Dunbar Neighbourhoods Southlands Dirty Johnny 2003-01-18

Thorn Tree Café

I tell you, if I had a hand-job for every time I’ve driven past the Thorn Tree Café on the Southeast corner of Dunbar and 16th and thought to myself, “Johnny, that place is just begging for an Armada assault,” I’d have spilled more seed than at a Pee-Wee Herman/George Michael house party. Yet, for some reason, despite its proximate, conspicuous location and multiple obnoxious (but informative) banners garnishing the building I’d just never gotten around to it. Perhaps it’s due to its outwardly nondescript appearance, perhaps it owes more to the fact that I’ve never seen a hot enough girl working there to honour them with my refined palette and libido. Whatever the case, as “The Crying Game” has proven, appearances can be deceiving, so let’s stick our hand up the Thorn Tree’s skirt and see what we find in it’s panties.

At first glance it was apparent that the Thorn Tree was going to have difficulty accommodating my impertinent crew of rapacious rapscallions. The popular haunt was packed fuller than Lang Dang‘s shorts and it looked as though we were going to have to unleash the arsenal when a kindly couple offered up their table which was more suited to our fat-assed demands. We shoehorned ourselves in and took a moment to reflect on the rec room like décor. Wrought iron and miscellaneous quaint trinkets adorned the interior while varied and brightly coloured nature paintings littered the walls. “Snap, dude,” chimed Deep Fryd, “these pictures look like they’re straight out of ‘Field and Stream!'” Duly noted, dude.

In profound need of a saturated fat fix, I made an attempt to order up a chocolate milkshake only to be steadfastly denied by our decidedly male server. “Uhhh, we don’t serve shakes in the morning.”

“Don’t serve shakes in the morning?! Isn’t this a breakfast restaurant, when the hell else am I gonna get one?!” (Audible sigh) It was to no avail, this kid just wasn’t going to listen to reason so I was cajoled into settling on the fresh-squeezed OJ for $2 and was pleasantly surprised. See, the thing with juice is that it’s reputedly good for you which tends to defeat, if not counteract, the whole process of desecrating my body and vascular organs with gratuitous amounts of sodium, batter, meat by-product and two-week old deep-fryer oil. That being said, this stuff tasted like it had been squeezed from freshly deflowered virgin oranges…supple, ripe, nubile, quivering beneath my well-travelled lips…”oh yeah, baby, that was great, now it’s time for you to get going.” And another one bites the dust.

A good forty minutes passed before our food was upon us which I’ll be the first to submit was not the fault of the Liberace-approved, all-male-revue staff. The kitchen is about the size of an Alcatraz latrine and the lone chef is trying to crank out meals for approximately 30 people concurrently. All sympathy aside, a wait is a wait and by the time our food arrived we were hungry enough to eat Janet Reno.

Heeding our resident corned beef aficionado’s bewildering zealotry, Deep Fryd, Lang Dang and myself formed a 3-man jury and put the $6.25 corned beef on the stand to be tried for mouth-watering crimes of extreme deliciousness. The beef itself was thin-sliced, hearty, tender and looked like it could have originated in an actual animal unlike that processed, Brazilian Rainforest Hereford shit. After a relentless cross-examination and some heated deliberation, the verdict was in and the defendant was found guilty on all charges and sentenced to several days of punishment by the volatile juices of our intestinal tracts. While on the inside, the defendant would be forced into co-habitation with other repeat offenders such as last night’s taco salad and that Slim Jim I ate four months ago when I was drunk. On the lesser charges of portion size being too small, the defendant was again found guilty as the entire jury professed their inclination towards ordering up another platefull.

Still hungry, I again harassed our serving-boy about the milkshake and was rewarded for my diligence with one of the finest frozen chocolately dairy-based beverages in all my years of dedicated reviewership. This beauty was well worth the wait as it came laced with Hershey’s syrup and even entombed a chocolate-coated Pocky (that weird, stick-like, mysteriously popular Asian treat that white folk still struggle to comprehend) who’s crispiness stood up amidst the frothing sea of cow-juice and cocoa. At last, satiation and bloatedness had arrived, and none too soon for this cantankerous columnist.

Duck-boy, looking much like a late-sixties era Mike Nesmith in his brand-spanking new toque, did the expected and ordered the $7.45 Eggs Benny. When prodded to decide between fruit and hash browns as his side, a resounding “Fruit, fruit!!” roared forth from his mouth. I think by now it’s evident to readers that the Duck made his fruity choice a long time ago. While Ducky deemed the Benny to be merely adequate, the option of the fruit (an assortment of orange and various melons) complimented the meal well nicely and gave a nice reprieve from the typical, symbiotic hash brown/Benny arrangement.

Agent M took one for the Armada this week and ordered up the sausage and eggs despite inner cravings for the ubiquitous corned beef. Glistening with grease, the “classic”, although advertised out front as costing $3.95, actually comes in at a whopping $7 (provided you order the sausages) on weekends. The eggs and nicely seasoned hash browns stood up respectably but the sausages looked deep-fried and entirely unappetizing. This wasn’t enough to dissuade him from practically wolfing them down whole but unfortunately, he too was only feeling about 70% full and had to order himself a milkshake to top up the tank.

So what’s to be taken home from this week’s experiment? The Thorn Tree is good at what it does and, as opposed to girls who wear those fraudulent water-bras, it doesn’t claim to be anything it’s not. It is cramped, the waits are long, the talent is non-existent and the serving sizes are scant.That said, the food itself is sufficiently tasty, reasonably priced and Lang Dang has since returned to feast again upon the succulent corned beef. When doing a cost-benefit analysis, the previously mentioned positives and negatives cancel each other out and result in a middle-of-the-road judgement. You’re not going to leave the Thorn Tree angry at life. Conversely you probably won’t be raving to your friends about how it’s the greatest thing since some glorious bastard decided panty lines were tantamount to cancer and invented the thong either. Take it for what it’s worth, breakfast knaves, see you next week.