Lea was doing everything in her power to beat the competition during Poutine week so she was piling on the participating restaurants! Griffintown café was one of them with their clam chowder poutine. Sounds whhhheird if you ask me! And that is why I went but did NOT have the poutine. I'm a sucker for brunch so THAT'S why I was going!
Griffintown café is in an old building with really REALLY old wooden floors. The kind that you might be afraid to walk on if you weighed over 200 pounds. It was noisy, but a nice kind of noisy, and the ambiance was nice and chill and happy! The place made me think of a hall of some sort. Brick walls made it look authentic and a whole wall was painted on with graffiti type drawings.
Let's get down to the point: the food!
Heovos divorciados. Basically, it's two eggs that are 'divorced' because they are separated on the plate (not in this case) and have different sauces like salsa roja or salsa verde (not in this case). So, basically, this was not huevos divorciados. In the original recipe, it is made with fried eggs but at Griffintwon Café, they serve the dish with poached eggs, which was just fine and dandy with me. Oh but they didn't 'have' poached eggs right now, so I had to settle for regular, pan cooked eggs. I don't really get how you can 'run out' of poached eggs. Just take a couple minutes, bring the water to a high simmer, create a whirlpool, drop the egg. A couple minutes and blamo, you's got a poached egg! Sheesh! The tortilla was good, but nothing special, the tomato was bland and the salad was.... mesclun (or mixed salad)! Who in the holy F still serves mesclun? WHOOOOOO? I demand to know. There should be a written rule damn it! The eggs were nicely seasoned and the chili was OK but it sort of tasted like it had just been taken out of a can. I mean, who puts green peas in their chili? No one, that's who! The best things on my plate were the yummy, fresh, smooth guacamole and the refreshing crema (ok, I'm pretty certain it was just plain ol' sour cream. And yes, there IS a difference!). I always like having a colder component when eating something hot.
Service was not the bestest (dudes, I swear that's a word!): the hostess/waitress who welcomed us did not even crack a smile and I don't even recall if she said hello or not! Our waiter was alright but again, not the friendliest. Water was brought to our table quickly and we got our dishes in a pretty timely fashion, which is always awesomeballs.
And now, the scores!
Food: 6.5
Service: 6
Perhaps I would try going back a second time. But I tells you what, it best not be out of a can :p