By The Way Café (400 Bloor St. W & Brunswick)

By The Way Café’s whimsically muralled-walls, dark oak tables and Middle-Eastern inspired menu have become a landmark for weekend brunching in Toronto’s Annex. From 10:30 am onward the place is packed, and the background chatter of happy brunchers is a surprisingly-fine substitute for music in this music-free environment (at least the morning we brunched). Brunchtime seating can be “intimate”, but the café has done a great job maximizing seating indoors when it is too cold to sit on the glorious patio (heated with gas heaters from early spring onward). The café is a fantastic locale for people-watching as its floor-to-ceiling windows, and patio, hang over one of the Annex’s most trafficked corners, Bloor and Brunswick.

As far as the food was concerned, this was the first time that we have been divided.

Karina ordered the Shakshuka ($9.00), described on the menu as “two poached eggs in a rich and spicy tomato broth” with pita. Nothing in this dish wowed Karina. While the dish was flavourful, had the right amount of spice, and was most certainly unique on the brunch scene, the yoke in the poached eggs was not runny, and Karina was just not overwhelmed.

Rachelle ordered the goat cheese and sun-dried tomato omelette with zatar ($9.00). The dish came with hashbrowns, what the menu called a “Montreal bagel”, and sliced fruit. The omelette was delicious. Where else can you get zatar in an omelette? The zatar complemented the goat cheese and highlighted its sour undertones, but to our dismay, the bagel was not a Montreal bagel! To add insult to injury, it was not well-toasted as she had requested. This was disappointing to Rachelle, our well-toasted-Montreal-Bagel-lover.

Leora and Mark both ordered the Eggs Benny ($9.00). The classic order also came with hashbrowns and sliced fruit. If you like dill, this is the Eggs Benny for you. This dill hollandaise sauce made the dish. While we were a bit thrown off by the substitution of sliced-ham in the place of pea meal bacon, the dill hollandaise was so good that it almost did not matter. There’s no doubt that a Benny should be made with pea meal, but Leora would go back just for the dill.

Deconstructing the rest of the meal, the hashbrowns were delicious. They were fried with onion, well-seasoned, and were really soft – to the point that part of the portion begins to resemble mashed potatoes after a while.

In terms of coffee, the drip was really good. They make a mild, but flavourful cup: not watery, but not too intense.

We also disagreed on the staff. Leora liked the service and Karina found it curt.

Price-wise, their prices were a little lower than your average hip brunch place where Eggs Benny run around $11-$12.

RATING: All-in-all it’s a good, solid, satisfying brunch. Based on our rating system (see below) Leora would have given the brunch a 3.7, Karina would have given it a 2.8. We’ve compromised on 3.25/5.

Many factors go into a truly sublime brunch experience….

Rating Scale

	1	2	3	4	5
Innovation of menu	BORING!				Wow! Did Susur Lee create this?
Would you go out of your way to go back?	Out of my way? You couldn’t drag me…				Yes…I’d even walk it if I had to.
Service	Rude and slow				Did I just have sex?
Atmosphere	Uncomfortable/ tacky/ugly/dirty/Too loud/too quiet/				Perfection balance
Taste	Bland, under/overcooked …bad.				Manna from heaven