Spoons Diner

Address: 2915 Douglas Street (in the Super 8)
Phone: 250-382-5111
Website: http://www.spoonsdiner.com/
Price: $5-15
Notes: Used to be Floyds2, is now Spoons with a very familiar menu and (usually) less of a wait.

If Spoons Diner seems familiar, it's not just your brain playing tricks on you, for a small period of time they were "Floyds 2" serving an identical menu, but without the 30-40 minute wait on weekends. Then (to quote their literature) the recession happened, and they gave up their goal of taking over the world with little Floyds franchises everywhere and 'just' became a Spoons.

The menu changed slightly, but the essence of good food and sass is still there. In fact, if anything the menu items got sassier... for example, the Floyd's "Bananas French Toast" is reinterpreted as pancakes, with the healthy honey & yogurt & raisins  replaced by chocolate and it's called "In'er Harbour." HUR HUR HUR. For a while they had a set of "sliders" (three of their burgers served on English muffins) that I sorely miss but must have been taking too long to make because they were cut, but their absence makes me sulky every time I look at the lunch menu.

They also have one of the lesser known, more epic patios for brunch in the city - even though it's next to a major artery, the large brick wall in between you and the light sunday morning traffic is plenty sufficient to fade it all away.


Service
August 1, 2011
Back to the regularly awesome service today! It was a holiday Monday and we were kind of expecting it to be packed but it was remarkably dead for 11 am. We were seated instantly with lots of room to spare, and our server was extremely attentive and awesome. Yay!


February 19, 2011
The service was not 110% today, but I'm going to cut them some slack considering it was their first weekend date after they had a Groupon.  It wasn't that it was bad, but my coffee only got refilled twice (this is a shocker compared to normal!) and when I had a request it was impossible to catch our server's eye because she was serving about half the place, plus cashing people out on their Groupons and coffeeing/chatting up the growing line waiting for a table. When I did get a coffee refill, the woman was more than happy to pop into the kitchen and get me a side of salsa to make things better even though she wasn't our server. Even with the incredible busy factor, our food arrived in less than ten minutes! Clearly they were prepared for the onslaught. Even with all the craziness, the staff had time to recognize us as frequenters and chit-chat about what was new. They weren't even grumpy that we were regulars with a Groupon. (We assuaged our guilt by extra-extra tipping.)

Food
August 1, 2011

The Prusa via foodspotting.com

Today I couldn't decide, so I opted for the "Prusa" - aka the kitchen will make you whatever they feel like cooking for you. If you're feeling lucky (I wasn't) you can flip, double or nothing. I ended up getting an omelet stuffed with copious kinds of meat and topped with what I'm pretty sure was a dill hollandaise (might have been pesto though, dill as always, eludes me as a flavour). It also came with hash browns and copious amounts of toast. It was delicious, but I was sadly defeated by it and had to leave a little bit of everything behind. Sadly not quite enough to wrap up for later.

My friends had joined us for brunch - one hates breakfast, so had one of the burgers and it came on a pretzel bun! This is a new change, but one I highly support. This city-wide pretzel bun fad is rad! My other friend had the "Bad-ass Benny" which looked incredible - I wish I'd taken a picture! A very long sausage cut in half and placed over the two halfs of the muffin. What amused me the most was that the server did not write down "bad ass" she wrote down "the dani" (as in the owner). Awesome!

My partner-in-food-and-life got extra creative that morning and asked for a chili benny - as in put their homemade chili on top of the muffins and then top with eggs and hollandaise. Apparently Dani's eyes "got really big and excited" when the server asked if that was possible. Two thumbs up for a creative kitchen! It was pretty awesome tasting, I have to say although we decided afterwards it needed bacon in there somewhere.


February 19, 2011
I opted for the Huevos today. This is the same as the Huevos Incrediblos from Floyds and it makes me happy to the very tips of my toes. Today, I think either the cook forgot to put their yum-tastic homemade salsa on top, or put it at the wrong stage so all the yummy fresh salsa flavours disappeared. But, as I mentioned above, once the staff stopped moving at light speed I had a side of salsa in my hands and balance was restored in my breakfast universe.  It's a pretty simple variation - baked beans and cheese baked on a tortilla shell, topped with sunny side up eggs, hash browns and the perfect trifecta of salsa/sour cream/guacamole on top.

My partner-in-food-and-life had the special which had an amusing name (double or nothing?) but we can't quite remember it. It was basically two of everything - eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, mini-pancakes, toast and "more than two hash browns." It didn't all quite get finished. Shhhhh.