Palate Kitchen: Contemporary brunch in downtown Vancouver
Palate Kitchen is a cafe and restaurant located in downtown Vancouver. They are known for their coffee roasters but has since expanded to offer brunch, lunch and dinner services.
This review is based on an in-dining experience.
Interior
The interior is quite interesting because all the in-dining areas are on the second floor. The first floor is more of the cafe with a coffee bar with casual seating. The kitchen is also on the ground floor so the servers will bring your food upstairs for you.
My friend and I were seated in a corner table near the window and it was very spacious. Both the booth seating and dining chairs were comfortable.
Food
We share several brunch items.
The fjord toast ($19)
The fjord toast is basically smoked salmon with cream cheese on toast. They use Gravlax salmon, which is salmon that’s been cured with a combination of salt and sugar. They also put avocado and pickled crispy shallots on top, with cream cheese spread on sourdough toast.
Now this toast is big! The sourdough toast is really thick, which holds everything up together nicely. They put a lot of salmon on top, which I like. I also really like the crispy shallots – yum! The avocado is not sliced into chunks or smushed so it is kind of awkward to eat. In general, you kind of need to de-construct the toast in order to eat everything they’ve put on top.
BBQ pulled pork eggs benedict ($19)
Their eggs bennies feature 2 poached eggs topped with housemade hollandaise sauce, sautรฉed spinach and your choice of bacon, mushrooms or BBQ pulled pork on ciabatta bread. We chose pulled pork as it was the most unique of the 3. You can substitute salmon for an extra $2 or add a side of potatoes for $4.
Now I’m used to my eggs bennies coming with a side so it looked like it was kind of missing something but I refuse to pay $4 for potatoes. However, as I started eating it, I found the eggs benny to be quite rich and filling. I had trouble finishing 1 of the 2 eggs bennies.
The pulled pork was very savoury and at times, a bit too much with the hollandaise sauce. This might be a good choice if you are a heavy meat eater or if you like to eat richer/greasier foods in the morning. Or if you are just a very hungry person.
Mini hot cake ($5+$1 for toppings)
I wanted to try one of their signature hot cakes so I was glad they have a mini version. Their original/full size version costs $12.
You can choose between 5 toppings for the mini hot cake. We chose the mixed berry mascarpone, but they also have dark chocolate, white chocolate and berries, caramel sauce and mascarpone praline.
The cake is not as dense as I thought but it’s not super fluffy either. I liked that it was warm and tasted refreshing with the berry mascarpone. I think the mini size was a good size for me to try!
Final thoughts
Loewe’s rating: โญโญ
Out of all the dishes we ordered, I liked the fjord toast the most even though it wasn’t the easiest thing to eat. I’ve also heard good things about the french toast but I don’t have a big sweet tooth so we didn’t order it.
Palate Kitchen’s menu has some interesting items like halloumi cakes, kefta skillets and healthy huevos so if you are vegetarian, definitely lots of other choices. I think that is a great aspect to their brunch offering as brunch items can be a lot of the same-old after awhile.
The only negative point is that I haven’t yet found a dish I really really love and would keep returning back for out of the 3 items we ordered here, but I enjoyed all the food and it was fun to try the hot cake.
Service was decent. It can be difficult sometimes to get your server’s attention because dining tables are on the second floor and there are 2 separate second floors. So unless there is a server already up on your second floor or if they happen to be making rounds, you may have to wait to get their attention.
Sincerely, Loewe