barry's restaurant review: urban diner.

in an effort to save money, i’m trying to eat out only twice a month. as you can imagine, this is very hard for me since i love food. love. so, i try to make the outings count…and it’s such bitter disappointment when they don’t. take saturday’s outing to urban diner. i’ve never been before, but had heard ridiculously fantastic things about their brunch, so three buds and i decided to head over and see what all the fuss was about. it’s a cute place with lots of booths and tables, and though there was a line to get in, we didn’t wait long, and while we were waiting we had a fantastic view of pies. mmm…pies. we also had a great server who was very helpful, and a menu of gourmet breakfast dishes to choose from. the traditional eggs benny was a hit (great hollandaise sauce), as was the salmon and swiss quiche. the breakfast burger however…well, two of us ordered it, only one of us actually liked it, and it wasn’t me. you’d think a sandwich that had five (five!) proteins in it (ham, bacon, meatloaf, fried egg and cheddar cheese) would be heavenly. you would be wrong though. it was salty, the meatloaf was a funky texture (too soft) and was bland, and there was a red pepper spread. about the red pepper spread: you know when there’s a food you don’t like, olives for example, and there is the smallest portion of it in a dish you’re eating? all you taste is olives! well i normally like red peppers, but all i could taste was salt, bad meatloaf and olives. and by olives i mean red peppers. bad red peppers. it was so disheartening i had to get pie. i’m the kind of person who needs things to end on a positive note, like pie. damn good pie. between the four of us we ordered three desserts to share: banoffee pie, sour cream lemon pie and white chocolate orange-mint cheesecake. they sent our taste buds into sugar overdrive, and tried to erase memories of a bad breakfast from my mind. they didn’t succeed, but they did try, and i have to give them credit for that.

YAY:

• great pie.
• the eggs benny, and more importantly the hollandaise, was good.
• polite service.

MEH:

• the food was pricey; not a big deal if your meal tastes great, but it’s salt added to the wound if you’re not digging the food.

NAY:

• the breakfast burger (don’t do it, no matter how tempted you are!)
• there’s going to be a line to get in. you’ll just have to accept this fact if you’re heading there on a saturday morning after 9:30.
• very, very, limited parking.

Urban Diner
12427 102 Avenue NW
Edmonton, AB T5N 0M2, Canada
(780) 488-7274