"New favourite brunch locale in the Annex"
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I have visited this location of Butler’s Pantry twice for
brunch in the past month with a fellow foodie. We meet regularly to have a good
meal and do a lot of catching up. ‘Catching
up’ venues need to be comfortable, not too loud, with seating spaced out
sufficiently to avoid people overhearing personal girl-stuff gabbing. Butler’s Pantry gets a gold star on all
counts.
We came upon this restaurant by accident when we couldn’t
get into our first choice. My friend,
local to the area, remembered Butler’s so we popped in out of the cold to check
it out. The menu looked promising,
although there wasn’t a soul in the place which can be a serious red flag. We were famished and decided to take a
chance. The waitress sat us in a
cushioned booth at the front of the restaurant beside floor to ceiling windows. The wait staff is very pleasant and have
attained a wonderful balance of neither hovering, nor ignoring.
Mugs of aromatic freshly brewed coffees were set in front of
us. I added cream and took a sip of Java-heaven. Was this coffee really that
good, or was I in some kind of withdrawal needing a fix?
They
have a full brunch menu that I would like to have sampled in its entirety but I
settled on the Eggs Benedict ($11) which was accompanied by three (probably from
frozen) hash browns. But so what if they
were frozen? They were crispy and not
super greasy and didn’t even need ketchup.
The eggs were beautifully prepared because they were cooked with a soft
yoke and well cooked whites. Just the
right amount of hollandaise sauce was spooned over the top. The eggs were set upon a layer of crispy bacon
atop the usual English muffin. It was a delicious
breakfast.
My ‘catch-up’ friend ordered the Benny Gone Veggie which
replaced bacon with spinach and the hash brown with a salad. But she asked for smoked salmon which she
thought was going to be inserted where the bacon would have been. Apparently the waitress thought the same
thing because she apologized for the placement of the salmon - a blob on one side of the plate - explaining that she
didn’t want to ask the cook to move the salmon after the dish had been
plated. Fair enough – it would have been
a messy looking Benny. But the only nit
was that there was a charge of $3.50 for the salmon and it would have been nice
to have been given a heads up about this.
Happily that was the only nit that we had in our two visits
and I’m really just being picky. This
place is a ‘must-visit’ location for brunchers in the Annex area (university
district) of Toronto; however, one word of warning is that this venue is not
for the student budget because our bill before tip was $31.00.
My ‘catch-up’ friend and I will definitely be back to sample more of that delicious menu.
Restaurant website: http://www.butlerspantry.ca/
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