The Gray Olive Cafeteria – Brunch in Burnaby Heights

Okay, anyone who’s read this blog for a while probably knows that I love breakfast… so when one of our friends and their family recently opened up The Gray Olive Cafeteria in Burnaby Heights, we were quite pleased.

We dropped by today during their soft opening and the place was already hopping by 9am. The interior is a bit of a tight fit with the centre bar seating area.

One side wall is proudly adorned by their all-day breakfast, lunch, and weekend brunch menu.

Since it’s wintertime, it was a no-brainer to start out with some hot chocolate; their vintage crest logo stamped on the cardboard sleeve symbolizes their modern approach to traditional food.

The Kitchen Sink ($11) with 2 eggs, sauteed peppers, green onions, sausage, bacon, cheese, and G.O. potatoes is on their all-day breakfast menu and will pleasantly satisfy those people who don’t want to have to choose between bacon and sausage.

You can pick your eggs to be either sunny side up, marbled, or poached in this dish but sunny side up is the way to go to get a nice pic and also some yolk porn when you pop it.

At first, I was planning to get a breaky sandwich and then I noticed their brunch menu so I changed my order to the Smoked Ham Hock Benny ($16.50 + $2.00 with avocado) with slow-cooked ham hock, poached eggs, pea shoots, and hollandaise sauce over a house-made cheddar and chive biscuit, with G.O. potatoes. You can sub a salad for the potatoes but trust me… get the potatoes.

Loved how crispy the potatoes were and you can pick between 3 dipping sauces.

Befitting the cafeteria theme, food arrives on metal food trays. The benny was quite good and you can’t go wrong with the added avocado (they also serve up Avocado Toast for $5).

The round compostable bowls reminded me a bit of the bamboo steamers that you find at dim sum restaurants. The good part of this is that it keeps all of your runny yolks contained within the bowl so you can sop it up with the crispy potatoes.

Turns out that their soft opening was so successful that they had to close early today. Check them out on Wednesday (Feb 15th, 2017) when they have their Grand Opening!

Update: We came back for brunch the following weekend to try some more delicious dishes. This time, I tried one of their off-menu brunch specials (limited quantities)… the Short Rib Benny ($17.25).

It’s pretty similar to their Smoked Ham Hock Benny that we had the prior week but with thick-cut, tender short rib taking over as the main protein.

Again, the potatoes were perfectly crispy. Make sure to pair them with a side of dipping sauce (my fav is the shallot).

Nothing like starting our your day with a little yolk porn.

We also tried the Chicken and Waffles ($16.25) with spicy Korean ketchup, maple syrup and whipped butter.

The waffles are very light (you can also get the Waffle Bites with dipping sauce) and the chicken had a nice, light and crispy exterior which kept the meat moist and tender.

Great addition to the North Burnaby area.

4190 Hastings Street
Vancouver, BC

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