Nelson the Seagull Cafe | Sourdough Baked Daily — Restaurant in Vancouver

I usually have a brewed coffee and a “Chocolate Chip & Walnut, Oat Cookie.”  Both are very good but the cookies are a little too good because now I have a low key addiction to them.  Not too sweet but still quite tasty, with just the right amount of crunch.

There are two kinds of brewed coffee; the “Nelsons Custom Roast-Rowandan” and the “Modus Coast-Nicaragua.”  Both are nice but I like the Modus Coast the best.

The vibe at Nelson The Seagull is very cool.  Laid back, lived in, relaxed, homy.   The decor is vintage and stylish, yet very practical.  Good wi-fi and the staff are quite friendly and helpful.  I work and live nearby and I'm not fancy, so I appreciate the lack of pretension.

There's a huge picture of Nelson Mandela behind the front counter, who was apparently a boxer at one time.  He didn't go pro but it was a good way to deal with his stressful life.  He was also part of the inspiration for the name of this coffee shop.

Nelson The Seagull has a lot of character and part of that can be attributed to the building itself…The Rainier Hotel.  It's an official heritage building of Vancouver that was built in 1907 and is now an SRO that offers supportive housing for vulnerable women on the upper floors, and commercial business space on the main floor.  There's another great coffee shop next door called East Van Roasters, as well as a vintage clothing store called Community Thrift & Vintage Frock Shoppe.

The surrounding community is called Gastown and it's chock full of character for a lot of reasons.  For one thing, this is where Vancouver began in 1886.  It's where the Canadian Pacific Railway met the Pacific Ocean, on a deep ice free harbor, united Canada politically, and created a massive industrial hub that fueled the national economy, and became known as the “Gateway to the Orient.”  Gastown was the beating heart of Vancouver before there was a Gastown, or a Vancouver.

The Rainier Hotel and the entire Gastown area have traditionally catered to the working class.  Even the indigenous people who lived here before the European settlers were certainly not considered rich by today's standards, and nor did they aspire to do so.  But they were still attracted to this area of British Columbia for largely the same reasons as the Europeans...the climate and the abundance of life.

The original clientele of the Rainier Hotel were predominantly single men working blue collar jobs in the logging and shipping industry.  Not surprisingly, the first bar in Vancouver opened here in Gastown and the area was famous for its music, entertainment, and nightlife.  It was a rough and tough crowd of people who were just struggling to survive and spent a good part of their time unemployed and looking for their next job.  In the 1960’s the city was going to demolish Gastown and build a freeway through it, but Gastown and its supporters rallied together and it was spared.  Never say die should be the motto of Gastown.

To this day, Gastown still reflects the same working class roots, hustle, and struggle for survival as it did in the late 1800’s.  It's deceptively beautiful but raw and unforgiving…like the rain forest it was built in.  To survive here you need to be tough, resilient, and strong in spirit…like the indigenous people, or perhaps...

Fig and Walnut Sourdough Loaf! You have to have some Kahoonas to make this. First thing that comes to mind is "why not just have Sourdough bread and fig jam" since figs are not local; correct me if I am wrong. Second, if someone is deviating from the now perfected, cheaper Cranberry Walnut Sourdough bread they would have a high hurdle to clear. For the record, I do not think Nelson clears this hurdle. What we get from the traditional Cranberry Walnut Loaf is a sweet surprise every so often. What we get with Nelson's Fig and Walnut loaf is the expectation of sweetness with a reality of a slightly different savory profile within the bread. Sometimes the figs are roasted/charred when they are near the surface of the dough and this just seems like a waste of a fig.

The texture overall is the standard you would expect from a Cranberry Walnut Sourdough loaf.

The Chocolate Oat Walnut cookie was disappointing. It was good for a chocolate cookie, but it had too much chocolate for an oatmeal cookie which served to obscure the cookie crumb. The problem is that the chocolate does not age well at all. The chocolate becomes kind of dry the longer it sits. This leads to the cookie being like a dry piece of chocolate with oats and nuts if bought in the afternoon. The traditional Oatmeal Raisin cookie has the syrupy bend due to the raisin and brown sugar/molasses which helps the cookie age well.

Overall the flavor balances were a bit off (e.g. too many similar savory elements in one bread). I will say they have some of the best presentation and picture perfect bread I have seen at a bakery in North America.

It seems like key elements were ignored when embarking on these new baking adventures. Being adventurous is nice and novel but I find nothing was left after the journey besides novelty and...

I put in my order with the person at the counter. I ordered a coffee and herbivore sandwich to eat in. I paid for the order and tipped when their system crashed. The woman at the counter tried to make me pay twice for my meal (after I double checked if the order had gone through on my card). I drank my coffee as I waited for my sandwich.

After waiting 30 minutes and noticing my order still wasn't served I went to check with the kitchen..... Turns out the person at the counter never put in my order to the kitchen. I went to go see the woman at the counter to inform her of her mistake. At that point she started laughing at me. I was not amused and asked her why she was laughing. She just continued laughing. I was now late to catch my flight. It was very unprofessional. She kept making excuses and went to the kitchen. She never came back to me to apologize for her behaviour. Never came to see what could be done to fix the problem.

The person in the kitchen did their best to try and hurry the order and put the meal in a to-go container for me. I left 45 minutes after ordering with my food and ran to catch my flight. As I went to eat the sandwich is was very sorry and not good. I couldn't eat the salad as I was not given any utensils or napkins.

All in all I was very disappointed with everything. I will never be going back...