where jess ate

I decided to start off my first day of vacation with brunch! Since it was a Monday the options were a little limited. After a bit of research, I discovered that Lady Marmalade was open, so my friend Chris and I made our way over. It happened to be an extremely hot day which made it an uncomfortable street car ride. Unfortunately, Lady Marmalade didn’t have air con either…only fans that blew around the hot air, so I was hoping the food was worth it.

The interior of the restaurant is covered in avocado green walls and contained mismatched furniture and dishes which looked like they were all purchased at a garage sale in the 70’s.

For drinks, I was debating between the fresh orange juice (my usual) and the fresh raspberry apple juice. I decided to try something different and went with the raspberry apple ($3.75). It had a sweet and tart flavour to it, which I didn’t absolutely love. Not bad, but I should’ve just stuck to the OJ. Chris ordered the homemade lemonade ($2.75), which was not too sweet and made for a perfect thirst quencher on a hot day.

I noticed that their menu is quite vegetarian friendly, as most items can be substituted for avocado or organic tofu. In addition to all the brunch items, their menu also features a lot of lunch options too such as sandwiches and bowls. But I came here for their famous brunch, so I passed on the sandwiches.

What I like about going to restaurants with Chris is that we often lean towards similar menu items. This time we both were deciding between two of the same items – a scrambled egg dish and an eggs benny, so we decided to order them both to share.

We ordered the Huevos Migas – 3 soft-scrambled eggs with cheese, tomatoes, scallions & spicy sausage, served with basmati brown rice n’ beans, sourcream, organic corn tortilla chips & pico de gallo salsa for $11.50. The eggs were perfectly cooked and I loved the mixture with the tomatoes, scallions and sausage, which had nice kick to it. The whole dish was topped with a small bunch of cilantro on top, which I personally enjoyed, but Chris hates cilantro. Luckily it was in large bunches and he was able to easily leave it out of his portion of the meal.

Although I enjoyed the egg and salsa portion of the dish, I didn’t particularly enjoy the rice so I ended up leaving most of that and the beans, since I’m not a huge fan of beans in general. The portion of this dish was also quite large and the two of us had trouble finishing this dish. Or maybe it was just the unbearable heat stifling our hunger…

Our second dish was the Lady Marmalade Benny – with ham, red onion & chipotle mayo ($12.50). All bennies are served with potatoes and a salad, or fresh tomatoes with a lemony hollandaise. We opted for the potatoes and salad. The potatoes were a tad dry and the outsides were a bit chewy. We didn’t touch much of the salad. It had an Asian dressing and reminded me of the salads you get at Japanese restaurants.

As for the benny, the hollandaise had a great flavour and the lemon flavour wasn’t overwhelming like the one I had at the Drake. The menu advertised chipotle mayo on this benny, which was certainly one of its selling points, but we couldn’t taste it at all. We didn’t mind though, since the hollandaise was incredibly tasty. Lady Marmalade has several other variations of eggs benny, which I’m sure are also amazing given their delicious hollandaise. Highly recommended!

The service was warm and friendly and the food for the most part was pretty good. Located in Leslieville, it might be a bit of a trek for some people, but definitely worth it for the delicious benny!

At a glance:
• Amazing eggs benny
• Cash only
• No AC (so if it’s hot… be prepared to sweat!)
• Vegetarian friendly
• Open for brunch seven days a week

Ratings (out of 5):
• Food: 4 stars
• Service: 4 stars
• Atmosphere: 3.5 stars