The Bread Company

Restaurant: The Bread Company
Cuisine: Bakery/Breakfast/Brunch/Lunch/American
Last visited: August 15, 09

Area: Kelowna, BC
363 Bernard Ave
Price Range: $10-20

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: Tres Excellent!!

Food: 5
Service: 3
Ambiance: 3
Overall: 5
Additional comments:

• Serves breakfast and light lunches
• Order and pay at cashier, food brought to your table
  
• Cafe and catering
• Casual cafe, but more gourmet than The Bohemian Bagel across the street
  
• Focus on freshly baked breads and pastries
• Artisan breads
• No refined sugars in breads
• Only vegetable/olive oil used in breads
• Loaves to go
• Familiar to locals, line-ups, busy
  
• Toonie Tuesday Lattes

**Recommendation: Lemon Ricotta Pancakes, Fig & Anise Loaf, stuffed French toast is popular too, but I didn't try it.

So I tried this restaurant for brunch the next day. It's across the street from The Bohemian Bagel, and it's casual but not as laid back. The baked breads are definitely more artisan breads and better than the homemade bread baked at The Bohemian Bagel. You don't get as much of that "home cooked" feel as you do at The Bohemian Bagel, but I thought overall their food was a bit better. The Bohemian Bagel offers food lighter than pub food, but heartier than The Bread Company. The breads at The Bread Company look amazing and they taste great! I wish you could sample them before buying them though. All baked goods are in the display cases so you can seen everything and order/pay at the cashier. For hot food, they give you a number after you pay and serve you at your table.

On the table:

• **Lemon Ricotta Pancakes 6/6
  
• One of their signature items! Signature pancakes made with lemon and ricotta cheese, served with fresh blueberry compote and maple syrup.

• These were so good! I enjoyed them a bit more than the oatmeal blueberry pancakes I had at The Bohemian Bagel. They were the same style pancakes though, 3 mini pancakes that are nice and moist - not the thick traditional kind. The ricotta cheese is very light in the pancake batter and it adds more in terms of texture than it does in flavour.
  
• Adding ricotta to pancakes makes them really tender and delicious! This pancake has a nice weight and is not heavy - the lemon and lemon zest added a great dimension of flavour and lightened up the whole dish. You can really taste the subtle hint of lemon zest, it brightened everything up. The blueberry compote was also great! Naturally sweet and thick - a good amount was served on top of the pancakes. Not too much, and not too little - just enough to not make your pancakes soggy and just enough to balance out all the flavours so that nothing was overpowering.
• Banana Walnut Pancakes 2/6
  
• Signature pancakes made with banana and walnuts served with banana compote (more like mashed bananas) and maple syrup.

• The ricotta lemon pancakes were better. The banana compote served on top was a little like baby food to me. It was mushed up bananas served on top, which means it turned brown in colour and ruined the presentation. You could tell it was fresh and nothing was added, but it just didn't look that appetizing. The bananas were really ripe too, so the whole dish was a bit sweet. The pancakes have a really subtle banana flavour - not like banana bread or anything - good pieces of walnuts in them too, which it really needed otherwise everything just tasted too mushy and you get sick of it quickly.
• *Honey-Cured Ham & Havarti Frittata 4/6
  
• eggs, ham, Havarti, sauteed apples, sage and leeks, served with hashbrowns or "home fries" and buttered toast

• This was good but they should call it an omelette rather than a frittata. It tasted like an omelette. It was heavy on the honey ham and Havarti. The Harvarti was just slices melted all over the top instead of incorporated in - so yes it was good becuase you can see how much you're getting, but I think it would have been better if it was incorporated into the eggs, as well as a little on top for presentation sake.
  
• I couldn't taste the apples at all. I wish I did though because it would have added a sweet note that would really make this "fritatta" a stand out! The leeks were really nice and I actually even bit into some zucchini (found in their Feta & roasted vegetable frittata), which is weird because zucchini isn't meant to be an ingredient for this frittata. I still liked it though. If I went in knowing it would be an omelette and if I could have tasted the apples which would have enhanced the leek and sage flavour more this would make it as one of my recommendations...too bad it didn't...so I gave it one star.
• The "home fries" were just fried up diced potatoes - so a fancy hashbrown.
• We had this with multi-grain toast - their multi-grain is great! You can really taste the grains and it has this amazing crust. Nice and chewy with great texture! Can eat this on its own - doesn't need anything else on it.
• Pumpkin & Pecan soup 5/6
  
• A gourmet soup that is delicious! Nice pieces of pecans in it, I'm surprised they didn't sink to the bottom - small enough to float and big enough to see. Great flavour and homemade...WAY better than the soups offered at The Bohemian Bagel.
  
• **Fig & Anise Bread 6/6
  
• I won't say much about it here because it's so good I'm giving it its own review. I even bought a loaf home at around $5. But it is worth it because you can taste the quality.