Venue: Acme Café
Location: 51 Hastings St W (at Abbott)
Serving: Breakfast, lunch, dinner
Food: New take on olde-timey diner classics, specializing in dewicious pies
I can still remember the days when the only kind of breakfast you could buy around Tinseltown was crack and/or a lady of the night. I’m pretty sure you could still find both of those things in that part of town, but the Woodwords and Espana developments are changing the face of crosstown Vancouver, and I’m happy to see that ambitious entrepeneurs are prepared to capitalize on the new development.
Between personal training with Weights101.com in their studio off Keefer and shacking up spring-fever style with a certain someone special, I’ve been spending A LOT of time in this part of town and there is definitely a lack of clean AND affordable places to eat in crosstown.
Enter Acme Café. Walking into the place is like stepping into a cool glass of water. Its interior is a modern take on art deco and the all-American classic diner, which really complements the exposed brick, industrial feel to the buildings in that part of town. And they don’t overdo it either — just nice touches, like the finishing around the counters:
The menu is driven at giving you some comfort: sandwiches, salads, meat loaf, chicken pot pie — and nothing clocks in over $13. This is a family-run restaurant paying particular attention to quality and good service. The servers actually smile — surprising, considering it’s right in the middle of upwardly mobile hipster heaven.
I had the Chicken Club. See for yourself: big portions, with enough culinary twists (like lemon mayo) to keep me interested:
With a tagline like “Keep your fork — there’s pie!”, you’d better save some room for dessert as well.
When to go: You’ll probably see me there on the weekends for all-day breakfast. There is also a good chance that an early evening pie date will be happening in the very near future.
Noteworthy: I got to have lunch with that saucy minx Catherine Dunwoody AND share that piece of pie above with her. Sharesies! I like to think I’m busy, but that girl is BIZZAY.
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