Saturday 18 May 2013

Review: The Thompson Diner

I am rather partial to diners so I decided to finally try The Thompson Diner. My hesitation at attending a hotel restaurant was defeated by my curiosity over this lovely art deco building. The interior is as you would expect, that of a hotel restaurant meets a diner. This means that there is flocked wallpaper (the expensive kind),velvet brocade upholstery on the booths and the world's ugliest sports bar shoved into the middle. I was unfortunately seated to close for comfort to said sports bar but our waiter was very nice and completely understood my need to move to another table.

The Thompson Diner

The Thompson Diner

Prior to coming I had studied the menu and knew exactly what I wanted. It is my practice when attending a diner for the first time, to sample their most outlandish sounding dish. So for me it was a toss-up between "The Fat American" or "The Brunch Burger". The first dish consists of three mini-pizza sized pancakes stuffed with turkey sausage and bacon then topped with a fried egg and crispy onion strips. The later dish is a bacon cheeseburger with a fried egg sandwiched into a powdered doughnut. Food Network if you're reading I'll consider doing a Woman Versus Food if you're interested.

I decided upon the Fat American:


The Thompson Diner


The Thompson Diner

Unfortunately The pancakes are extremely dry and taste like they were made from a box mix. Thankfully I was given a generous portion of real maple syrup and was not charged when I asked for a second portion. The promised stuffing of turkey sausage and bacon is rather sparse. I found myself excavating through the pancakes to find the little morsels of meat. The turkey sausage was not so great but then I really can't get my head around the concept of turkey as a replacement for pork so maybe that's just me. The bacon, however, was delicious and left me wishing I had a plate of that instead of the pancakes. The topping of the fried egg and crispy onion strings was also exquisite. It was just that the pancakes themselves and the actual concept of this dish are not very good. There is way too much pancake compared to meat and topping. This would work better perhaps with mini pancakes.

My companion ordered the pulled pork burger. When asked how said burger was, he replied "Hmph it's a burger". I'll take that to mean it was adequate though not memorable. I did not taste this burger so I can't add my comments. The presentation, however was very cute:

The Thompson Diner

The Thompson Diner

And last but not least we started with the onion rings. The onion rings are delicious. The downside is that you get only 6. They are very large and at $5 it's pretty good value but they are so delicious and surprisingly not greasy that you will want more than 6 especially if you are sharing:

The Thompson Diner

Again cute presentation. We got so carried away eating these that I forgot t take a picture while there were still onion rings.


I give The Thompson Diner 3 out of 4 Taros


Thompson Diner on Urbanspoon

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