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View the
Canadian Cafe menu
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Restaurant: Canadian Cafe
Where: 125 E. Colorado Blvd., Monrovia
Phone: (626) 303-2303
Reservations: Not required
Cocktails: No
Service: Tableside/Counter To Go
Atmosphere: Casual
Outdoor Dining: Yes
Credit Cards: MC, Visa, American Express,
Discover, Debit w/logo
Kid’s Menu: No
Senior Discount: No
Food to Go: Yes
Catering Menu: No
Price Range:
$1.95 - $11.95, average $4.95 |
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Canadian Fries |
Modified Bacon Buddy Sandwich (Peameal Bacon) |
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Corned Beef on Rye |
Rotisserie Chicken Sandwich |
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Onion
Rings |
Butter Tarts |
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DOT COM DINING A Look At San
Gabriel Valley Restaurants by SanGabrielValleyMenus.com
Canadian Café in Monrovia
By Bill Coburn
Ron and Diane Babcock both hail from Canada, and
over the last 20 years, while running Diron’s Business Center in Monrovia, they
both missed the food they’d enjoyed in Canada prior to coming south. So they
decided to open a place of their own, and serve their favorites, including
Peameal Bacon and Rotisserie Chicken, featuring the “Chalet” sauce served in
Swiss Chalet restaurants found in their homeland. They’ve decorated the
restaurant with flags and photos of Canada, and brought in Canadian desserts,
Canadian coffee, and Toronto deli style sandwiches. Now Ron tells me they’ve
had people come from as far away as Palm Springs just to get some of the
Canadian specialties they serve up.
Katie and I stopped by for lunch the other day, and
I tried the “Bacon Buddy” sandwich, which consists of Peameal Bacon piled high
on a French roll. Our waitress, Jacquie Bailey, couldn’t have been nicer, and
pointed out that some of their customers were adding lettuce, tomato and
mayonnaise, for an improvised PBLT. Peameal Bacon, also called Back Bacon, and
according to Ron, the REAL Canadian bacon, is made from boneless pork loins, cut
from the leaner portion of the loin. The external fat is trimmed to within
1/8”, to make it a healthy product. Smokeless and tender, it is sweet pickle
cured and rolled in a traditional cornmeal coating. I didn’t really expect to
like it, with the sweet pickle curing, but it was actually quite a tasty
sandwich. Peameal Bacon is also offered in a Breakfast Sandwich with egg and
cheese on sourdough toast, and on a Canadian Sub, with grilled honey ham, two
kinds of cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, and dressing on a sesame seed steak
roll.
Katie had the hot Corned Beef and Swiss Cheese on
Rye, and said that the Corned Beef was really quite good. She also had onion
rings, which were gold brown and fried to perfection. I ordered the “Canadian
Fries”, which consisted of fries with gravy (made) with ground beef and
mushrooms and poured on top of the fries. The gravy was delicious, the fries
were, too.
One of the items that Ron has been telling me about
for months, which wasn’t available until recently, is the Canadian Style
Rotisserie Chicken. The menu features a ¼ chicken and a ½ chicken meal, served
with French fries, coleslaw, dinner roll, or a whole chicken with no sides.
Since I was already having the Peameal sandwich, I decided that was too much
food, so I ordered the Chicken Sandwich. My sandwich was piled high with
tender, juicy, white meat chicken, and the Chalet sauce was also quite good.
After lunch, we tried the Canadian butter tarts, and
they were delicious. A small pastry with a raisin sauce that kind of reminded
me of pecan pie. Canadian Café also serves burgers, dogs, and nearly a dozen
sandwiches. One item that we didn’t try, but we’re told will be of interest to
Canadians, is something called Poutine Fries. According to the menu, this
French Canadian dish consists of white cheddar cheese curds flown in from North
of Quebec. You see, when cheese is made in large vats, the uneven cheese is
sliced off the top of the vat. It crumbles into curds, which are a bit creamier
than hard cheese. Canadian Café sprinkles the curds on top of their fries, and
then pours a poutine sauce on top which melts the curds for what the menu
assures us is a great combination.
Here’s another item of interest: Canadian Café
accepts Canadian currency at par, so if you have some leftover Canadian money
from a trip, you can get an even better deal than the regular American low
prices. And customers receive a Canadian Café “dollar” with their check, to
spend on their next visit. You can find their complete menu at
www.canadiancafe.net.
Beckham Grill, which I wrote about in a recent
column, will be the scene of a “high noon” luncheon meeting of a group called
the Huntington Westerners. At the meeting, Huntington Library volunteer Marcia
Good will be reading selections from her book, Voyage to California – Written
at Sea in 1852. The book is the daily journal of her Great Grandmother,
Lucy Kendall, who in 1852 at the age of 24 made the trip from New York to San
Francisco to join her father, Joseph Kendall during the Gold Rush years of
California, along with her mother and her sister, Annie. The book was published
by the Huntington Library Press. Reservations are $17.00 per person, checks
payable to Huntington Westerners, 395 S. Oakland Ave., $301, Pasadena CA 91101.
For further information, call (626) 577-5222.
Bill Coburn is owner of SanGabrielValleyMenus.com, a restaurant website
featuring more than 160 restaurant’s menus, as well as downloadable coupons. He has
nearly 20 years experience in the restaurant business, and has been eating for
much longer than that. |
