t be too harsh on them. By now, it’s been half a year since they opened so hopefully the wait and flow has improved. Although decent, we both found it to be overpriced for what it was. I think we will save our fluffy pancakes experience when Japan opens up to tourists again (without having to go on a group tour).

Ricky’s Country Restaurant

May 9, 2021

Ricky’s Country Restaurant has been around forever. Honestly, I am surprised that they haven’t shut down yet and are still running. We came here many years ago and it was meh. There are definitely better brunch restaurants out there!

However, let’s stop with my negativity. The fiance and I were looking for a brunch delivery one weekend. We were really hungry and we saw that Ricky’s had the fastest delivery time and also free delivery, which were the 2 reasons we picked Ricky’s and not elsewhere. We were pretty meh about it. You’re probably wondering why we even chose this place then?! Haha!! Good question….

Ricky’s Country Restaurant is located inside the motel by Boundary and Lougheed. There is also a newer Ricky’s Cafe that opened a few minutes drive away in Brentwood’s SOLO district where I went pre-COVID and it was pretty meh.

Traditional benny: The fiance was craving an eggs benny, so he decided to try the traditional one. The most important part of an eggs benny is the hollandaise sauce, it’s what makes or break the eggs benny.

The hollandaise sauce was very buttery and creamy and the fiance enjoyed it. I had a bite and it was too rich for me, I could probably have only a couple of bites before it would be too much.

Unfortunately, the egg yolk was a bit overdone as you can see in the photo so that was disappointing. The hash browns were not bad and still a bit crispy despite being delivery.

Chicken strips: I love my chicken strips, and haven’t had them here before so I decided to try it. Ricky’s makes their chicken strip batter differently, and I didn’t like it this way. The batter was flaky, like tempura. The menu described it as “Southern style” chicken strips.

Nonetheless, the chicken strips were juicy and seasoned well. I would have preferred the batter to be made the usual way.

Our brunch from Ricky’s was alright. It was okay in a pinch, but it wouldn’t be a place to crave or go to often when there are so many other good brunch spots. The food this time was better than I remembered it to be when we came here many years ago at least.

Railtown Cafe

November 11, 2020

For the past month, I have been publishing mostly Indian and Korean reviews! I had yet another Indian review lined up but decided that I rather spread the posts out.

I didn’t have any other restaurants to write about and haven’t tried anything new recently (except for Indian restaurants), so I decided to look around UberEats to see what I could write about.

Railtown Cafe was offering a discount on UberEats so I decided to give it a try. Rarely do I order breakfast or brunch food, but the breakfast menu looked pretty good!

There are currently four Railway Cafe locations in Vancouver. The original location is in Gastown, and there are also two in downtown by Waterfront and on Howe Street, and lastly, one on Main Street by Olympic Village. My delivery order was placed from the Gastown location.

Sausage breakfast sandwich: Admittedly, I haven’t had a gourmet sausage breakfast sandwich…. until now, that is! When I do have sausage breakfast sandwiches, they’re usually ordered in a haste from Timmy’s or McDonalds (not that there’s anything wrong with that, I do love my fast food breakfast sandwiches). This was the first time I’ve had a fancier sausage breakfast sandwich.

What a treat this was. Everything about this was delicious and I found myself savouring every bite. The bread was fresh, thick, soft and buttery – it reminded me of fluffy Japanese bread. The sausage patty was thicker than I imagined and the quality was great, there were also some herbs inside. In addition, there was a perfectly fried and gooey yolk egg, melted cheese, and some fresh, crunchy greens.

It was the best sausage breakfast sandwich I had so far and I would gladly order it again.

Bacon breakfast sandwich: For the fiance, I ordered the bacon breakfast sandwich but we ended up splitting both sandwiches in half so we could both try.

The bacon sandwich was delicious too, but the sausage sandwich was definitely better. The bacon was great quality and thickly cut. It also came with a fried egg but the yolk wasn’t as runny, melted cheese, and fresh veggies too.

Hashbrowns: I also ordered a side of hashbrowns. The hashbrowns were crunchy and delicious, and more on the thick side. I noticed that they cracked some extra salt on top, which wasn’t really needed as the hashbrowns were flavourful enough on their own.

All in all, Railtown Cafe’s breakfast sandwiches were delicious and really great quality. I would gladly order from them again or stop by any of the cafes. My only complaint was that it was quite salty, but that’s to be expected. It’s definitely something you shouldn’t eat daily because it’s high in sodium (you know you’re getting old when you start to watch your sodium levels for blood pressure), but would be a nice treat once in awhile.

