Monthly Archives: April 2008

Who doesn’t love a good, lazy, late morning brunch? I’m a loyal fan of the brunch, especially if there is also beer. Not that I am normally an advocate for AM drinking, but with Stella’s Tap & Tapas‘ huge assortment of fruity, delicious import beer, exceptions can certainly be made. And so it was with much excitement that my friends and I found ourselves at Stella’s (our second choice, actually, after finding out that Me & Julio was closed). And we were still excited when we ordered the Gauffres (Waffles) Bananas Foster ($9) – a waffle covered in a banana, brown sugar and rum mix then topped with whipping cream – and the French Toast with Brie and berry coulis ($11), which is accompanied with hash browns and a green salad.

And then we proceeded to get caught up on each others lives, while noticing that our excitement was dwindling slowly. Breakfast was taking an exceedingly long time. I had finished my Caesar and not been offered anything else. My friend had finished her coffee, requested a Belle-Vue Kriek, realized the waitress had forgotten it, asked for it again and finally got it, and still no food had come. We did the normal restaurant thing of craning around trying to figure out if the people all around us eating had come before or after us and came to the conclusion that the restaurant had been mostly empty when we arrived.

So we flagged down Niki, our incredibly uncaring waitress who seemed to forget about us constantly – forgot to fill our water, forgot to bring aforementioned beer, forgot to ask us how the food was, forgot to bring us the bill and then at the end forgot that there were 3 people at the table so she took one person’s credit card to ring through, then came for the next one, etc…). I want to say that she forgot our order as well, since it took 45 minutes for the food to arrive, but a loud “F***!” from the kitchen (thankfully after we received our brunch) may have indicated other problems going on there.

Like the inability to tell if a banana is ripe, for instance. When we finally did get our food, we were sad to realize that the bananas were no where near ripeness. They were little so green…little banana embryos that would have needed a lot more time to mature. Banana flavoured rocks, with that faintly fuzzy texture inherent to bananas. They were terrible. Coat anything in sugar and rum, however, and mix in some good company – my friend also reported that the Brie on French Toast was delicious – and all would have likely been forgotten, but the service never got any better.

I can forgive forgetfulness, but it was obvious that Niki just didn’t care. I’m sure she would have spent her entire shift updating her Facebook page if they had a laptop behind the bar (and maybe they do, that would at least explain the service).

Sadly, I love Stella’s, and especially their brunch. My only complaint up until now is that it occasionally gets too busy and noisy, but the food is usually spot-on and they have one of the best import beer lists in the city – many of them fruity and yeasty and perfectly matched with breakfast fare. I’ve even had the bananas foster waffles a few times before and enjoyed them, so I hope this was simply a (very) off day for the restaurant and not a sign of things to come.

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Stella’s Tap & Tapas
1191 Commercial Drive, Vancouver