Eggspectation Visited 9/3/2011 2.5 Forks

Eggspectation 1313 De Maisonneuve West, (corner Montagne), Montreal, Quebec H3G 2R9

It was my first full day in Montreal and I was excited to try out a cute French-like bistro for brunch.  Eggspectation was not a cute bistro, but it was within walking distance and packed full of locals and tourists with a cute name.  I mean with a name like Eggspectation, it has to be good with egg dishes right?

The place is cute in the sense that it tries to look like a country house on the inside but then it's also got this weird industrial vibe with exposed pipes and concrete floors, so I'm not sure what sort of look they were going for.  Once we sat down, we realized that it's a chain (surprisingly with other locations in Maryland) restaurant, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but not what I really wanted.  The menu is, as expected, full of a million different kinds of egg dishes with "witty" eggy names like eggstreme, egg-chilada, and yoke around the clock.  As someone who loves eggs, it was so hard to decide what to try.  I thought I would be "healthy" and go for the California Benedict ($13) and Dan got the Breton Benedict ($11).  Before we order, I notice the beginning of what was some serious lacking service.  I realize it's busy and I do feel bad that they have to deal with a million things at once, but we literally waited forever to order.

When we did order, it took forever just to get our water and coffee.  And when she brought Dan's coffee, she literally swiped the sugar and cream for the table next to us without asking the couple sitting at the table.  It was a bit funny and shocking at the same time.  The couple was actually pretty pissed and said that they thought our waitress so rude for doing that.  When our food came, both of our dishes weren't really what we expected.  While I know that the menu said that my dish came with smoke salmon, spinach, asparagus on wheat bread, I didn't expect it to literally come on a tossed bed of wheat bread.  Usually benedict comes on english muffins, but all of these ingredients were scattered on 4-5 pieces of thin toast.  The eggs, veggies, and hollandaise sauce (there was tons of it) were all fine but it was just the fact that it was literally on randomly placed regular wheat bread was weird. Dan's dish was not what we thought either and to be honest we didn't know what it was supposed to be but it came out as 2 poached eggs inside of crepes filled with ham and covered in hollandaise sauce.  It was really different and not something either of us had seen before.  It had a definite sweet and salty combination that I like, it was just the fact that the crepe was covered with hollandaise sauce that was a bit bizarre.  When it came time to get our check, we waited and waited and then when we got our check we had to wait to get change.  Meanwhile, she took the ketchup off our table and gave it to another table, which we thought was amusing. Why don't they just have enough condiments for all the tables?!

Overall the meal was fine and the place was cute enough but the service was so slow and the food was not amazing enough to make up for it.  If it was local place and in NYC, I would consider coming back every now and then, but it's not a destination meal to go out of your way for.  Total bill $34 with tip.