Wannawafel (Market Square)

 Address: #102 Market Square - 560 Johnson Street
Phone: 250-590-5300
Price: $4 a waffle, extras $1-2
Notes:  As Seen on TV! Visit their store front in Market Square for a choice of two kinds of waffles, plus toppings!



Wannawafel is a great example of a great local family business - although it's soon to be an intensely successful franchise! It's such a good 'story' - a family moved to Canada from Belgium and wanted to share their tasty sugar 'Brussels' wafel with the Canadian masses. They started with a cart in the inner harbour selling to tourists, and grew to have a store front selling the Brussels and the Liège wafels, as well as adding toppings.

They were featured on Dragon's Den last year in an attempt to get partners to franchise their wafel carts, and the Dragons were fighting over the idea. Although they accepted the deal initially, they have since parted ways in an attempt to get things rolling a little faster. We visited the store the first weekend after the show aired, and they said they already had thousands of requests from all over the world for more information about franchising!


Service
Despite being a victim of their own success, the service is always fantastic. Someone from the Marchand family is nearly always working, and they're more than happy to chat with you about how things are going, and take time to make sure each wafel is totally worth it - no rushing! They have a small store, with a few tables outside for sunny days.

Food

Liege Waffle via foodspotting.com

February 5, 2011
edited to add: Renaat, the owner, contacted me to say that I messed up the name of the waffles! Oops - tsk tsk! Liège look like 'light' in French to me, I think that's why I was confused as the Brussels waffles are just so light and fluffy in my head.  Thanks for the correction which has been noted below.
 
The Brussels Liège wafel is pretty freaking fantastic, although I describe it more as a "snack" than "breakfast." It's small, and sweet, and comes wrapped in a piece of wax paper and a napkin. It doesn't need anything else! What's unique about this waffle is that it's made from dough, not batter and has beet sugar. The smell of the waffles cooking spreads out over the whole of Market Square and lower Johnson st. and it's hard to walk by without having one.
We also had some of the Liège Brussels today (because we had a Groupon and it was supposed to be breakfast and because I wanted to be able to review the full deal). These are the fluffiest waffels I've ever had! These ones are made from batter, but also clouds (although apparently no sugar) and as a result are not super filling. We tried them today individually with both whipped cream and berries, and each was delicious although paired I think would have been better. I also noticed they sell it with ice cream on top which would be pretty epic. I saw one go by, and it was no small scoop either!

Really the only way they could improve the food is to add a bacon topping option. This would be tricky given the current 'kitchen' set up, but the results would be pretty amazing.