De Dutch – Oak Street Location

September 11, 2020

I wrote a post earlier this year on the De Dutch location in Olympic Village when we visited for my birthday. If you sign up as a De Dutch member (for free), they email you a voucher for a pannekoek during your birthday month. Unfortunately, the fiance had his birthday during the beginning of the pandemic so some restaurants were closed, including De Dutch.

They finally opened up a few select locations in June and emailed the fiance a late birthday voucher. This gave us the chance to try the Oak Street location because we likely would have just gone back to the Olympic Village location (which would have been a better choice as you’ll soon find out).

The Oak Street location is pretty inconspicuous, like most of their locations. It was clean inside and half the tables were closed for social distancing. I can’t remember if they did contact tracing or not… This is why you don’t wait 4 weeks later to write the review. Oops!

I was wanting to try De Dutch’s chicken strips, but was sad to hear that this location doesn’t have a deep fryer! That knocked off some points for this location already.

Sausage hash n eggs: The fiance picked this for us to share. It was your usual breakfast plate with toast, eggs, hash, and sausage. Personally, I don’t like going for brunch because I find you can easily cook the same thing at home! Such was the case for this dish, so I found it average.

As mentioned above, this location doesn’t have a deep fryer. The hash here was not as good because they were pan fried instead of being crispy. We were expecting crispy hash so it was a bit disappointing.

Here is another photo showing the delicious melted cheese. The dish was alright, but it is easy enough to cook at home so I would recommend getting something else instead.

Pannekoek: For the fiance’s birthday voucher, we redeemed the strawberry Nutella pannekoek again – a happy balance with two of our favourites things. The pannekoek was good, with the texture in between a pancake and crepe.

If you do come to DeDutch, I would recommend the pannekoek as that is their specialty item. It’s good and there are so many flavours or DIY combinations to pick from. You could get better brunch food elsewhere.

All in all, our visit to this location was pretty meh and we wouldn’t come back. I would recommend the Olympic Village location instead since they have a deep fryer, so their potatoes are crispier. There was not much left to be desired here but we did leave full.

OEB Breakfast Co

July 1, 2020

What kind of food blogger am I if I told you I am not crazy about going out for brunch? One that’d make you stop reading this blog? 😉 Anyways, I do enjoy going for brunch once in awhile and eating something that isn’t easily cooked at home. For example, eggs, toast, sausage, pancakes, waffles etc are so easy to make at home.

But after hearing that OEB served duck fat fried potatoes from Cola, I knew we had to try it out as it’s not easily replicated at home!

I was actually invited here last summer when they first opened as a media guest, but turned it down because my stomach problems were absolutely horrible last year. Fast forward to now, I can finally try it as a paying customer!

Chasing chickens: Cola recommended the breakfast poutines, which I had my eyes on already. My poutine came with poached eggs, duck fat fried herb potatoes, Saint Cyrille curds, smoked pulled chicken, and brown butter hollandaise.

This was heaven in a bite. The duck fat fried potatoes did not disappoint, they had a nice flavour and aroma to it that was different than other potatoes I’ve had.

In addition, the smoked pulled chicken was juicy with some grilled flavour to it. The poached eggs were disappointing though, the egg whites were kinda rubbery and tasteless.

However, the star of the show was the hollandaise sauce! I am usually just okay with hollandaise, but this one was just spectacular. It was better than the duck fat fried potatoes imo. The hollandaise was very buttery and lemony. I’d come back just for the hollandaise sauce.

Gold digga: The fiance ordered a breakfast poutine as well, but with a different meat. The gold digga came with poached eggs, duck fat fried herb potatoes, Saint Cyrille curds, Berkshire roast pork, black truffles, and brown butter hollandaise.

Most of our poutine was the same and equally as delicious. The Berkshire roast pork was tender and seasoned with rosemary, my favourite herb! It was absolutely lovely.

The fiance is a huge hollandaise fan, and often bases brunch ratings according to their hollandaise. He was really impressed with OEB’s hollandaise too, and it was one of the best he’s had!

All in all, we were very impressed with OEB. The main item I wanted to try was the duck fat fried potatoes, and they did not disappoint. We were also very blown away with their amazing hollandaise! The price point is a tad high compared to other places, but the quality and taste is there.