My niece Molly is in her second year of university in Saskatoon. When we arrived in Saskatoon the night before, I asked her whether she'd rather go for drinks or brunch. She's 19, so I absolutely would have taken her on the pub crawl.
But for a university student, I'd always expect them to choose not starving.
After surviving our pub crawl and somehow getting up at a reasonable hour, we headed over to the university to pick her up.
This year, she moved over to the dorms south of the main campus and holy fuck, what an upgrade that is.
For the same dollar amount.
Going from a communal stove for an entire floor to having your own stove in your dorm must feel pretty fucking liberating. I'm not saying I'd have been a better student with my own kitchen, but I definitely would have had better snacks.
With Molly safely extracted from university life, we headed downtown for brunch at Living Sky Café, a woman-owned business with a warm, welcoming space that felt like a pretty perfect place to start the day after the previous night's shenanigans.
I started things off with a 3 oz Living Sky Mimosa, made with grapefruit juice and black currant syrup. Nat grabbed a smoked Caesar, while Molly started slow with an iced tea before eventually joining the smoked Caesar club.
For food, I ordered the Royale Benedict. House-smoked salmon flakes, capers and feta on an English muffin, topped with two soft-basted eggs and lemon dill hollandaise.
I also ordered a Drunken Pig sandwich to go, specifically to fuel my gambling later in the day at Maidstone and, subsequently, Gold Horse Casino on the return trip. Crispy bacon, caramelized onion, flambéed pear, melted brie and mustard aioli on ciabatta.
Brunch wasn't just about recovery. It was about preparing for battle.
Molly went with the Traditional Benedict, which swapped the salmon for crispy bacon and tomato while keeping the rest of the fixings.
Nat went with a single gluten-free waffle with berries and whipped cream, along with the Gluten Free Dream Bagel, which was actually substituted with gluten-free toast. That came with whipped cream, fried egg, bacon, tomato, arugula and red onion.
The only complaints I heard from Nat were about the gluten-free waffle. What was advertised as a single waffle arrived as two quarters of a waffle, and it was pretty obvious it was store-bought.
That said, I understand it. Preparing gluten-free options in-house can be incredibly difficult, and I'd rather see a place offer a reliable gluten-free option than try to make one from scratch and completely fuck it up.
The Benedicts were good, but there were a couple of things holding them back.
Molly and I both noticed that the English muffins weren't toasted. That took away a bit of the contrast the dish needed. With soft eggs, hollandaise and salmon, you want something underneath it all with a little texture.
I also found the feta came through a little too strongly on the Royale Benedict. Instead of adding another layer to the dish, it started competing with the salmon and lemon dill hollandaise.
After the mimosa, I ordered a cappuccino, and I'm pleased to report this thing was fucking perfect.
Darker than most, not riddled with sugar and actually tasted like coffee. Exactly what I want from a cappuccino.
Very enjoyable.
I followed that up with a raspberry almond cinnamon bun, which was delicious. The cinnamon and almond worked beautifully together, but I'm not convinced the raspberry needed to be there.
It didn't really contribute much to the overall flavour and almost clashed with the cinnamon and almond.
Sometimes you just need to let a cinnamon bun be a cinnamon bun.
Nat also ended up ordering a carrot cake to go, which was very clearly homemade. It was incredibly moist and delicious. Definitely worth taking a piece for the road.
Overall, Living Sky Café was a really enjoyable brunch stop. The space was welcoming, the food had some genuinely good ideas behind it, and there were only a couple of small execution issues that kept the dishes from being as good as they could have been.
And after a night of questionable decisions, waking up, picking up a university student and sitting down to a proper brunch with a damn good cappuccino was exactly what the doctor ordered.
No regrets.
Well, maybe a few from the night before. But none of them were brunch's fault.