Eggspectation began in Montreal in 1993, with a few clear ideas and an unembarrassed enthusiasm for breakfast. The founding thought was to take the ingredients everyone loves at the start of the day and carry them creatively through lunch and dinner too, in a room that felt more like an energetic bar-café than a diner. More than thirty years on, the formula has proved durable enough to spread: there are now close to thirty locations worldwide, all built around the same customer-friendly culture, the same attention to service, and the same frankly passionate reverence for all things breakfasty. The setting is industrial-chic and hung with contemporary artwork — light-hearted, cosmopolitan, and casual by design — and the teams are recruited to care about the whole experience rather than just the plate.
The menu is long and cheerfully indulgent. The eggs benedict have their own section and are the house's calling card: the classic on ham or florentine with sautéed spinach and strong white cheddar, plus smoked salmon with cream cheese, capers and red onion, a Maritime lobster version, a crab cake benedict, Blackstone eggs with grilled tomato, bacon and avocado, and a Montreal benny built on Dijon, smoked meat and Swiss cheese — all under the house hollandaise and served with Lyonnaise-style potatoes. Alongside them sits the more exuberant end of the breakfast repertoire: Yolk Around the Clock, a grilled wood-fired bagel with a sunny-side-up egg in each hole; a breakfast poutine of Lyonnaise potatoes, bacon, sausage, ham and cheese curds under breakfast gravy; its Toluca cousin with chorizo, caramelised onion, pico de gallo and sour cream; chicken 'n waffles; breakfast tacos; and a bagel and lox platter with wild sockeye, capers and Kalamata olives.
The sweet side is where the kitchen shows off. French toast is baked from an artisanal brioche made to the house recipe and served flambéed with strawberries, bananas and walnuts in orange brandy and maple syrup, or in a s'mores version stuffed with Nutella and marshmallows. There are lemon ricotta blueberry pancakes, high-rise pancakes layered with sausage, bacon and potatoes under a sunny-side-up egg, Belgian waffles with pears, bacon and maple salted caramel or dressed as a banana split, and chocolate-banana crêpes — with the all-time classics of buttermilk pancakes, waffles, crêpes and French toast always available with pure Canadian maple syrup. Omelettes run from the original Eggspectation, three eggs with mushrooms, onions, peppers, bacon, sausage, ham and cheddar, to lobster with provolone and hollandaise, the Montrealer with smoked meat and Swiss, the Mykonos with feta and oregano, and a generous veggie. The classics section covers the All-American, the Eggstraordinary, a Greek yogurt parfait bowl, and the Uneggspected — a 10oz rib eye with two eggs and potatoes.
Past midday the menu keeps going. Savoury crêpes come stuffed with scrambled egg, spinach and ham under hollandaise, or with grilled chicken and feta in the Athenean; there are tacos, brie-and-walnut crostini, Montreal and classic poutines to start; salads from the Californian and the Cobb to a Greek villager and a Marseille with white tuna; sandwiches including the ultimate BLT, a tuna melt panini, a rosemary chicken with brie and avocado, and a Montreal smoked meat on rye; and burgers on artisanal brioche buns, among them the Eggspectation with chipotle aioli, bacon and a fried egg, the mushroom melt with brie and lemon aioli, and the double-everything Big Daddy. Dinner brings steak frites, chicken parmigiana, fish 'n chips, and a run of tagliatelle and cavatappi dishes — fradiavolo, fiorentina, and mac and cheese in plain, bacon and lobster versions, the last a signature in its own right.
Generous, endlessly variable, and unashamedly fond of the yolk, Eggspectation is where Montreal's idea of breakfast escaped the morning — and has been happily running all day ever since.