mindless ramblings

Ever since our first visit to Commercial Drive a couple of months ago, we’ve been wanting to return and explore the area for more food. Our destination this time was Frenchies (1018 Commercial Drive), a 50’s style diner which serves French Canadian food like Montreal smoked meat sandwiches and poutines.

Looking over the menu, I noticed that the prices weren’t exactly too cheap. The cheapest smoked meat sandwich was $9.95 for 4 oz, and there wasn’t much else for less than that price too. Nevertheless, I decided to get a 6oz sandwich for a buck more, Esther had a Italian-French hot dog (I forget the French name for it) and we shared a poutine. Esther’s strawberry milkshake was somewhat bland. Perhaps we are used to the saccharine sweetness of the McDonald’s milkshakes, but this had a much weaker strawberry flavour. Huge serving though! Our total bill came up to just over $30… not too cheap for diner food!
The food followed the serving size of the milkshake. The amount of food was enormous. Esther’s hot dog was a good 8 inches long (spare the jokes please) and came complete with a huge mountain of fries. It tasted like a hot dog covered in pasta sauce really. The bun arrived somewhat soggy (steamed perhaps?) and the sauce didn’t help the cause. The sausage was nice though, with a thick skin and a faint hint of spices in the meat. The sandwich wasn’t all that big, but it came with a side of coleslaw which kinda helped to wash down the massive amounts of food we were consuming. It was quite good, I had dijon mustard on mine and it gave a nice tartness to the meat and bread. The poutine was pretty decent too, but the gravy was not salty enough for me, and there wasn’t much gravy at all.

A pretty average meal in a pretty unique enviroment then. I guess Frenchies is somewhat of a novelty destination to me. I wouldn’t come here all the time but it’s a fun place to go with your friends and pretend you’re in a Archie comic hanging out at the Choklit Shoppe!