OEB Breakfast Co. — Restaurant in North Vancouver

FANTASTIC - deserve more than 5 Stars

And I'll walk you through the "why":

My wife and I wanted to have brunch after taking in the King Tut exhibition at the Convention Centre, and here's how this experience unfolded.

1. A call to several restaurants, gave me the same answer - "we don't take reservations, it's about an hour's wait." Finally got through to OEB NVan and Brie says "It's usually an hour's wait but, do me a favour call me an our before you come and I'll put you on our waitlist so won't have to wait"

First point scored - Brie took the initiative to offer a solution!

2. We get there and had to wait for a few minutes at the bar, Jenica comes by and has a casual, friendly chat. By this time our table is ready and Jenica and Gabby grab escort us to it. We place our orders with Gabby, Maria had the Waffles with a side of a fried egg and I went for the Duck Confit (all time fav!). I asked her to skip the caramel - don't like sweetness with my Duck! All this time Jenica was by the table and we wondered why. Gabby repeats our order and said "This is my third day!" We continue chatting and I caught Gabby's attention and asked if it was possible to have an aioli in place of the caramel. Like an absolute pro she let me know the three options I could pick from. On her third day! I later flagged Jenica down and told here how professional and confident Gabby was, I'd never guess she was just on her third day!

3. Our food comes out and it looks fantastic, well presented. A little while later Blair, their GM comes out to chat and I shared how impressed I was with Jenica and Gabby. (Jenica was training Gabby)

The food was delicious and Jenica came back to check in on us and we had a great conversation with her.

Now, full disclosure - I have been in the hotel F&B industry for 4 decades with leading brands and can spot kinks in many great restaurants. This one blew me away - I was watching how the staff went about doing their job and how each table was being efficiently attended to.

An open kitchen is a double edged sword, looks great but if the team is not in sync you can hear and see the chaos. Here, it was like a well oiled machine.

As an F&B guy, I was thrilled to see such amazing staff, food that was delicious and well presented.

I know this will be going...

Make sure you keep reminding the host for a table in case you see time and other parties passing by and they are not paying attention to you! We were a party of 8 going to enjoy breakfast at OEB, we got there around 9:30am and it was not crowded but people were starting to line up. There were 2 parties ahead of us, we requested a table for 8 (2 babies included), and they said it was going to take 15 minutes. Time passed, and we clearly see several tables available, some of them for a party of 6, so we guessed they were waiting for a larger table for us. After 30 minutes, the kids were really hungry and starting to become hangry, I talked to the host and she told me it was almost ready. About more than 10 parties thay were waiting after us passed by, some of 6, 4, and 2 so again, after 45 minutes I went to ask again what was going on. I was only told that they were looking in to it. At this point, it was going to take longer to go away and ask for a table in another place. Finally, after 55 minutes (10:25am), they gave us a table, but my surprise was that it was a table for 6 and they squeezed 2 more chairs. We could have gotten a table for 6 ten minutes after we arrived!!! That is the reason of me giving this place 3 ☆. I can say the food and our server were very good, but one of the servers/ hosts was not as nice when we asked her for help. Too bad because it could have been such a...

If you are planning to celebrate something, DO NOT consider going there!! We gathered there to celebrate our friend's birthday. After enjoying our meals, we brought out the cake to blow out the candles. One of the staffs kindly offered us small dishes to share the cake, which we appreciated. However, in the middle of our celebration, the manager, Michael Moore, suddenly approached us and, in a rather brusque manner, took the dishes and told us that no outside food was allowed. This unexpected interruption dampened our spirits.

We were initially speechless for a few moments but then explained to him that we understood the policy and the reasons behind it. Nonetheless, we felt that we could have been treated with more courtesy and kindness. He responded by saying that he was just following the rules and if you have any complains I am the manager! While we understood the importance of adhering to rules, we couldn't help but feel that we had been treated like misbehaving children. Moreover, he made things difficult for the staff member who had brought us the dishes.

We believe that, as a manager responsible for enforcing the rules, he should work on his customer service skills, especially in situations like this. His actions truly marred what should have been a memorable experience, it's very disappointing and obviously we won't consider going back...