Yolk’s Breakfast (Breakfast/Brunch Food Truck/Cart)

Restaurant: Yolk’s Breakfast
Cuisine: Breakfast/Brunch/American/Food Truck
Last Visited: January 27, 2013
Location: Vancouver, BC (Gastown)
Address: Dunsmuir & Beatty
Transit: Stadium-Chinatown Skytrain
Phone: (604) 441-9655
Price Range: $10 or less

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: FMF Must Try!

Food: 5
Service: n/a
Ambiance: n/a
Value: 3
Overall: n/a
Additional comments:

• Chef/Owner Steve Ewing
• Breakfast/brunch menu only
• Farm to table
• All natural
• Free range eggs
• Organic where possible
• House made sauces
• Local favourite
• Vegetarian options
• Gluten free options
• Reasonably priced
• Catering available
• Daily specials
• Thursday, Friday: 8:30am – 1:30pm @ Dunsmuir St and Beatty St
  Saturday: 10am – 3pm @ Nat Bailey Farmers Market
  Sunday 10am-2pm @ Dunsmuir St & Beatty St
• For locations/hours: @YolksBreakfast

**Recommendations: Chicken & Waffles (available Fridays and weekends), Poached Egg Sandwich, Wednesday’s Rib Eye Steak & Free-range egg sandwich with beer battered onion rings & salt spring island blue cheese, Thursday is something braised and a poached egg, and Crème caramel pancakes with lightly burnt walnuts and apple chips are on special occasions.

Thomas Keller in the kitchen! I may be exaggerating there, but watch out! I didn’t know the background of this baby blue trailer before I was hosted for lunch here, but I knew it was getting quite a bit of hype and I was still surprised. After all it was just breakfast – that is until I tried the first thing, and then I knew it wasn’t just any breakfast. Hype deserved. This humble little cart gave morning street food a whole new meaning.

I love breakfast, but it is convenient and easy to make at home. However this was breakfast worth planning and going out for, and even waiting in line for… and as a local I’m not as patient with line ups especially for street food.

If a breakfast station exists in a restaurant, almost every beginner Chef starts there. It is the easiest meal to make with affordable ingredients, but it is often the simplest things that are easy to screw up or even to master. You over cook the eggs, over mix the batter, or even burn the toast and there is no recovering and nothing you can do to hide it. But leave your worries at home, because this is no amateur chef running the kitchen. This was sophisticated sit down restaurant quality breakfast at reasonable prices. Everyone can make breakfast, but not everyone can make it quite like this.

Chef and co-owner Steven Ewing is no newbie to the industry and he’s not messing around in the kitchen. He graduated at Dubrulle French Culinary School at 19 and went straight into working at fine dining establishments like Bishop’s and Le Crocodile in Vancouver. Since then he has also worked at Chef Thomas Keller’s world renowned restaurant French Laundry in Napa Valley.

Yolk’s Breakfast offers unique and hand crafted breakfast and brunch. The menu is prepared with care and proper execution. He uses local and natural ingredients, free range eggs and organic produce where possible. The food is polished with attention to ingredients, and the recipes practiced, making it one of my favourite food trucks/carts in the city.

My only problem is the daily specials are daily specials, and I just want to try them all in one day. However this system allows for quality control and consistency, which I can’t comment on any further due to my couple visits. The menu is somewhat limited, but I could have an egg sandwich everyday for the rest of my life, so it does not bother me. If you don’t know my obsession with eggs and runny egg yolks see my Tribute to the Egg Yolk Series.

Later this Spring/Summer they are opening their brick and mortar location in East Vancouver (Hastings St. and Clark). This will be an extension of the Yolk’s Breakfast concept and I can’t wait!

On the table:

Hot Mulled Apple Cider – 3.5/6 (Good-Very good)

• Lemon, cayenne and local honey 12oz $3.25
• Well this was a nice way to warm up.
• It wasn’t too sweet and it had a nice acidity from the lemon and heat from cayenne, but it wasn’t spicy.
• If you want something more decadent and dessert like also try the Hot Apple Cider at Bel Cafe.

