Brado Restaurant

Brado Restaurant
1399 Commercial Drive
Vancouver, BC

Late night eats… While I am no Sherman when it comes to eating at certain times of the day (or the night), when push comes to shove, well, I am willing to try anything. One night, I was in East Vancouver and decided to drive to Commercial Drive for good eats. Unfortunately, most of the places were already closed or close to closing (unlike previous instances, this was drawing closer to 11:00 p.m. already) so I was hesitant on the options remaining. That is until I drove past Brado…

I have been there in the past; however, I wasn’t sure on one detail: is this a 3-in-1 restaurant or they are supposed to be the part of the same “restaurant”. Notice I use that term loosely as it might also be considered a food court… As for the three “restaurants”, one is a Middle Eastern, one is more of a dessert like (though it looks closed) and the place I ended up going for that night: a pizza parlour with some goodies including poutine.

I could have gone for the pizza; however, there was *something* that prevented me from doing so. In these pizza parlours, the pies are usually under the lamp until these are served. Of course, depending on the turnaround, these can be fresh or… Let’s just say they look bad. In the case of Brado’s, they looked bad, really bad. As a result, I went for an alternative which ended up being chicken wings. And, to make it more “interesting”, I switch the fries for poutine. Now, I had in mind some burger and sandwiches (specially the Montreal smoked meat) but, having doubts of their turnaround, I decided not to.

At first, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was hoping for some form of mass packaged fried wings but these were actually quite good. If I were to compare them to House of Wing’s where the meat could slip out of the bones, these still had some sticky consistency. Of course, there a people going for both sides so I will leave it to personal preferences. The BBQ sauce didn’t really do anything so I won’t comment on it.

The poutine was… Odd. Starting with the fries, these were crispy, which didn’t work for me in this case. The cheese curds didn’t really melt either; fortunately, these weren’t that cold which ended up being sort of a mixed blessing. That is because the gravy was almost a thick form of starch that didn’t melt the cheese down. In a way, these components didn’t mix together very well – this is even comparing those I have had previously at Belgian Fries.

Had this been after clubbing, where I am really tired and just wanted something to fill up to my stomach, Brado might hit the spot. However, in my case, that didn’t necessarily work for me. One thing that work against this is the fact the wings with the regular fries were $10; switching to poutine was an additional $3. That is darn expensive, in my opinion, specially considering that places like Wings or House of Wings have them for $7.50/pound (which usually translates into 10 pieces).

Tagged under: Chicken • Late Night • Vancouver