Sebs Market Cafe: For Rainy Day Vancouver Brunches

Seb’s Market Cafe

592 East Broadway, Vancouver

I choose breakfast nooks based on whether or not they feature pancakes on their menu. However, I made an exception for Seb’s Market Cafe and thankfully, I wasn’t disappointed! The warm and homey interior of the cafe was a perfect hideaway from a dreary, cold and rainy Vancouver Saturday. There was only one other couple waiting for a table when we arrived but the place quickly filled up after the hostess took down our name.

After a few minutes we were seated in a cozy booth at the back of the restaurant. We ordered the banana bread French toast (another breakfast item close to my heart, right beside pancakes) with a side of turkey sausage and the corn and potato chowder.

When the French toast came, covered in a thick snow of powdered sugar and lying atop home style potatoes and a fresh colourful fruit salad with two little silver ramekins spilling full of berry jam and maple syrup, it almost looked too pretty to eat. But by then, I was too hungry to admire. The banana bread was just the right balance of rich thickness but was also fluffy in the middle, large chunks of sweet banana was embedded throughout the loaf. The French toast was light on the egg batter, which was perfect as it didn’t upstage the rich banana bread center.

I have only had turkey sausage a few times in my life, and I have to admit that given the option, I always order pork breakfast sausages over turkey. Seb’s menu didn’t have pork sausage though, and I really didn’t feel like eating bacon so I opted for the turkey. I wasn’t disappointed. The sausage was very well seasoned. It wasn’t as moist and fatty as my usual pork sausage, the turkey meat had a firmness and leaner texture but it worked well with the banana bread French toast. Also adding a lightness to the meal was the amazingly sweet and ripe fruit salad. Hiding under the two fat slices of toast was a very juicy slice of pineapple. I absolutely love pineapple in any shape or form so this really pushed the dish over the top for me. If only there was more than one slice of the pineapple though. The melon slices were also very delicious. Obviously eating the melon after the gallons of maple syrup that I consumed made the melon slices taste a little bland so I should probably reverse the eating order at my next visit.

The corn and potato chowder that we ordered was the soup of the day. It was also very tasty and surprisingly light for a chowder. There were very large and well cooked soft chunks of potato throughout. The diced carrot and mild spices in the soup also made it the perfect meal for a cold day.

We had a wonderful time at Seb’s and will visit again. Maybe by then, there will be a short stack of buttermilk pancakes on the menu!