The Main Dish - Calgary

The Main Dish
903 General Ave NE

We were on our way to the Blue Star Diner, one of my more favorite places for a delicious breakfast, however because we were pressed for time, we headed down the street and endewd up at The Main Dish. This cafeteria like restaurant just happen to be serving a weekend brunch which was quite good and worth a good blog.

First impressions of the restaurant were nice. It was seperated into stations where you would go to order hot meals, deli, soup/sandwiches, and coffee/alcohol. The place was bright with ample sunlight and provided are very confortable atmosphere for a saturday morning brunch.

We found a table and headed straight over to the hot meals station and ordered our food; Quinoa Oatmeal, Ham and cheddar stuffed frenched toast, and their West Coast Eggs Benedict. Presentation was nice and being able to see the food stations and the chefs prepare the meals were well considered atmospheric perk.

The Quinoa Oatmeal was an excellent comfort food. There was a good mix of oatmeal, quinoa and fruit. It was an excellent take on mom's good old oatmeal when we were kids. The consistency was what you would expect however I found that over time it was turn too mushy. I know that's probably normal of oatmeal, however it got pretty thick pretty fast. Good thing is still tasted good.

The stuffed french toast was enjoyable. It was well portioned and had a good ratio of bread to filling. Although enjoyable, it wasn't something that I would remember forever. The combination of savory with sweet was a good idea and it wasn't too sweet for my palate. I am not much of a sweet tooth and this was pretty much the perfect balance.

The west coast eggs benedict was a little disappointing. It was a hard poached egg on a bed of shrimp over a croissant as opposed to the traditional english muffin. The croisant was a nice change, although I would have preferred the english muffin since that is what I would normally expect with an eggs benedict. The shrimp were of a decent size and the eggs would have been much better had they been soft poached. The most disappointing part of this whole dish however was the hollandaise sauce. It was sour to my tongue. So much so that at first I thought it had gone bad but then realized that it was just an over zealous chef and their lemon juice. When it comes to eggs benny for me, it all comes down to the hollandaise and had that sauce been done right, it probably would not have amplified any of the other faults.

Accompanying our meal was their coffee which to be honest, was quite good. I had a double americano and it was rich, bold, and delicious.

What you see in the above photo came out to about $40.

I think I would come back here to the Main Dish. The open concept is great and it's a great place to meet with friends to catch up. The atmospere is definitely a plus here. The only thing is that I would not make specific plans to come here for brunch, a light lunch or afternoon coffee would be my ideal visit to The Main Dish.