Ai. Sorry for the descriptive title. At least it wasn't me. Luckily, I escaped this horrible fate.
I joined some friends across town to Touski for breakfast this morning. I haven't been there for brekkie for at least a year and it was a (rare) gorgeous day and Touski has a great big backyard full of picnic tables.
I hate to slam any place run by a co-operative, but things are kind of hit and miss at Touski. When I lived close to there, I didn't go very often for that reason. One of my friends said that the last time he came here, he had to wait over 45 minutes after ordering to get his breakfast. How long does it possibly take to cook eggs??
It seems that Touski no longer do table service. Everything is done at the counter. You order, give them your name, they stick their head out of the kitchen door which opens to the backyard, shout out your name when your order is ready, you go back in, to the counter to pick up your food (obvious question: why can't they just give you the food from the kitchen door?)
I got the "Consistant" - two eggs, bread, one "thing", and fruit. You get to choose from a list of "trucs": sausages, bacon, cheese, vege-pate. I made the mistake of ordering vegepate before, three years ago. It was gross and cold, and if I remember correctly, full of alfalfa sprouts. Not the kind of thing I would want for breakfast. So I avoided the pate and went for cheese, which they said is cheddar, but turned out to be a nice mozzerella.
I remember one of the few episodes of a Gordon Ramsay show I saw had him saying to a chef that one of the most basic things for a chef to do is not break the yolk when making a fried egg. And it's also one of the basic pleasures of having a fried egg - breaking the yolk yourself. So I always take a broken yolk as a sign of a shoddy kitchen. Jen's plate had a broken yolk - that egg was hidden under the first one. Classy.
(I always forget to break out the camera when the food comes because I like to dive in -obviously the food didn't come looking like this!)
My breakfast came with delicious bread, kind of yeasty and crunchy, like German bread. Definitely the best part of the breakfast. Unfortunately, the cook forgot to give it to us so I had to ask for it. My eggs were pretty runny up top for sunny side up, plenty of "rooster juice" as another friend called it. Yuck. But at least they weren't broken. The potatoes were not deep fried, which was good, but they were cold and shrivelled, like they were cooked at least five hours ago, which was bad. Still, I was ok.
Then one of my friends jumped up, napkin to her mouth. "Oh my God, I'm going to puke". One of the eggs tasted funny, very funny. She kept her food down, sat back down and decided to eat everything else. Then she disappeared and bum vomited. Mel's stomach started feeling funny. Then she disappeared and vomited. I was freaked out that I was next but luckily, nothing happened to me. Honestly, not worth it, despite the lovely bread. There's not really a reason to head back to that place. I'm sorry to say that, especially as it's a co-operative and the kind of place I would like to support.
I had a 40 minute bike ride ahead of me and I was really worried that I would be in bad shape along the way, but instead I had a great ride back in the sunshine, and stopped off at Atwater Market to get some cheese (at Les fromages du paradis - 3 cheeses from a changing selection for $11.99).
Touski Café du quartier
2361 Ontario E
two eggs, bread, potatoes, fruit, and one "thing" $5.50
Hi! I'm really sorry you had such a bad experience at Café Touski. In fact, I work there and think I remember this crazy day when you came and had this very bad experience. If I remember well, we didn't charge your friend, right? And, for all the incredulous readers out there, our eggs are fresh; the problem was that very specific egg. When summer begins things are just going CRAZY and when the café and the backyard are full, our two cooks often have a hard time getting all this work done quickly. We tried to fix a lot of these things and, honestly, things are running much more quickly right now. For your information, yes we still do table service. The backyard is an exception because, since it is not officially a terrace, we cannot have the commodities to offer service there, but we still want our clients to enjoy this peaceful place. Also, you have to go to the counter to pick-up your food because you will most likely ask for ketchup, a coffee refill, salt, etc, and the cook just can’t deal with that in his rush. That said, we keep improving ourselves. We care and we don’t want anybody to have this “hit-and-miss” feeling you had when came. Besides, I think you could have told us about your experience right away. It’s more helpful to have a feedback on the spot then to read that a year later on a blog! I don’t know if you’re still around, but I personally invite you to come and visit us again, truly hoping you will enjoy your experience this time!
ReplyDeleteHave a nice day, Marie-Sophie