EDMONTON: Café de Ville

Looking for somewhere new for Sunday brunch (we can only go to Culina so many times in one weekend), Jason’s family and I headed to Café de Ville, which has been in Edmonton for a while but somehow not on our radar.

The restaurant is on the ground floor of the three-storey Buena Vista building built in 1912. The Glenora Inn Bed & Breakfast is in the same building (across the street from the Mountain Equipment Co-op), which has a nice old world European charm.

At Easter, the Sunday brunch was very busy but well managed. We snagged the last reservation at 11 a.m. and were told they would need the table by 1 p.m. Very fair.

Excellent strong coffee started everyone off, along with a gorgeous, complimentary basket of warm, fresh pastries. Flaky croissants, warm mini cinnamon buns, mini danishes, and mini muffins with cream cheese inside. What a great touch.

Not realizing how ample that basket was, we ordered the grilled banana bread ($12) to share as a starter. It was nice with black raspberry coulis and créme fraîche, but we didn’t NEED it to be satisfied.

Ken and Pam’s dishes were real winners. Ken, a meat and potatoes kind of guy, hit the jackpot with the special sausage ($15) of the day from Irvings Farm Fresh. The pork and leek sausage was super lean but still packed with flavour. It came with poached eggs, hash browns and toast.

Kitchen showed its stuff with Pam’s polenta soufflé ($13), which on its own was quite overpowering with Stilton, feta, herbs and spinach. But paired with a savoury wild mushroom ragout, it was a well-balanced brunch dish.

Jason and I both went for egg dishes. My eggs fumé ($13) had a great house-smoked salmon but the brioche was dry and the hollandaise was too tart.

Jason’s eggs capicollo ($13) suffered similar problems. The brioche was dry and the citrus pico de gallo too light to make up for the lack of “moisture” overall in the dish.

I’d still recommend Café de Ville as a very civilized place for Sunday brunch. Service is very friendly, and coffee refills ample. There are no lineups out the door with hungry people staring and trying to mind-bend you to eat faster. There’s lots of time and space to relax on a leisurely Sunday.

Café de Ville, 10137-124 St. NW, Edmonton, Alberta, (780) 488-9188.