Tasting Journey #16 - Jethro's Fine Grub

Jethro's Fine Grub
3420 Dunbar Street
604-569-3441
www.jethrosfinegrub.com


Finally, after 2 attempts of dining at Jethro's Fine Grub for brunch, we finally got a table after an entire hour of waiting in line. Last week, we arrived at noon and was shocked at the crazy line up, so this week, we thought we'd better be an early bird stay away from the crazy line up.  To our surprise, the line was just as long at 9:30am.  There was a time where I loved watching the "Diner's Drive In and Dives" on the Food Network.  This is an American show where they go around to different parts of the country to introduce some excellent diners.  For one of the episode, they decided to head North to Vancouver.  Jethro's was the restaurant that they recommended trying out.  Seeing that it is a short 3min drive from my house, I had the name of the restaurant imprinted in my brain as a "must-try" place, perfectly in line with my goal for this year.

After an hour of waiting in the bone-chill cold windy cold weather, we finally got in.  While we waited, we peered yearningly through the window (somewhere down inside, I thought to myself that maybe if I stared at the guests eat, I'd telepathically make them gobble faster and leave, ha).  Jethro's got 8 tables, and probably seats a maximum of 25 people. I would say that the average table turnover rate is maybe every 30min.  As expected, every table had ordered some sort of pancake.  The portions are enormous, in a size easily made for giants.  As soon as we sat down, it was all business - order, eat, leave. 

We had ordered a "Gold Rush" pancake-caramel, pecan and streusel folded in a banana flavoured pancake, and a "La Nina"-corn cake benedict with chili & poached egg with drizzles of Hollandaise sauce.  The pancake was awesome (note the size...I had purposely included the mug in the photo to give you a visual perspective of what I mean by huge)! Fluffy, full of flavour, and rich in taste and texture.  Though amazing, we were only able to eat 3/8th of the pancake.  The La Nina on the other hand, wasn't as good as expected. It looked delicious, but the cornbread was very flaky and the Hollandaise sauce was slightly too blend to well-compliment the poached eggs. It was a weak dish.  I would have liked to try their sandwiches (or even the pull pork as recommended in the show), but with just the two of us, two dishes is already way too much to consume.

Is it worth the one hour wait? well, maybe for the first time.  Would I go again? Maybe...but I'll seriously consider either 1) calling to put my name on the wait list first so that I don't have to spend an hour waiting in line, or 2) order take outs although it probably won't taste as good.  If this many people are willing to wait in line at 9am on a weekend, then Jethro's gotta be doing something that's extraordinarily good right?