Sugarbowl Edmonton, AB - tasty chicken and waffles, missed the elusive cinnamon bun!

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Rating Food 7.75/10, Service 7/10 When my cousin and his girlfriend was up for the weekend, we dropped by on a Sunday morning (ok, mid morning - we like to sleep in!) for brunch. We were hoping to try their cinnamon buns, touted as the best and largest in the city. In this cozy restaurant flanked by a large bar/pick up orders by waitstaff area to the back and a nice patio in the front. Service was a bit spotty, with waitstaff disappearing for a while, and other waitstaff reluctant to bring cold cream for coffee (vs warm pitcher we initially received) as it wasn't "their table"... but they were pretty busy.

We were seated relatively quickly as the breakfast crowd was just clearing out and the lunch crowd didn't arrive yet. Sadly, we had missed the last of the cinnamon buns by a few minutes... a table a few down from us got the last of them. Drat! Ah well, the early birds get the cinnamon buns I guess. Still, I was excited for brunch!

the FOOD After a bit of a wait, and finishing most of our drinks and catching up, our food came. My cousin's Sugarbowl Benny Poached egg looked amazing, and was served with warm back bacon on a thick slab of cornbread, fried crispy on outside and soft on inside potatoes, and a small bowl of housemade ketchup that had a little chiptole? zing.

...and completely drowned in a generous amount of rich thyme béchamel sauce. While quite tasty, with a nicely runny soft poached egg, he's a traditionalist, and thought the benny's would have been even better on a softly toasted english muffin.

My boyfriend wanted to have some of my chicken and waffles, so he went with the Breakfast sandwich. Pretty plain and not memorable, with a lightly toasted bun filled with a small bit of melted cheese, non-descript deli meat and really watered down and bland watery scrambled eggs.

A good hit of sauce, better quality meats, more cheese and waaay less diluting of the eggs would improve this dish. Eggs are cheap and plentiful!

My cousin's girlfriend went with the Omelette of the Day, served with fried potatoes and toast. Her omelet had some spinach, red peppers and cheese, which she said was pretty good, but wasn't impressed with her toast which was stale, cold, hard and inedible. We noticed while the kitchen was fast, many orders would sit for quite a while on the "pickup" area and languish, before they eventually get picked up and dropped off.

Finally, my Chicken and Waffle with maple butter was a winner. The chicken was well seasoned and coated in a crisp thin batter that was cooked just shy of burnt, but that didn't sell me as the chicken was better off alone than with the waffle - the chicken seasoning and odd little bit of undressed spring greens didn't quite work with the waffle.

But the wafffle. Saturated with notes of vanilla, fluffy inside and crisp on the outside. Drown it in the lightly buttery tasting maple syrup and its gold. Sugarbowl's waffles and pancakes aren't quite as good as Over Easy Breakfast's in Calgary (much much more butter and cream in OEB's batters), but OEB's been at it longer, and Sugarbowl can have a brunch-off with them.

the VERDICT

Overall, not a bad place to grab weekend breakfast or brunch. Once they work out the service issues, Edmonton will have a breakfast place worthy of bragging rights.

Sugarbowl

Address 10922 88 Ave NW, Edmonton, AB T6G0Z1

Phone (780) 433-8369

Hours Sun-Thurs 8am-midnight, Fri-Sat 8am-1am

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