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This past weekend, we were invited to go to the Brunch Crawls as part of the Dine Out Vancouver festivities. Put on by Richard the Vancouver Foodster. The first of the brunch crawl series was in Gastown.

Gastown Brunch Crawl

In 4 hours, Mr. and I checked out 7 different spots in Gastown:

• Prado Cafe
• Zero Zero Pizzeria
• The Capilano
• The Birds & The Beets / Grain
• Rodney’s Oyster House
• Bao Down
• Smallflower Cafe & Bakeshop

The crawl started with a cup of hand-crafted coffee at Prado Cafe. There were a few choices and we ordered an Americano and Flat White.

Almost right next door was Zero Zero Pizzeria. The portion was quite generous here. We had two options, including the pizzetta flatbread, but also a new topping combination that wasn’t even available on the regular menu yet!

A couple of streets over we got to the new Capilano Tea House. They will officially open their door on February 1, so we basically got a sneak preview.

In addition to a good selection of teas, they also served us some baked bannock and filo pastries, which I thought were pretty good. The best bite was the bison filo pastry.

The Birds & The Beets was a stop for us to sample some salads and other grain-based dishes by, you guess it, Grain. As healthy as it looked and tasted, it was actually a welcomed item on the menu because of all the greasy food we’re having on the crawl.

One of the highlights on this crawl was Rodney’s Oyster House. I’ve only been to its Yaletown location, so it’s my first time at the Gastown location. The crab cake eggs benedict was nice and meaty, and the poached egg was cooked perfectly. I wish we could spend more time here to enjoy the plate but we had to move on to the next stop.

At Bao Down, we got a taste of an Asian breakfast sandwich as well as beignets made with Chinese steamed buns. This was probably the least successful plate as the beignets were on the dry side.

The biggest surprise was the Smallflower Cafe & Bakeshop. Food served here is gluten free and vegan, and if you know me, you know it’s not my top choice for food. But the BBQ tofu slider was flavourful (the bun had good texture), tomato soup was hearty, and the mini drumstick ice cream cone did remind me of the regular Nestle Drumstick. This was our last stop, and a great wrap-up of our crawl.

Final Thoughts

The number of stops and menu offering varies from one brunch crawl to another. If you are looking for a weekend event, and you’re into brunches, check out the remaining Brunch Crawls in the coming weekends:

• January 23: Downtown
• January 24: North Vancouver
• January 30: Yaletown
• January 31: Main Street