Davie Village Neighbourhoods West End Dirty Johnny 2002-11-09

The Elbow Room Café

“So, what can I get you little shits to drink?” Damn, not 10 seconds after meandering through the vaunted doors of the legendary Elbow Room café in downtown Vancouver we were wallowing in the verbal onslaught doled out by the belligerent staff. This was quickly followed by the realization that this was the Armada’s type of establishment…no-nonsense, insolent, shiftless and in possession of an utter disregard for the little people who come to worship. Solid.

For those unfamiliar with the Elbow Room’s esteemed reputation, their shtick is as follows: serve up some of the finest, most unique breakfast items in the city along with a healthy dose of abuse and degradation. Lost? Let me dumb it down for you, Kato Kaelin, the staff at the Elbow Room do their best to leave you with a smile on your face by drawing attention to how conspicuously ugly said face is. Why would anyone endure such maltreatment for a mere breakfast you ask?

Well, in addition to the quantity and inimitability of the outlandishly-named eats, these folks are seasoned masters of humbling and humiliating their clientele. The sheer performance itself is worth the price of breakfast although it’s most likely not a place you’d wanna take the grandparents for that silver anniversary. Unless, of course, your grandfather is Don Rickles.

We were (shockingly) promptly seated in functional, diner-style chairs amidst a sea of black-and-white signed glossies of D-list celebrities like Daphne “Princess Vespa” Zuniga and Dolph “Rocky IV” Lundgren. The overall décor could be best described as flamboyantly eclectic, entirely unrefined and purposefully tacky and the forties sounds of big band could be heard over the din of the staff-spewed invectives. The talent in this place is nothing to write home about but our waitress, the appropriately named Alberta, had some serious spunk and a ghetto-booty that she knew how to use. I damn near got up and spanked her silly after she put on a little display of the junk in her trunk for us.

But enough ’bout the beast, let’s get to the feast! I almost gave into my primal, inherent urge to indulge in one of the 12-inch, boogie-board-sized pancakes when the 19-choice benny menu came a-callin’. The selection of hollandaise-soaked, cardiologist’s wet dreams is unparalleled and each is named after some sort of presumably locally-based pseudo-celebrity/drag-queen (this is the West End, afterall). I went with the Christopher (w.t.f?) which was chock-full of ham, mushrooms, spinach and feta on a toasty sour-dough muffin.

“Would you like hash browns?” inquired Alberta.

“Hmmmm”, I mused, “as opposed to?”

“NOT having hash browns?” Snap! I am still stung from being so thoroughly and remorselessly zinged. I walked into that one like a cow to a Texas slaughterhouse. For the record, the hash browns in question were the little, tiny, McCain-style ones, and were cooked up just right although they could have benefited from some seasoning as ketchup seemed to be the prominent condiment on hand. Nevertheless, my overall meal was a delight and earned many self-satisfied belches.

Duck-boy strayed from his usual “traditional” and chose the Ironman from a wide selection of omelettes including the uproariously named Rita McNeil which, although I didn’t note the exact contents, can only be assumed to include 5 types of cheeses, a stick of butter, Polish sausage links and an Oh Henry bar. The Ironman was stuffed with a myriad of fresh veggies and topped with hollandaise that, sadly, lacked the “three Z’s”.. zip, zest and zing. Luckily, the Duck seemed more than satisfied with his pick and scarcely came up for air save to intermittently cry, “I’m in dire need of cream.” Dude, I know we’re on Davie and all but try to suppress those latent, closeted urges until after I’m done eating, dig?

Agent M bellied up to the Pangea-proportioned pancake and despite the fact that the dough infusion options include blackberries, peaches, apple cinnamon and chocolate chips, he chose to stick with more pedestrian fare and settled on strawberry. Imagine his surprise when the colossal disc of dough arrived not only with the desired strawberries but also complete with spinach, onion and mushroom “extras”. I’ll tell you something right now folks, there should never be anything green remotely associated with a pancake. A verdant colour implies life and health while the hotcake is a symbol of overindulgence, gluttony and a complete lack of respect for one’s internal organs. In addition to this heinous faux pas, the cake was doughy, dry and syrup was only delivered upon request near the end of the meal. An unfortunate bump on an otherwise smoothly paved road to satiation.

Apart from the cruelty of its staff, the Elbow Room is also notable for it’s insistence on a donation to local AIDS charity A Lovin’ Spoonful if diners bite off more than they can chew. Special mention must also be made of the supa-fly hunnies the restaurant seems to attract, in particular a couple of lovely dishes named Darci and Sarah who were kind enough to let us slobber over them while we feebly pretended to be interested in their food. Hey, ladies, you ready to have my babies!!?? Yeehaw!

In the end, we left most impressed with the experience as a whole and eagerly anticipate round 2 in the near future. This is providing, of course, that the thick-skinned staff can weather another barrage of scrutinization and rapier-sharp wit from the good people here at the Breakfast Armada…proudly eating breakfast since the day we were born.