Cafe Review: Mowgli's Dessert Cafe
Address: 1209 9 Ave SE; Instagram: @mowglis.yyc
Mowgli’s recently just opened in Inglewood, in the place where Jam’s Diner was. Having been to Jam’s Diner a couple of times, I can tell you that the quality of the food had been declining for quite some time so I knew it was only a matter of time before we saw that restaurant being replaced by someone new. In communities like Inglewood, Kensington, and downtown, rent is pretty steep and if places aren’t profiting, it’s hard to stay afloat with a property in one of those areas.
I had seen Mowgli’s on social media for a while and several people had sent me posts about the place so I wanted to check this place out for myself. At the time of this review and of our visit, they were serving a pop up breakfast/brunch menu.
On the surface, the menu, like the interior of this place looked extremely promising. So much so that I had serious difficulties deciding what I wanted to eat. Eventually I settled on the MFG, my husband ordered their bagel plate and my friends ordered the Jungle Bowl with Pulled Beef and the Chili Chorizo Shakshuka.
The MFC is a waffle topped with Mowglis [sic] fried chicken, a schzewan [sic] sauce, furikake, pickled cucumber slaw and a poached egg. Well I can tell you first off, I wasn’t terribly impressed that they didn’t use an apostrophe in “Mowgli’s” and that they spelled “Sichuan/Szechuan” wrong, but I decide, “who cares how they spell things as long as the make good food right?” Boy was I wrong. The fried chicken was pounded super thin so most of it was just batter, there was no “schzewan” sauce on the chicken or over the dish, which was sorely needed, the waffle was dry and sad, the pickled cucumber was just pickled cucumber and the slaw was barely dressed. I ended up taking one or two bites of the waffle before giving up. I wish it had come with some kind of sauce or syrup. It would’ve helped a lot. The pickling on the cucumber was quite good though. It was just the right amount of sour and sweet while still being crunchy. The dish also came with fresh fruit and tater tots which I hadn’t expected so that was nice. However, the tater tots kept falling apart, making it hard to eat. Also, when we asked for ketchup for the tater tots, they brought us packet ketchup. I’d expect that from fast food, somewhere like McDonald’s but not a sit down restaurant. Also, given the size of the waffle and fried chicken, one single poached egg on top of the thing looked really sad.
The Bagel Breakfast Plate my husband ordered gave him the choice of bagel and spread and also came with eggs any style and a choice of bacon or sausage. Well, my husband decided on the Mowgli’s seed mix spices with a roasted almond and honey spread, eggs done over easy, and bacon. The waitress joked with us, asking if we wanted the eggs and bacon on the bagel, saying that was a weird thing to do. Lo and behold how does the dish come out? With the eggs and bacon inside the bagel. Overall, my husband was pretty impressed with the dish - the cream cheese had good flavour, though it was more liquidy than you’d expect from a cream cheese, the eggs were cooked well and bacon was as expected. He, however, was not a huge fan of the bagel, finding it kind of tough to eat and dry. In his words “the fruit and the tater tots and the price were the best part of this dish”.
Both the Jungle Bowl and the Shakshuka looked quite good. Unfortunately, I only managed to get a picture of the Jungle Bowl. Both friends found the dishes to be very carb heavy and ended up with a carb coma when they got home.
My friend ordered the Jungle Bowl with Pulled Beef, Hollandaise on the side, a side of fruit, and the eggs done hard. Well I can tell you, the beef looked more like just cubes, and the cheese curds (which I stared at for the longest time before I figured out what it was) was kinda melted into one big sheet and pretty browned. I thought it was a fried egg and it took until me writing this review to realize what it was. In short, it looked pretty unappetizing. My friend said that because she had to deconstruct the dish so much, it was kind of hard to judge if this would’ve been good. Her review of her dish was as follows:
The best part were the tots. Really fluffy and crispy. I forgot about the hollandaise on the side and when I finally tried it, it was kind of bland and the texture was foamy instead of creamy. The cheese would've been better if it was melted like poutine style instead of fried. Without any sauce the bowl was kind of dry and the beef was saltier than I preferred. If I had added the hollandaise sauce I think it would've balanced it out, but it needs an avocado or something to add that moisture and cut into the abundance of tots. For a bowl to be called a 'Jungle' there wasn't much greenery besides the spring onions. The eggs were okay. If they were made medium instead of hard then it would've helped with the moisture and adding in the creaminess.
The Shakshuka was served in a pizza dough bowl and filled with tomato sauce, crumbled chorizo, two poached eggs, and a slice of sour dough. I thought that was a very cool concept, but also, as it turned out, it was very filling. My other friend ended up packing most of it to go. His thoughts on the dish were:
I enjoyed my shakshuka. The flavour was good, but it's a lot of pizza dough and tots to get through. I also ordered my eggs medium and one was correct and the other was hard.
I have mixed feelings about coming back here, but I’ve heard that their desserts are pretty decent. Considering it is called a dessert cafe, I will venture an attempt to return here again to try said desserts, but like my husband said, seems like a lot of restaurants nowadays are trying to do too much and stretching themselves too thin. Maybe pop up breakfast wasn’t meant to be.
We all also got drinks. My husband felt that his Americano was fine. A little watered down, but he wrote it off as just ordering a larger size resulting in a weaker tasting coffee. I, on the other hand, got the cappuccino. Cappuccinos have grown on me in the past couple years and that is generally my go to in the mornings. This one was awful. It tasted to me like cigarette water with a lot of milk. My friend ordered a hot chocolate and felt that it had an okay chocolate taste, though it was a bit weak. It was lower on the sweetness scale which she liked because it wasn’t so sweet that it coated her tongue with cloying sweetness and didn’t need some kind of palate cleanser.
My rating is as follows:
Atmosphere and Accessibility: 2.5/5
They did massive renos to the place and it actually looks a lot nicer than Jam’s Diner did, though it might not be a fair comparison since the vibe of the two are completely different. However, they only renoed the main area of the restaurant and the bathrooms are still in the old style. I did not appreciate that none of the toilet paper holders had paper in them and all of them were either balance on top of the holder or on the toilet tank lid.
Also, the floor both in the bathroom and in the restaurant were sticky. It was really gross and off putting.
If I’m remembering correct, the restaurant isn’t very accessibility friendly as there is a ledge/threshold that needs to be stepped over in order to get into the restaurant which would be difficult in a wheelchair.
Service: 2/5
The service was super slow. We had drank all the water waiting for our friends to arrive and it took until almost the end of the meal plus us asking before they refilled it. We actually had 2 servers and neither of them noticed or communicated with each other so we had to repeat ourselves several times to each of them. Not impressed.
Food: 2.25/5
Nope. There were some redeeming qualities, but overall, just really bad. It’s nice they have their own industrial baking kitchen in the back and make everything fresh in house, but when it’s not good, that doesn’t even make a difference.
Price: 3/5
Price was not bad and my husband wasn’t unhappy about it, but I didn’t even think it was worth what I paid.
Overall Rating: 2.4375/5