Food Review: PINO (Montreal)

On the busy street of Crescent Road, an Italian corner restaurant namely, PINO, grabs my business on a bright sunny Sunday afternoon in Montreal.

The menu is quite extensive. You have all the normal dish categories. The menu looks very generic and not all too appetizing, but who knows, maybe when it comes out it'll look good enough to eat.

Sitting up in Pino's "L" shape patio on the second floor, we get a pretty good view on Crescent Street.

I opted for the special brunch menu. And boy was it big. For $18.00, this is what you get. First they start you off with a mimosa. Second item is a HUGE fruit plate (which can easily feed 2-3 people). For the main entree, I went traditional and got the Smoked Salmon Eggs Benedict. Lastly, they give you a dessert and coffee. But I was way too stuffed, so I just try the dessert with no coffee.

Mimosa & Fruit plate (photo above)

The Smoked Salmon Eggs Benedict was not to the best, or very good. I like having my eggs run a little, so this was just slightly overcooked for me. The potatoes were just alright. The hollandaise sauce was not as bad as "Sunnyside Grill" (in Toronto), and the richness was there, but barely.

And lastly, they called it a "crepe" dessert, but this is what it actually was:

That is..... a pancake. Perhaps to them, (French-Canadians) crepe means pancake. Anywho, it was a little disappointing since I haven't had a crepe in ages and was really looking forward to it.

Would I go again? Perhaps. I did enjoy their patio atmosphere (on the second level), but due to the high traffic, it was very slow service. The food was definitely on the large side, but the food might still have some work ahead of them.