Yes, you were nice enough to set aside extra space for us, but I feel I can squander it at my leisure. I’m a paying customer, and I’ll waste space but not food. How western of me. Our server was a real professional and soon came around with a huge tray of individually poured juices: orange, grapefruit, apple and tomato. She also had a brace on her juice wrist which made me feel bad. Maybe it was a ploy for tips, but it was probably just the crushing weight of a tray full of juice and glass being hauled around for hours.

The buffet layout was counter-intuitive. The plates were by the desserts and the breakfast options were scarce. They had a gelatin beside the salmon leading us to believe it could be aspic (gelatin made from beef stock), but it was plain old Bill Cosby-worthy gelatin (brand names need not apply).

The omelette station was impressive. A man bearing a Jaime Hyneman moustache was mastering four hot skillets at once. I was in the middle of a sizable line when he asked what I was having. Totally took me off guard. The chef boasted he could handle six burners at a time, but the table space would get like his memory – small. The omelettes were amazing. Really fat and incredibly tasty. Options included green onions, mushrooms, green peppers, tomatoes, ham and I’m forgetting a couple others. All excellent.

Everything except the omelettes suffered a slow death-by-warming-tray. The potatoes were Yukon gold, coming straight from Hutterites, according to rumour. They were dried out and lukewarm when I got to them. The bacon was stiff and congealed and the sausages were almost not worth mentioning.

Okay, I’ll mention them: the dried out links looked like wrinkly, dead fingers and tasted only moderately better. The bread options were mini-bagels or rolls with individual cream cheeses. The rolls were… wait for it… dry!

There was a predominance of desserts. Many cakes and squares but no chocolate fountain like at the Fort Garry Brunch. The salad bar was skimpy and there were odd-tasting pastas around. What looked like baby corn stir-fry was neither sweet nor sour. Just bad. Thick noodles posed as shanghai-style but tasted like they came out of a can.

Good point: we got a large bottle of Tabasco. Bad point: it was Tabasco. Good point: coffee and juice were included in the price.

Bad point: the juice only came once, and the coffee was no good.

Bonus Omelette review

by Chantal Guénette

Mushroom, tomato, ham & cheese omelette.

Bouquet: Make your own omelette station! It had ham, cheese, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions and peppers. It was the most incredible omelette station I’d ever seen. There was one chef manning FOUR frying pans. Amazing. He never neglected a single omelette –he asked me what I wanted in my omelette, then made three omelettes, and after making the third he still remembered what I wanted. He didn’t over-oil the pans, he flipped the omelettes so that they’d be cooked on both sides, was courteous & funny and when we asked him about his four omelette station he said that normally he has SIX! It made me want to go home & see if I could cook four omelettes at a time… I almost don’t remember if the omelette tasted good, I was too impressed with the cooking.

Boeuf: Tobasco was the only hot sauce they had. :(

November 16 2008

Teddy’s

(in the Viscount Gort Hotel)

1670 Portage Avenue

Hours of operation:

Mon - Sat     7 AM - 10 PM

Sun               7 AM - 9 PM

Sunday Brunch    $ 16.75

(from 10 AM - 2 PM) 

after tax

coffee included

Teddy’s is chock-full of wood on the tables and the walls. It gives it a rustic feel, but that was only the half we sat in. The other half of the restaurant had a business-like cafeteria feel to it.

When we were seated at our reserved table, the server efficiently started filling all the glasses with water. Not wanting to be wasteful (contradiction – eating at a buffet and trying not to be wasteful) I asked her to not fill them all yet as we didn’t know exactly how many people would show. I got a baleful look from her as if I’d just committed a crime.