The Wellington Diner

So the other weekend we decided to go out for breakfast.  I had two ideas - both in the Westboro area:  The Wellington Diner or Baker Street Cafe.  The Wellington Diner is my favourite breakfast place in the city and when I have guests in for the weekend it's almost always a for sure go-to.  However, I've heard such good things about Baker Street Cafe and I've been wanting to try it for months.  Problem is, I've heard there is always a line up and we were none to early getting organized to go.  It was past 10:30am on a Saturday morning and just driving by Baker Street there were about 6 people waiting in line outside the restaurant.  I'm not sure how big the place is, but if there were even a few people waiting inside we could have been waiting for awhile.  I was hungry then, dammit!  I didn't want to wait in a line up, especially when I knew just down the road was a BIG YUMMY breakfast waiting for us!  So, back to The Wellington Diner we went.

I got my usual ... the Traditional Breakfast with ham being my choice of the breakfast meats (mmmmm ham, my favourite of all the breakfast meats!  Oh except for back bacon ... mmmmmm back bacon.  But back bacon is not part of the standard Traditional Breakfast meat choices.)  I ordered by two eggs over-easy and egg-y bread for toast.

There is always fresh fruit on the side.  The eggs were cooked exactly perfectly and they are not greasy.  The home fries are piping hot and cooked perfectly; crispy on the outside.  You can also 'poutine up' your homefries by adding cheese curds and hollandaise sauce, but I didn't go for this undoubtedly yummy, but extra fat and calorie, add-on.  You get a decent amount of ham; its sliced thin but nicely grilled with a little crust on the edge and perfectly salty.

Oh, and they serve a variety of bread.  You can choose between white, brown, rye or egg bread.  As far as I'm concerned, offering this selection gives The Wellington Diner a leg up over most other diners for breakfast. I love challah (holla!).

Heinous crime:  theft of a piece of egg-y bread!

He had the Big-y Breakfast which includes THREE eggs, all THREE breakfast meats (you know how I feel about three meats -- you can never go wrong with three meats) and home fries.  You may not be able to tell, but the Big Breakfast is not served on a plate, it comes on a small platter to accommodate all that food.  Eggs were ordered over-hard and again they were cooked perfectly (although I don't really know if you can mess up over hard eggs??!?).

He also opted to double-up on sausage and skip the bacon.  Seriously, check out the pile of sausages that were served.  Also, notice the stolen egg bread ... you would think with three eggs and that pile up of sausages and ham you wouldn't need to steal someone's egg-y bread toast!

The coffee is passable - typical diner coffee, in my opinion, but we both had a couple of refills so it's clearly not too bad. The service is fast and friendly. Every time I have been to the Wellington Diner the staff have been pleasant and for as busy as the restaurant usually is for breakfast, the food is served very quickly and it's always hot.

The place is old-school typical diner, with big windows out front so it's nice and bright; checkerboard tiles on the floor and a cool 'loft' dining area upstairs looking down on the patrons below.  So far, I've not found a better diner breakfast in the city, and I've tried quite a few.  This is my favourite ... but seriously if you want to wait in line for your breaky, keep heading down the road to Baker Street Cafe ... and then I'll be able to get a table when I arrive at The Wellington Diner no matter what time I get there.