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.

The Bohemian Bagel

Restaurant: The Bohemian Bagel - Brunch review
Cuisine: Eclectic/American/Breakfast/Brunch/Lunch
Last visited: August 14, 09

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

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

Food: 4
Service: 3
Ambiance: 3
Overall: 4
Additional comments:

• Open Wednesday - Sunday
• Serves breakfast and lunches
• Lighter than pub food, not gourmet, but home cooked style
  
• Cafe and catering
• Focus on homemade sausage, bacon, dressings, soups
• Freshly baked goods
• Each table has this homemade fruit jam, a great added touch!
  
• Healthy & tasty options
• Homestyle, casual/laid back feel
• Attracts all ages/families
• Popular to locals, quite busy
  
• Daily specials
  

**Recommendation: Blueberry oatmeal pancakes, homemade sausage/bacon, apparently the Huevos Rancheros is good (although I didn't try this)

So we got this recommendation from the front desk at the hotel. He's a self-acclaimed foodie and seemed trustworthy. It was a great recommendation, although he did warn us that the hollandaise sauce was not homemade...which I beleive, otherwise they would advertise it like they do with everything else that is homemade. The bread was baked in house, but I prefer the bread from across the street at The Bread Company. It was a young staff, with laid-back service. We had 4 servers for brunch so it was a bit disorganized, but not hectic - just sllooww.

On the table:

• **Blueberry Oatmeal Pancakes 5/6
• One of their most popular items! Topped with icing sugar, lots of warm blueberries and served with maple syrup.

• I really enjoyed these! They were delicious. It's served in 4 mini pancakes - the oatmeal is ground into the pancake batter so it's a smooth texture and not gritty or anything. Nice and moist, not really fluffy though. They're not your thick and hearty style pancakes though. They're thinner and quite moist becuase of that; completely different than the giant pancake I had from The Grizzly Manor in LA - I like both styles of pancakes though. The blueberries are fresh and added a natural sweetness to the pancakes. Nice, simple, and very enjoyable. $11.50, so a bit more expensive than usual, but worth it for the quality.
• **BOH Combo (Select 4 favs) 5/6
  
• 2 eggs, hashbrowns, homemade sausage, homemade back bacon

• Must try the homemade sausage and bacon - the back bacon and bacon strip are all made in house in the back. It's very fresh and not the cured bacon most people serve. This is gourmet bacon. The sausage and bacon were were both quite lean and not oily, both were very flavourful and juicy. Quality meat, so there's no need to add anything to enjoy them.
• Classic Eggs Benedict 2/6
  
• With the homemade back bacon and English muffin (don't think the English muffin is made in house though)

• This was good, but also just a standard eggs benedict. I came in biased to this item because I knew that the hollandaise sauce was from a powder and not homemade. Therefore it tastes like a benny you've probably had before. This is actually one of their popular items, but that doesn't surprise me because most people are used to that packaged hollandaise sauce rather than the real deal. You can even order the hollandaise as a side people like it so much - I wonder what brand they're using...
• Spinach and Fresh Cherry Salad 4/6
  
• Quite creative. Spinach, fresh Okanagan (local) cherries, Goat's feta, tomato, and carrots with you choice of dressing. We had the mustard-soy dressing which is made in house and tastes great! Really nice dressing, more like a vinaigrette, it would go well with any salad.
  
• This salad was on their specials board, so it's seasonal due to the fact that there's fresh cherries in it.
• Pineapple Peach Cornmeal Muffin $2.50 3/6
  
• Another creative item on their specials board! I love how they take advantage of the seasonal fruit that is so abundant throughout the Okanagan. Fresh local peaches and pineapple (not sure if the pineapple was fresh though) go into this cornmeal muffin. I tasted more cornmeal in the muffin than the fruits though - I think the cornmeal overpowered the fruit flavour. You can actually bite into and see the pieces of fruit, but I found the flavours lost in the cornmeal. I could taste the fruit in the first couple bites and then I couldn't taste it after that.
  
• Remember to ask them to warm up the muffins - it tastes better. Also try their muffins or homemade breads with the homemade fruit preserves served at every table. Really bold and fruity in flavour.
• Mandarin-Apple Streusel Muffin $2.50 4/6
• This was a slightly better muffin, but it tasted like a coffee cake with the nutty brown sugar topping. It's hard to compete with a muffin that has a crunchy streusel topping. It sounds like a really creative and unique muffin, but again you couldn't really taste the mandarin or apple. If anything the apple flavour came out more than the mandarin flavour.
• Nice and moist on the inside, this is a good muffin - it's just that it doesn't taste like what it was supposed to be. Again remember to ask them to warm up the muffins - it tastes better.
• Soups 1/6
  
• All the soups are made in house and change daily.
  
• We tried the gazpacho and the corn chowder.
• Just because it's made in house doesn't always mean it's good. Yes, it's fresh and homemade, but that doesn't mean the recipe is good. The recipes for the soup were unfortunately not good. We happened to try both becuase the original order the gazpacho was so disappointing. It tasted like canned tomato sauce that was watered down with veggies in it. So the waitress traded it and gave us the corn chowder - which was also disappointing. It was better than the gazpacho, but still had that watered down taste and texture. The corn was definitely from the cob, but it didn't matter becuase the soup base itself just wasn't good. Rarely do I ever ask the server to take something back, but in this case it was necessary because it really was that bad.
• Homemade preserves available at each table - full of real fruit flavour