Identity crisis

Cinnamon Xpress struggles to find its niche
Ottawa XPress

Article By: Colleen Johnson
Photo By: Ben Welland

Cinnamon Xpress suffers from a lack of a single identity, as it is at once a coffee shop, Internet café, ice cream shop, crêperie and all-day breakfast joint. In addition to all of that, it houses another business that specializes in custom cake design, called Cake Addiction.

The decor here isn’t particularly appealing, and the space seems more appropriate for an office than a restaurant. However, the place is looking significantly better than it did upon its initial opening some months ago.

On a recent visit, my date and I started off our breakfast with a couple of cups of coffee. Though this place claims to make a decent cup of joe, our brew wasn’t up to snuff. The coffee tasted burnt, with an ashy aftertaste.

The menu here features all-day breakfast items, light lunch fare and a wide range of sweet and savoury crêpes. The crêpes seemed like the most promising items of the group, so my date opted for the eggs Benedict crêpe, while I ordered up the peaches and cream crêpe.

While eggs Benedict on crêpes is a great menu idea in theory, the execution of the dish was sub par. The eggs were not cooked to the same doneness, with one poached correctly and the other overdone, with a hard-cooked yolk. The Hollandaise sauce was bland and the asparagus that garnished the dish was woody and undercooked. The potatoes on the side were limp, spicy potato wedges that tasted like they’d been cooked from frozen.

The peaches and cream crêpe was a sorry sight when it arrived at the table. I’m not usually a stickler for presentation, but in this case I’ll make an exception. The whipped cream had melted into an unappetizing looking puddle, while the cream cheese filling was smeared on the side of the plate. The caramelized peaches were tasty enough, but the pool of sticky caramel sauce over the top created a sickeningly sweet result.

There are much better crêpes to be had at the nearby Wild Oat in the Glebe. Though both the food and the service at Cinnamon Xpress left much to be desired, there is one thing that this place does right. The free Wi-Fi that’s offered here is screaming fast, with download speeds coming in at over 16 megabits per second. So if you’re the type to use a coffee shop as an extension of your home office, this place may be worth a visit.

Cinnamon Xpress
665 Bronson St.
613-680-3818

Breakfast: $4.99-$12.50
Crepes & lunch menu: $4.50-$16.99