**Chicken & Waffles – 5.5/6 (Excellent!)

• Free range Polderside Farms fried chicken & waffles with gravy and syrup $8.95
• Available Fridays and weekends.
• I would wait 10-15 minutes in the rain for this… and I kind of did, but it was worth it and I hate the rain.
• This upgraded version of a Southern classic was my favourite thing here.
• I’ve had maybe a handful of versions of Chicken n’ Waffles and this one was memorable.
• I love sweet and savoury so naturally I love this dish in general. It was an indulgent breakfast.
• It was 2 fluffy and crisp house made Belgium style waffles with about 5 morsels of crunchy and crispy chicken thigh nuggets.
• It was topped with home made gravy, real maple syrup, and sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar.
• I have to be able to enjoy each component separately as well as together and the waffles and chicken lived up to each other.
• The waffles were eggy and tender and had double smoked bacon and crispy chicken skin in it. I didn’t really notice either as I was eating it, but it was in there.
• The panko buttermilk fried chicken was fried golden brown and each one was crisp, although slightly under seasoned.
• The meat was tender, moist and juicy being dark meat and it was good quality Polderside Farms chicken to start off with.
• The chicken was battered and fried with the skin on so they had a lot of flavour and thankfully the skin wasn’t chewy.
• I once had Chicken n’ Waffles with honey friend pecan crusted chicken, but for $8.95 at a food cart I was content with this version.
• Although I won’t lie, next time I might just bring my own candied and spiced pecans to add.
• It was a good ratio of waffles to chicken and although it seems pricey for half a portion, it is enough for a small to average appetite.
• The creamy white gravy was more like a country fried steak gravy and it was made from a classic French roux (flour + butter + cream).
• It tasted almost more like a bechamel than a chicken gravy and while I would have liked it to taste more chicken-y I still enjoyed it.
• The maple syrup was real Canadian maple syrup which surprised me because it’s pretty pricey stuff.
• I was happy they committed to quality ingredients and that’s were the price also comes in.
• It had a decent amount of sweet and savoury sauces without making the waffles soggy or making things too rich and sweet.
• This was upgraded greasy Southern soul food without the grease and for West Coast tastes!

Served plated at a restaurant this would probably be $15 considering the quality, but at a food cart, restaurant pricing doesn’t work.

**Poached Free-Range Egg Sandwiches – 5/6 (Excellent)

• Hand carved honey ham with fresh spinach & Yolk’s made Dijon, real hollandaise in an English Muffin $6.95 Add bacon for $2.50.
• Oh gosh. Just look at it! It was an eggs benedict sandwich 2.0!
• It looked and smelled right and most importantly it tasted better than it even looked.
• Just by looking at that poached egg I could tell he poached it in vinegar water like a seasoned chef would.
• The vinegar made for the perfectly round shape and it helped the white firm up and stay together.
• The egg ends up tasting a bit vinegary, but I didn’t mind and it just enhanced the lemony zing in the hollandaise.
• The only thing is, is that it is not a sandwich on the go. There is no neat way to eat this unless you knife and fork it.
• I used my hands and my hair blew into this saucy sandwich and it was a mess, but I didn’t care… I was in heaven.
• The only way it could get better is if it was in a buttery biscuit or a cheese scone.
• This was a Vancouver version of a “healthier” “Pine State Biscuit“.

You should have seen this coming. It was my next “test”. It is Tribute to the Egg Yolk Series worthy.

• The egg was perfect and you have to be VERY CAREFUL taking your first bite. I popped it with a knife before I went in with my hands.
• The real hollandaise was made from scratch and it wasn’t as buttery or thick as expected, but it was very good.
• It was tangy from the vinegar poached eggs and the lemon juice.
• I think the whole grain mustard was mixed right into it and I could taste more mustard which had a kick of dijon.
• I actually wouldn’t mind more sauce, but the egg yolk made up for it.
• There was a thick slice of salty and savoury slow cooked honey ham underneath.
• It reminded me of Christmas, but it wasn’t sweet and the honey not obvious.
• The ham was quite fatty, but the fat was tender and the meat was moist and juicy. It made for an indulgent sandwich.
• There was also some thick good quality bacon with a nice chew and then minimal fresh spinach leaves for mainly colour.
• I would love some crunchy or crispy texture to this, so I’ll just have to visit on a Wednesday for their rib eye poached egg sandwich with fried onion rings!
• Ideally I would want this with braised beef short rib and crispy fried onions which I think they do offer on occasion too.
• The crispy toasted biscuit was standard, but easily overlooked with everything else going on. It was my “mop”.
• Any nice sit down restaurant serving less than this I’m going to judge now… j/k! (Sort of.)

Truffle-Lemon Hashbrown Skewer – 3.5/6 (Good-Very good)

• Organic local potatoes, fresh lemon, truffle oil, sea salt & chives $2.75
• The hashbrowns came across as roasted potatoes, but there is no oven in this trailer… however there is a Thermomix!
• The skin on potato nuggets are preboiled and then deep fried upon order, so they are almost like fries.
• These are apparently a favourite and they were good, but the other things I had set such a high standard and it was all relative.
• The potatoes were tender with a crispy skin and the flesh was buttery and creamy and infused with lots of lemon juice.
• They were actually quite tangy and reminded me of Greek potatoes.
• They were drizzled with an herb infused truffle oil which I could actually taste.
• I’m not too enthusiastic about truffle oil (see why here) and would prefer mushroom seasoning (apples and oranges), but I assume the majority love the oil.