More Canonical Menus…

Matt and I got to talk­ing about the sim­i­lar­i­ty of menus in some of the chain restau­rants around Van­cou­ver, name­ly the Cac­tus Club, Ear­l’s, Joey’s and Mile­stones, which led him to make this post, which had me ROFLMAO.(If you don’t know that acronym, it means I was amused).

Not to be out­done, I think there are oth­er chains around here that have sim­i­lar menus, but these are the Cof­fee Hous­es. With the excep­tion of a few inde­pen­dent cof­fee hous­es sprin­kled here and there in the city (the Wicked Café being one of my all-time favourites) most of the cof­fee that is served in Van­cou­ver comes from the chains: Blenz, Seat­tle’s Best, JJ Bean, the high­er-end Caffe Arti­giano, and of course, Star­bucks. The menu I’m talk­ing about here is not the cof­fee drinks, but instead the cakes, pas­tries and oth­er items served along with the cof­fee. I could include that most Cana­di­an of Insti­tu­tions, Tim Hor­tons, but for now I’m going to assume that although they do serve a lot of cof­fee there, it’s main­ly to accom­pa­ny their donuts. The same goes for Bread Gar­den, Bojan­gles and the count­less small­er chains that I can’t think of at the moment: the cof­fee is to accom­pa­ny the oth­er items on their menu, not the oth­er way around. How­ev­er, if you could cre­ate a menu for the typ­i­cal Van­cou­ver Chain Café, let’s say Best JJ Blenziano-Bucks, it would look some­thing like this:

Best JJ Blenziano-Bucks

Oat cake that is prob­a­bly also good as a build­ing material
Fudgie Brown­ie thing
Dry as a bone Scone
Blue­ber­ry Bar
Date Bar (just like Blue­ber­ry bar but dri­er and ‘health­i­er’)
Chewy Marsh­mal­low Treats Square (for the 4‑year old in all of us)
Cin­na­mon Roll
Molasses Cookie
Macaroons
Choco­late-dipped Macaroons
Pump­kin or Banana Bread or Lemon Pound Cake (some­times avail­able in Reduced-fat versions)
Cof­fee Cake
Very Dry Blue­ber­ry muffin

Get the feel­ing the menu is main­ly about sug­ar? I wish one could get ‘savory’ items at one of these cafes, like a plain crois­sant, ham and cheese crois­sant or a spinach crois­sant (like they had in Boston’s Star­bucks but appar­ent­ly not on this coast). I also would­n’t mind a Cor­nish Pasty, a soft pret­zel or maybe even pou­tines. (All right, maybe not those). Did some­one decide that cof­fee need­ed some­thing sweet with it, or are these oth­er items beyond the stor­age capa­bil­i­ties of a Best JJ Blenziano-Bucks Café.