I still really like the fact that you can make a reservation for breakfast or brunch at The Fine Diner in Inglewood and not have to stand in line for toast. The food is great, the service is pleasant, and now the menu is all inclusive pricing. Since November of 2016, the prices on the menu include tax and gratuities – what you see is what you pay. Any extra gratuities you may leave will be donated to a charity of their choice. There were a few charities listed on the chalk board for your information, so if you felt like topping up your payment, you could leave knowing the extra would go to a good cause.
I met 4 friends from out of town for breakfast at 8:30 on a Sunday morning. There were only a few other tables booked at that time of the morning, but what I really liked was that they had our table of 5 booked in for 3 hours! Even though we were out of there by 9:45 it was nice to know that we could have taken our time to visit and we wouldn’t have been kicked out or given dirty looks to hurry up.
I enjoyed my coffee with cream and the little oddly shaped chunks of brownish sugar; I was able to drink a cup and read some of my book before my friends arrived just a little bit late. The server was super friendly and he explained the menu to us and answered all of our questions. With 5 of us it took a little while for us all to decide what to order, so the server had some good patience with us 🙂 I think most of us ordered something with potatoes, and everyone loved the potatoes! A mixture of sweet potatoes, white and purple, it was something different, and they were seasoned well.
Some of the sweeter breakfasts sounded to die for! Vanilla custard french toast with browned butter maple syrup, berry compote, lemon chantilly cream and vanilla custard!? Yum! But, I stayed traditional and ordered the house-cured salmon eggs benny. Their hollandaise is great. I shouldn’t have said yes to the extra salt when the server came around with the grinders – I really only wanted the fresh ground pepper but my mouth shouted ‘both please!’ before I could think about the repercussions. Because I added extra salt I found my breakfast to be too salty – but that was entirely my own fault. Brain fart!
The restaurant has a new Chef – unfortunately I can’t remember her name. At the end of our breakfast she brought us a new dessert item she was working on – donuts with a cream cheese sauce and a tasty cinnamon crumble on top… so good! Thankfully she gave us one donut each because we would have been fighting over them. Even the one of us who doesn’t like cream cheese was wiping the sauce off the plate with her fresh, warm homemade donut. What a nice treat!
What is also cool about The Fine Diner is they operate on a nearly waste free system. They recycle, compost and do biofuel conversion! They also have a perishable redistribution partnership with LeftOvers Calgary.
I really want to eat at this restaurant a lot more often. I just need more friends who love to eat out as much as I do!
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