Jam Café (Beatty Street)

The Bowl Only Three People Finished

3.5 of 5

Jam Café came over from Victoria, where Jim and Candy Walmsley had been feeding the island since 2012. In April 2016 they opened on Beatty Street with partner Mike Deas-Dawlish, in the old Danica's space, and Vancouver has been waiting politely on the sidewalk ever since. Kitsilano and Lonsdale followed. The formula did not change on the ferry.

The formula is volume and honesty. The kitchen has gone through something like four thousand eggs a week, makes pancake batter several times a day and whips hollandaise to order, the kind of detail a breakfast place hides when it cuts corners. The Charlie Bowl is the legend: hash browns, biscuits, ham, green onion, cheese, sausage gravy and two sunny eggs. Deas-Dawlish has said he has seen only three people finish it, one of them a little guy of about a hundred and twenty pounds. Respect to that man. The Little Charlie exists for the rest of us. Fried chicken French toast and a three stack of pancakes cover the sweet side.

The decor is thrift store theology: auction finds, an outboard motor, breakfast jokes on the walls, some of the art by Candy herself. Hours are short, eight to two thirty on weekdays and until three on weekends, and roughly nine orders in ten are breakfast even after lunch begins. Weekday mornings are your friend. Order the Little Charlie unless you have something to prove. If you do, call your cardiologist first.

Order this: The Little Charlie, Fried chicken French toast, Three-stack pancakes
The damage: $$
Go: A weekday morning, 8 to 2:30
Find it: 556 Beatty St, Vancouver, BC V6B 2L3