On & Off Kitchen + Bar — Restaurant in Coquitlam

A very beautiful space. A pleasant place to be for a meal. One of the best in the area.

Good coffee. It didn’t disappoint.

The food, however, the soul of it all, fell very short. It looked good but didn’t taste it. It was well short of everything else the restaurant had going.

The interior and coffee beckons for another go. We’ll be back to try something different (but I feel brunch shouldn’t be difficult to be good). Perhaps dinner? There's passion here - hoping it’s more than skin deep.

Maybe this well decorated ajumma meeting hub can still be a win for the area? Rooting for them.

Update: A few hours later. I still haven’t been able to digest the Porchetta sandwich. Feeling nauseous all afternoon. Eventually threw up. I had a feeling the Porchetta was “off”. We’ve ordered this at many other places (Meat and Bread on Cambie has an excellent version for a fraction of this price) and my partner’s made this beautiful sandwich at home as well. It’s one of our favourites. On & Off served it up on a commercial bread factory bun (derived from markings at the bottom) with a dressed up rapini (?strange?). If they don’t have an in-house baker this should be purchased from a local bakery. The absence of cracklings did not go unnoticed. This is the joyful part of the sandwich that just wasn’t there. A let down at the time but should have been a sign. The meat was greasy, tough and dry. The pan sautéed spiced rapini did not help. The fries tarted up in truffle oil served up with aioli were good on their own but served no reprise from the grease and richness inherent in the sandwich. The house made mustard was unfortunately over powered and rendered non existent. A cool slaw would have been better than the fatstravaganza building up bite after bite.

I am 100% sure that the porchetta was not made fresh that day.

Uncharacteristically, I couldn’t finish my meal but now regret even taking a second bite of it. I’ve never not finished a sandwich.

My lunch date asked for firm eggs for the Benny and received it very runny. Poached eggs is 101. (Like most reviews there seems a lack of consistency.) The bread for the Benny was strangely sweet and distracted from the other flavours so much so that it rendered it a challenging to enjoy. Feel that this is the foundation for a good classic Benny - freshly baked with good consistency and texture was all it had to have and should have remained unfussed. Without it, the dish fell apart. This meal too was left unfinished.

To sum up: On & Off Good for Instagram. (This is what’s “On”.) Not for your palate. (The food is definitely “Off”.)

Since hugging the toilet, I’ve down graded from 2 stars to 1. I can’t deny that everything sure looked good but that and the coffee might not be enough to entice a return for a possibility of...

I’ll cut them some slack because they’re in their soft opening phase but the service was not good. We had 4 different servers and even the chef delivered food to our table. The first server took our order and didn’t write anything down for the four of us. She didn’t ask how we wanted our poached eggs. When one of my group asked for a side order poached egg served medium, she was told, “No, you can only have soft”. This server then came back twice to reconfirm our orders.

When food did finally arrive via chef, he had two dishes and announced one of them—bruschetta. One of us ordered PORCHETTA, not bruschetta. So we sent it away. We could see him discussing with a server and pointing to our table. A second server came back with the dishes and said basically “This is what you ordered.” We said we ordered the porchetta. She announced the second dish, which was correct and asked why we sent it away. Well, he didn’t tell us what the other dish was. She said it’s because the menu is European and can be confusing. Uh, the first server asked us three times for clarification. Maybe write it down.

It’s unsanitary to also have the pastries just sitting out uncovered on a long table in the middle of the restaurant with flies and wasps flying around. Kids could just walk by and touch things. It’s not a buffet.

When the eggs came out, the one of our group who asked for medium poached eggs got hard poached and the one who was fine with soft poached got medium, even though we were explicitly told the eggs only come poached soft. I’ve worked in kitchens baking brunch. That’s not true. You soft poach the eggs ahead of time but then warm them to order. It’s not hard to make them medium or hard.

I got the fig and brie open faced sandwich and it was good. It was pretty expensive at $21 though.

When it came time to pay, the server was with us and the card machine and another server came over and asked her to give it to her. Uh, we’re still paying.

We gave our feedback to the most consistent of the 4 servers and she noted it. Whether or not it gets relayed to the kitchen is unknown.

The patio was nice and the room is nice. I hope they get their...

I got together for dinner with a lovely group of foodies from Lower Mainland Eats at On & Off Kitchen and Bar. Featured here:

Mussels Mariniere Duck Fat Roasted Fingerling Potatoes Hokkaido Scallop & Crab Risotto BC Mushroom Rigatoni Charcoal Grilled Sablefish Roasted Racks of Lamb Churros with Chocolate Dip

Even before ordering our food, one of the first things we noticed was the ambiance. The noise level was quite moderate which made for a relaxing setting where we could all easily converse with each other. I always find myself feeling mentally fatigued when I'm in a loud restaurant where I have to struggle to hear what people are saying to me.

Fingerling Potatoes were golden and crisp. Accompanied by a stunning mushroom tempura, the mussels were plump and flavorful. Several people had ordered the Roasted Racks of Lamb and all found it to be wonderfully tender and juicy. Hokkaido Scallop & Crab Risotto sounded so amazing that I just might order it for myself if I find myself at this restaurant again. There was a lobster butter in the risotto that perfectly complemented the scallop and crab flavors. Sablefish was melt in your mouth tender. Mushroom Rigatoni had a wonderfully creamy sauce and was very much enhanced by the crunch of the pangrattato (bread crumbs).

The one dish that really fell short of our expectations was the dessert. On the evening that we went On & Off Kitchen and Bar was serving churros as their daily dessert. Two people at our table were served churros with ice cream. After that we were informed that they had run out of ice cream but could do a chocolate dip as a substitute for the ice cream. We accepted this substitution. When we bit into the churros, they didn't taste very fresh, and the chocolate sauce tasted more like coffee than chocolate.

Other than the dessert, this was a very pleasant meal overall. I would have never known of this place on my own as it's tucked away in a remote area of Coquitlam, but am ever so glad that I know of this place now. Their website says they have a rooftop patio and I love dining on rooftop patios!

Service:  Good Parking:  Free Location: #15 - 2662 Austin...