Rumi – An out of this world experience

The 411

Brunch comes in all shapes and sizes, or tastes and flavours in this case. Anywhere you go in Montreal you can get a brunch ranging from a classic eggs and bacon place, to a bar that does bistro style brunches or even restaurants that make their brunch with an ethnic inspiration. Rumi is the latter in this category. Rumi is already a popular restaurant on Hutchison that you should go check out for dinner if you ever get a chance as it is one of my personal favorites. To describe the cuisine is not easy, its a mix of North African, Persian and Turkish and its 100% yummy.

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International House of Pancakes – visiting a legend

The 411

On the way back from a trip to Cali a long plane ride and a lack of medical sedatives made for me being in need of sleep and food. When I don’t eat I get painfully cranky so in order to avoid an incident at the border I decided that I need to eat right away and I really wanted breakfast food. So having landed in Burlington we asked around for information on where to get breakfast. I asked at the airport, the parking lot and even in a grocery store with no luck. Most people didn’t know of any place to eat breakfast on a weekday early in the morning and when one person suggested McDonalds I almost cried but I think the emotion was masked by disgust, which I think she saw on my face (sorry I’m cranky when I’m hungry). Then, as if a sign from above, someone suggested Ihop’s and pointed us in the right direction.

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Le Vieux St-Laurent – Some pretty good moves for an old man

The 411

I consider myself well versed in most places that serve brunch in Montreal, but when I went to brunch with a friend of mine this past Saturday, I was educated about a couple places I had never seen before. So once my head stopped spinning, we walked through the St Laurent street fest and made it to Le Vieux St Laurent and a wonderful experience followed (and I don’t mean the shopping at the street – I’m talking about the food)

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Chocola – More than just cupcakes

*UPDATE – NO LONGER SERVES BRUNCH*

The 411

With my friend having recently moved to NDG I realized that I had neglected the west end of the city in regards to the various places I have reviewed, so we decided to take a nice sunny Saturday and walk around Monkland village in NDG. The advantage of getting out of you car and exploring is that you can find those little gems you would not find driving around and focusing mainly on finding a parking spot. So with our minds set on a brunch adventure, we walked around looking for something well priced, tasty, different and preferably with a terrace. Then that’s where we found it – kind of like the last cookie in the cookie box when you are really hungry – Cho Cola called out to us.

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Quoi De N’oeuf – another jewel in the Atwater crown

The 411

As some of you may or may or may not know I have become fond of the Atwater market area – it’s a place filled with great little shops, green spaces and great food. There have been a couple places that have been serving up some awesome dishes here and brunch is no exception. So when when my friend told me about one of his favourite places in the area I could not resist the chance to check out another place in the Atwater market area and chow down on some good eats.

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Burgers & Benedicts – Much more than just burgers

The 411

For almost one year I have had my co-worker ask me to review Burgers & Benedicts. Being one of her favourite places, I got to hear one of the best pitches for how good it was. Now, there’s two things in this world I can’t say no to; one is food; and the other is a new place to have brunch (technically they can be considered the same thing but who cares). So one day we got some co-workers together and went out check it out.

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Le Coin G – The right spot 😉

The 411

When I first told my friend we were going to Le coin G her mind went right into the gutter and was taken aback. Now not to be confused with that other magical spot named after Dr. Ernest Gräfenberg (see you just learned something there), Le coin G is a little resto in the Villeray district that mainly people who live in the area know about. Although I don’t live there I have heard some good stuff about it and was really curious to check it out. So after some good laughs and some interesting web research on this rather unfortunate (yet interesting) name we headed out one sunny day to Guizot street (that’s whats its really named after)

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Le Cagibi – A Vegan adventure

The 411

One of the greatest challenges I come across while reviewing places is offering reviews on the vegetarian options, and in particular, the vegan options. Although personally I’m neither a vegetarian or vegan, I can see how difficult it can be to go out and find someplace to eat that offers something vegetarian/vegan on the menu. Things have come a long way in the last 30 plus years when you would have a hard time finding a menu item without meat in it. Many of the places I’ve gone too have some vegetarian menu items and they taste amazing. This is an easy thing to do when you deal with eggs, waffles, pancakes. Now vegan is another issue; it’s hard to find vegan items on a menu and often an item will be almost vegan if it was not for one small thing in it. I usually end up looking for fruit cups on the menu, which although are great and tasty, they aren’t really impressive. So all this to say, when we decided to go to Cagibi I was excited to find and review another place with not only vegetarian options but with vegan options as well (other than a fruit cup). So now that the stage is set lets take a closer look and see what we have on our plate.

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Fruit Folie – Bursting with fruit

The 411

St-Denis is a street where all you need to do is walk a little bit and find a nice gem of a place to eat, and brunch is no exception to this rule. Fruits de Folie falls into this category by providing well priced food and tons of fruit on most of your plates (as the name implies). Although this is my first time coming to Fruits de Folie, I know a lot of people who have spoken about it for quite some time now, and the peer reviews all follow a similar theme of lots of fruit and very affordable. Now since I can’t disagree with those two ideals, off I went exploring.

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Em Cafe where art and food meet

The 411

Situated on Parc Street just south of Bernard, Em Cafe is a place you would likely miss. Yet, when you step in you will see how it is more than an unassuming place and that it manages to serve up a laid back atmosphere where one can sit down and have the hours melt away.

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