Zellers Family Restaurant

I always associate “family restaurant” with breakfast. I know there are other options, and they’re usually open all day, but the majority of the time that I find myself at one, it’s for breakfast – or they have an all day breakfast menu, and I love breakfast foods, so I’m ordering breakfast anyway. So. To recap: family restaurant = breakfast. That’s the kind of math I like.

We were out shopping early one morning and decided to stop into the Zellers restaurant for some quick breakfast because I remembered that it used to be pretty inexpensive when I used to go years back. I also remember liking their grilled cheese a lot, but for this trip, I really felt like breakfast.

The decor is a minty green and chrome mixture, which makes it look like an old-school diner. There is a children’s play area in one corner, and a large bar with stools along the back wall facing the kitchen. It was a seat yourself situation, so we found a small table since all the booths were either occupied or hadn’t been cleared yet.

The service here is friendly and genuine. There were two servers helping out the whole restaurant, and though it was a bit of a wait for our food, she kept refilling our drinks and apologizing for the wait since they were so busy. I didn’t mind too much since she kept us from feeling neglected, and I appreciated that she kept checking on us.

Eggs Zenedict ($8.99) consisted of poached eggs on a toasted scone with peameal and hollandaise. The hollandaise was supposed to have been sun-dried tomato, but they were out and gave us regular hollandaise instead. The scone was dry, but had no distinct taste, which made us wish we had ordered the regular Eggs Benedict instead. The egg was poached perfectly, and the peameal was average, but the hollandaise was creamy and warm. The dish was served with crispy potatoes and a fruit salad that looked more grey than it should have been (we skipped the fruit).

Seafood Crab Cake ($7.99) was a crab cake topped with a poached egg on top of an english muffin and smothered in hollandaise. This was the more disappointing dish of the two, since the crab cake had such a strong “fishy” smell to it that it really didn’t make it appetizing at all. The bright side is the egg was again, poached to perfection, and the english muffin was chewy and warm. I ended up removing the crab cake and just eating the rest on its own. 

Sadly, this breakfast was disappointing on a few levels. The good part was the great service we received from the ladies that served our table. Next time, I’ll stick to the grilled cheese, please.

Zellers Family Restaurant
777 Guelph Ln. (Inside Burlington Mall), Burlington
http://www.zellersrestaurants.com/