The Village

Address: 2518 Estevan Ave.
Phone: (250) 592-8311
Website: http://thevillagerestaurant.ca/
Price: $6-12
Notes: Solid brunch menu, nice patio, would be great after a walk on the beach.

The Village is a place that only came on to my radar after starting this blog. "I've been writing a food blog," I would say. "Have you been to the Village yet?" has been a pretty consistent response. Reasons have been all across the board, which is interesting. Everything from gluten-free options to perfectly cooked eggs to great service.

The space is small and was crowded mid-day on a Sunday (but what brunch place isn't at that time in Victoria!). There were maybe a dozen tables of flexible seating up the middle, bar seating on one side and a cluster of other small tables at one end. I absolutely love the colour on the walls - which sounds like a weird detail, but the shade of green was so perfectly food-ish it worked in a cosy restaurant in a way I could never see it working elsewhere. I love that the kitchen is set down into the ground behind the main dining space. It meant you could peek down there and feel like a whole cavern of people were dedicating themselves to mining your food out of some delicious food cave hidden deep beneath that part of Oak Bay (can you really argue with that given the tastiness that resides on that block?).

The menu is pretty standard brunch fare with a selection of omeletes and bennies for the most part, although they've put a bit of a twist on a few things - bagels or latkes instead of english muffins for the bennies, for example. They claim to have both traditional Jewish recipes, like latkes, lox or shakshouka as well as 'west coast' dishes.


Service:
August 21, 2011
The service was excellent. We were seated before we knew it, despite the long line which we later found out was because of extremely prompt service from the kitchen. We had our meal in less than ten minutes despite the place being full to the brim. I suspect they have a really excellent manager, as we were leaving I saw him emerging from the kitchen to do a full check in with the front-end staff ensuring there were no problems and doing a visual sweep of the whole place to double-check each table.


Food:
August 21, 2011

Westcoast Benny via foodspotting.com

This was my partner in food and life's choice. The hollandaise was stand-up, the presentation was fabulous. Sadly, the salmon was reported to being not particularly flavourful. Overall not the best benny that has been served in this style but most certainly not the wrost!

1/2 Dave's Hash via foodspotting.com

I am super glad I only had the half of this! It comes with grilled Montreal smoked meat, but I was so hungry that I had forgotten that and was excited by the 'bacon' when it arrived. Ha! I'm fired. It was nice though - where bacon usually adds a mild smokey flavour and saltiness to hash, the smoked meat really added a lovely flavour to the whole dish that made my mouth happy! I opted for a poached egg on top, but since I had the choice I'd probably ask for scrambled in future just to get the nice hash texture going. 

Latkes via foodspotting.com

I also got a latke on the side because I adore potatoes, and there aren't too many place to find latkes in town! They were thin, crispy and nicely flavoured. I'm thinking I need to get a recipe to make these at home. The super nice thing was that on their own, they're $2.50 as a side but as a substitute instead of toast it only cost $1 extra. As a non-toast lover this made me very happy.