The Ottawa Breakfast Club: Atomic Rooster: not as nuclear as you'd think!

When pubs do food you don't expect too much from them, except when it comes to the basics of a brunch menu. Did Atomic Rooster get the basics right? Well, yes and no! It's a mixed experience here, this week, but let's qualify this a bit. It's a pub, so don't expect table cloths, homemade ketchup and silver cutlery.

Atomic Rooster is a medium sized pub on Bank Street between Somerset and MacLaren and the brunch menu has all the regulars; benny (4 kinds including a salmon one), steak and eggs as well as the usual omelette, eggs and meats mixture. It was suggested by a new member of our group and we are always happy to try new places. (Probationary period has been served, BTW.... welcome to the club!).

The tables are rough with wear and the tables and chairs I touched were too far on the side of 'sticky' for my liking. This week we were a table of 7 and found a suitable table (which required stabilizing with some beer mats), even though they were quite busy. We ordered coffee which took a while to arrive. We really expect to be served coffee within a minute or two of being seated rather than within 15 minutes.

When it came the coffee was good and, as it turned out, was included in the price of breakfast, with unlimited refills - which we like. One oddity with the coffee was that most of our mugs came with straws in them as stir sticks and a couple had spoons! Odd but it didn't detract from the enjoyment. One of us thought the coffee was a bit bitter but as I like my coffee strong and bitter it didn't pose a problem for me.

We ordered and the food came out in a reasonable time. Nothing really looked as if it had been plated with any love - very low on garnish which, with breakfast plates, always means a lot of yellow. Yellow toast, yellow omelette, yellow homefries; a bit of green would have been nice, or a piece of fruit.

I had the steak and eggs this week. I seldom have steak and eggs as breakfast cooks seldom cook it right. My steak (cooked rare) was perfect (as was another member's who requested medium rare) so kudos to the grill chef there and the cut was a decent piece (6oz) of sirloin strip steak served with 3 eggs (I ordered poached as did another member and they were all hard poached even though we asked for soft poached) and homefries that had a sprinkling of onion. The poached eggs were ok tasting but I've had better and, again, they were hard poached. The homefries had little taste and may have been frozen/from a bag. The toast was good quality bread. Apart from the quality of the coffee and the steak itself the plate really was just average.

The steak and eggs

One member had the '3 eggs/3 ingredients' omelette and had bacon, goat's cheese and jalapeño peppers and it was good but had an overdose of jalapeño.

I paid for 3 brunches and it cost $44 all in, including tax and tip so it's very reasonably priced considering I had a steak.

Not to be unkind to the Atomic Rooster, it's a good solid pub brunch place and there is little to be critically negative about, there is also little to shout about either. It's a noisy place too, some people like that, others don't - we don't, so be warned if you don't like noisy brunches - this ain't the place for you.