Granville Island Neighbourhoods Dirty Johnny 2002-09-14

The Cat’s Meow #2

What up, what up, welcome one and all to the long-awaited, overrated, ego-inflated Breakfast Armada, the premier web-site of discerning diners from coast to coast. To kick off the space in style, the Armada put our collective heads together and collaboratively decided that The Cat’s Meow, home of the city’s most delectable ladies (and, presumably breakfast) would provide the avenue for us to satiate our relentless hunger for grease and tight-panted hoochies.

In the latter department, we were more than satisfied as a red thong (in retrospect, I suppose there was probably a girl attached to said thong but hell if any of us noticed) greeted and seated us in The Meow’s opulent faux-leather love-seats and armchairs. Our world-weary hinders melted into the rapidly forming ass-grooves to the strains of Dave Matthews as our waitress for the morning’s experiment, “Monique”, approached us with a smile on her lips and silicone in her chest. “All of our juices are pure orange juice…” quoth Monique. Sweet girl but intellect-wise, she made Jennifer Love Hewitt look like Stephen Hawking. At any rate, coffee (first cup is an americano) and tea (of which there were limited choices) was promptly served up and we were unleashed.

The limited menu offered pretty standard fare such as the Classic Cat (eggs, hash browns, toast and pork product selection), a few rather pedestrian bennies, some omelettes, steak n’ eggs, and meusli (for all you hippie, freak-show, breakfast reviewer wannabe’s) with prices ranging from $5 to $13 for the steak. What immediately caught my eye (well, apart from the Mariana trench-like cleavage Monique was displaying) was the lack of my old Meow standby favourite, the strawberry pancakes. Evidently some genius in management nixed these triple-bypass tasties in favour of strawberry waffles. A waffle is a tricky mistress to master and unless done just right can leave the waffle-ee taking a lengthy trip down constipation highway looking for an Ex-lax Oasis to speed the journey along.

Audacious as I am, I gambled on the waffles and, to my relief, found them to be acceptable, if a poor substitute for the pancakes I had my cholesterol-laden, arrhythmic heart set upon. The sauce and whip cream were both insufficient and the waffles themselves a touch dry but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy them. The ever-reliable Philippe was in no mood to experiment today and stuck with the Classic Cat, complete with undercooked bacon and solid-yolked “over-easy” eggs. The uber-salty hash browns tasted like Captain Highliner had tampered with them at some point, leaving an almost fishy aftertaste. “Yarrr, down to Davy Jones’ Locker with ye, ya scurvy taters.” Bottom line on this one from the maestro of the traditional breakfast: “below average.” Philippe has spoken, so it shall be.

Agent M took a trip south of the border with the Mexican scramble and came out the big winner on the day. He seemed fairly content with his somewhat runny combo of eggs, sauce and diced up veggies although I’m personally at a loss to explain how some geographically-challenged kitchen monkey decided that tzatziki sauce was appropriate for a Mexican dish. Both Duck-boy and Agent M supplemented their brekkies with a glass of the aforementioned pure orange juice and were orgasmically satisfied with the ambrosia that was presented to them. “Nice, fresh, pulpy” said Duck-boy, barely able to contain his load. “Snap, dude, I just wanted to know how the juice was!”

But hey, the sun is shining, the pants are low-riding and the gullet is full so all’s well on board the HMS Armada for the time being. The Meow’s forte is most definitely not breakfast but, if you’re like us (and Lord knows you wish you were) and go more for the overall experience, you’ll walk away with a gleam in your eye and a tent in your shorts. And with that the Armada sets off for another week of raping and pillaging. Consider yourself warned.