This place is all about amazing bread. We discovered it on a Kelowna food tour, and whenever we’re in town, we stop by to sample their baked goods or get a great sandwich. It’s counter service, but they’ll bring your food to the table outside, which is a pleasant spot to eat on a nice day.
Chef Ron is a most unusual restaurant. At first it seems it is going to be Middle Eastern, with lots of kebabs and such. But there are also hamburgers, hot dogs, Philly cheesesteak sandwiches, pastas, Greek, Chinese, and even tempura! Oh, and American breakfast. So I guess the theme is “There is no theme”.
We started with the hummus appetizer. It was served with tortilla chips, so I guess that’s a Mexican element, too. It was quite good.
I had the Loghmeh, a minced spice lamb dish, cooked on skewers. It was a very generous serving, and was delicious.
My companion had the shrimp tempura, which was also very good. It was served with nicely crisped shoestring french fries.
I’m a sucker for skillets, and Cora has a good one. Best of all, the one I would pick is on their menu deals at the moment, making it a bargain.
My ideal skillet would be crispy home fries, bacon, cheese, onions, red and green peppers, and an over easy egg. Cora’s Ten Star Skillet adds spinach, green onions, ham, sausage, and, um … frankfurters and bologna? I almost had them leave those last ingredients out, but then figured, what the heck, and tried the standard version. It was very good. I do wish the base had been crispy home fries rather than rather large potato wedges, but I just left those, and convinced myself that’s where all the calories were.
Service was friendly and quick, and the location, which doesn’t look like much on the outside, is quite nice inside.
Overall, very good quality for such a large chain.
Aptly named, The Basic is basically a basic breakfast and lunch place with basic dishes that are based on breakfast and lunch basics.
Seriously, though, we really enjoyed our meal here. The menu has all the, er, basics of a satisfying breakfast, but we opted for sandwiches. The tuna melt is actually closer to a patty melt, but with tuna instead of a patty, since it normally comes on rye and has grilled onions. But they happily substituted sourdough, and could certainly leave off the onions to make it more conventional.
The cucumber and avocado sandwich was a nice lighter choice, served on toasted sourdough with tasty cole slaw and a nice fresh salad of mixed greens.