So we're meandering down Richmond one morning, late morning. I was hungry, but not for lunch food. We spot a place called Cora's Breakfast & Lunch. I usually end up eating breakfast type food two times a day. I eat 6 mini meals a day. My breakfasts usually are pretty stuck on starting me out with proteins and carbs. From the outside Cora's LOOKED like a local place, but as soon as I darkened the door of their lobby I spotted news articles from Alberta and other provinces.
Darn...a chain. I had already taken a picture outside of the place... I read the article in between shooting glances inside the place. It was PACKED.... The walls were covered with pictures of fruits and the wall leading to the kitchen and preparation area was covered with REAL fruit...it looked real anyhow. I kept reading...Cora's was supposed to be a place offering more choices to keep your lunch and breakfast healthy. Ok...we'll see this through... I walked in and asked for a table for 2 and a highchair. It all went down hill from there...fast...
Cora's Breakfast & Lunch
The girl that seated us put us at a table for two and kinda tossed the high chair on the side. No one could make it through that aisle to any of the tables around us. There was NO way to put something "across" the table out of the Sprout's reach...I had to get a new table. But they were PACKED... I had to try anyhow. I made a beeline for the table behind us, a 4 seater. I saw a waitress coming my way, I figured she was going to stop me. When I told her the situation, she wondered why they seated me at a 2 seater, when a high chair is involved, they normally aren't even allowed to do that for safety reasons. Makes sense to me and as long as I wasn't in trouble...moving on. I asked for 2 ice waters with lemon. I went to work looking through the menu. Guh....breakfast AND lunch...not so much. There were 4 salads, 1 lunch crepe and 1 sandwich. Everything else was breakfast. So..we went with breakfast. I went with Cora's Special and asked for "brown toast" rather than the crepe. I was watching tables around me while I waited for the ETERNITY it took for our food to come. A dude reached over to a table and asked his neighbor for the pepper... The people next to us came in after us, but their order came up before ours. A few minutes afterward I saw why...the lady ordered crepes and they were both not completely cooked. When the waitress came back to check on their drinks (which never happened for us until we asked for the check...) she told her they weren't done and got new ones. That gave me hope...perhaps our service would get better. But it didn't. Here comes our food...
Cora's Special
The first thing I did was portion out some eggs and "brown" toast to the Sprout. So he was munching happily. Before I took this picture I removed the melon rind that was sitting on top of my breakfast meat. I dunno if you can tell, but that bacon isn't "bacon". That is precooked bacon that you can buy at your local Sam's Club or Costco in bulk...you know...the paper thin, flavorless nondescript "meat". I handed that over to my Mister promptly...he'll eat anything that is categorized as "bacon", but at the price of 12 bucks for breakfast, I wasn't going to throw it away. The eggs were cooked right; not great. The sausages you see are most closely described as "bangers" like...."bangers and mash". English sausages. They had a nice taste. I could tell they weren't sweetened. That took some of the burn off...until I hit the sausages this breakfast was making me pretty angry. I ate my orange slice and handed the warm melon off to my Mister. When the fruit is warm, I refrain. But his stomach is a tank, so he doesn't usually have problems with food poisoning. He burps and moves on. A contained explosion. I am usually near death...so I don't take chances with warm fruits. Now...onto the potato. Half were overcooked and half were undercooked. The overcooked ones were chewy and the undercooked ones felt like apples as I bit into them. I realize there can be "hot spots" in ovens and on electric burners, but WOW... I just wanted to get the heck out of that place. So we did. The call for "Check please?" went out, we paid and we left. We'll never go back. Well...I will never go back. I can think of better places to spend 30 bucks on breakfast...though I can't think of that many places that the cost would be that high for seriously substandard eats.
I can't believe this is a chain...I can't believe 76% of 26 votes on Urbanspoon LIKED this place. What a false sense of reality!! I wouldn't recommend this place to ANYone that likes breakfast food. Skip it...get a bagel from ANYwhere or some fruit from a farmer's market some Saturday morning...you'll be happier and healthier for your trouble. Yet...another experience to add to the check list of why I hate, hate...HATE chain restaurants. Cora's may have started out as fabulous as those articles made her sound, but there is a GIANT gap in the description and the reality of the product being churned out. Too bad....VERY sad...
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