Monday, June 13, 2011

Free Press Café

237 McDermot Avene

Breakfast Special - $7.00, coffee extra.

Breakfast served until 11:00am. Not wheelchair accessible (two wee stairs).

The ambitious Free Press Café opened on March 23 as a venue to reconnect the downtown community with Freep journalists. Or to reconnect the journalists with the community, depending on how you look at it.

The décor was nice because they have huge windows. It’s sort of an Ikea-style design – nice, serviceable and not fancy at all. For the first time in a restaurant I actually liked the big TVs, as they were playing competing news channels – CBC and CNN. It was interesting to watch them in tandem and note the different reporting styles and stories they choose to follow.

The direct-trade Ecuadorian coffee was good, and we loved that we were actually given the option of light or dark roast. Their lattes and espresso were similarly pleasing, and didn’t come from a one-touch machine like at the Ground Floor.

The breakfast special was listed as “Free range eggs with Winkler bacon,” and I thought that was an exciting headline. The bacon was actually REALLY good, as was the ham. Just wonderful. And the chorizo sausage that came with my breakfast? Possibly the best chorizo I’ve had outside of Spain. They’re serious about their meat, as well their hashbrowns, which were roasted and coated in mustard seeds and sundried tomatoes.

The one big miss on breakfast was the super-dry toast. Scantily buttered (I like how “buttered” is still the verb, even if they use margarine), it dried out our mouths. As well, the Billy Bob brand hot sauce was more heat than flavour, and they didn’t have a huge selection for breakfast, but what they did have was great.

Congratulations to John White & co. for setting up a great place for breakfast in the exchange. The Free Press Café rules bacon supreme in the Exchange District.