Sunday, March 23, 2014

Easy Restaurant

1645 Queen Street West, Toronto                                                       Rating: Fair to Average

“Overwhelmingly underwhelming”

This little west-end hole-in-the-wall offers typical brunch fare and serves up a delicious cup of coffee. It’s a trendy Queen Street West diner so the prices are on the higher side. I’ve patronized this establishment numerous times and I’ve always ordered the Easy Rider Breakfast ($10.95) which is a typical meal of bacon, eggs and toast. Despite the fact that I'd never been disappointed with this choice at Easy, I decided to branch out and ordered the Eggs Benedict ($11.95). What could go wrong? Two poached eggs with grilled peameal bacon on an English muffin and accompanied with either salad or homefries. I’m not a salad-for-breakfast type person so I opted for the homefries.  With ordering safely under our belts, we did some catching up while sipping our delicious coffees. There's real pleasure in sitting in a cozy warm diner on a cold winter Sunday morning.

Our food arrived fairly quickly and we dug in with relish. That it arrived quickly was the good part; the bad part was the food. I don’t know what happened on this particular morning at Easy, but the chef must have dozed off while tending the grill because the slice of peameal bacon was a dried up piece of charred wood. It was cut too thin which meant there was a greater margin for error and unfortunately the chef wasn’t up to the challenge of pulling the bacon off the grill before it was charred. The overcooked bacon was accompanied by undercooked home fried potatoes. They were so unpalatable that I couldn’t eat more than a few bites. I kept hoping to spear into a tender spud, but each bite was a crunchy experience so I eventually gave up.  Cooking school 101: chefs must test the food to ensure that it’s properly cooked before sending it out to unsuspecting patrons. Fortunately the eggs were cooked to perfection, but unfortunately there was an overwhelming sour flavour that detracted from the taste. I couldn’t tell if it was the hollandaise sauce or if the chef added vinegar to the water when poaching the eggs.  It’s an amateur approach to poaching and ruins the flavour of eggs.

It was an underwhelming food experience that I doubt I’ll repeat.  I do like the place, so I’ll switch back to the Easy Rider Breakfast next time and avoid this particular menu item.  This establishment gets a Fair to Average rating because it only takes one bad experience to ruin an otherwise Good experience. Better luck next time, Easy Restaurant.

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