Toast

Top of the morning

Toast serves breakfast with an Irish twist

It’s my calling, so I just decided that I was going to open a restaurant here.

Ann Brady was very careful to not market Toast as an exclusively Irish breakfast and lunch restaurant when she opened it in 2015.

“There’s just not enough around here. If I was to only depend on that community, I would not be in business.”

she wryly jokes in a Midlands accent.

Thankfully Brady is not only still in business, business is booming. From the very first Toast, which opened 11 years ago on Bellerose Drive, the family now has sister restaurants in Sherwood Park and the Windermere area of Edmonton. The underplayed Irish component? Also still very much a part of the menu, with a full Irish breakfast including white and black pudding as one of the many sunrise options.

Brady has been at the game for decades. After working at a breakfast and lunch place in New York modeled on a train carriage, she returned home to her native Ireland to apply the lessons she’d learned. There, she combined her eatery experience with selling hardware, jewelry, and accessories in a succession of successful eateries. 

Then the economic downturn hit. Brady and her husband, who was from Canada, took stock. Not only did her husband have family in St. Albert, there were better opportunities to be had in the province. When Brady and her husband decided to move to St. Albert in 2013, she immediately noticed a market gap.

“I could not find a decent place in St. Albert to go for breakfast. It’s my calling, so I just decided that I was going to open a restaurant here.”

She Says

Brady attributes Toast’s phenomenal success to a number of factors. There’s the repeat customer base, loyal patrons who are constantly spreading word about the eatery. There’s also the staff, who Brady unstintingly praises for both their hard work and dedication. She notes that she rarely has to advertise for staff, and when she’s away from the restaurant she never has to worry about the business. 

Finally, there’s the food itself.    

“I would say we are, in my opinion, superior,” she bluntly states. “Honestly, we are definitely the best at what we do. We’re independent. We’re not a chain. So, if you’re a customer here and you want something a particular way, we will do our best to make sure you get it that way.”

Toast covers all the bases with their breakfast, from granola bowls to Tex Mex, huevos rancheros to avocado toast. The Full Irish is a signature dish with a few items that aren’t all that common in Canada. First is the white pudding, made of oatmeal, pork and breadcrumbs, and black pudding, which is pig’s blood, onion, spices and oatmeal. Both are definitely not
the sort of food we associate with the word “pudding.” 

Brady has had to explain these traditional Irish items to customers a number of times. She points out that black pudding in particular has been recognized as a super food full of iron. Brady is also happy to hand out free samples, and notes that people are often surprised to find that they like it. Both the white and black pudding, as well as the restaurant’s sausage, are flown in from the East Coast, where they’re prepared by
an Irish butcher. 

“It took me a long time to find someone who could make these,” she says. “I tried all the local butchers, gave them a recipe and they couldn’t get it. The puddings were too large, too flat, too purple, too soggy. We just could not get it. So, I knew this butcher from my own hometown and he told us ‘Yeah, no problem.’ So, I just order everything directly from him.”

It might seem like owning three restaurants would be a lot of work, but Brady says that once they’re up and running she’s able to stand back and let the staff take over. It’s because of this that she’s even thinking of pushing the concept forward a couple more times in the future. She’d love to open a Toast in Calgary in a couple of years, but she’s also looking at one in Edmonton proper. No locations scouted as of yet, but there’s a general idea running in the back of her head.“I have looked at several locations in Edmonton, but I feel like Toast would be a destination spot. You’re coming to me so you have to have parking, you have to be able to make it easy to get there. I won’t go to a restaurant in Edmonton if I don’t have ease of parking, if I have to walk too far. So, I need it to be in something like a strip mall where there’s lots of parking, or somewhere where people don’t have to walk the extra block just to get to our door. We’ll see what comes up.” t8n