Wilf & Ada's

Eggs in Purgatory is not the plate most people expect to find at a Bank Street diner. Poached eggs sit in a spicy tomato sauce, arugula and Grana Padano scattered over the top, toast and home fries on the side — comfort food with a sharper, saucier edge than the format usually allows. It is the dish that carries the whole idea of Wilf & Ada's, a daytime kitchen that trades on diner familiarity and then cooks like it has something to prove. The sauce carries real heat, the eggs are timed, and nothing about the plate coasts.

Brunch is the main event, and the benedicts are the clearest read on the kitchen. The Blackstone Benny stacks bacon and tomato under black-pepper hollandaise and chives, a plate built to be judged on egg timing and sauce work; the Florentine Benny runs the same idea down a vegetarian line. For the sweet side, the buttermilk French toast is the anchor — egg bread with vanilla and spice, stewed apple and berries, whipped cream, and maple — substantial enough to share or to settle a table that came for dessert disguised as breakfast. The avocado eggs hold down the lighter end for anyone who wants the brunch without the heft.

From there the menu widens into heartier territory without losing the thread. The Hungry Human Breakfast is the full-plate option; Poutine Galvaude brings curds and gravy into the brunch hour; a spicy meatball melt, the Dagwood, and a breakfast burger cover the lunch-leaning end, with a BLTE for anyone who wandered in wanting a sandwich. Those heartier plates get the same attention as the eggs — house-made gravy, real curds, the same kitchen habits carried across the menu. The spread is broad, but it never strays far from the diner's centre of gravity: eggs done well and a short list of comforts done properly.

What separates the kitchen from a standard all-day breakfast place is the scratch posture. Sauces, hollandaise, and the breakfast staples are made in house, a habit that traces back to the bread baked and the bacon cured on site in the diner's earlier years. Wilf & Ada's took over the former Ada's diner in 2014, keeping the counter format and the open kitchen while rebuilding the cooking from the ground up; local coverage at the time was careful to call it a scratch diner rather than a greasy spoon. The name nods to the corner's earlier life, but the kitchen behind it is the part that changed.

The compact dining room takes no reservations, which makes timing part of the meal instead of an afterthought. Arrive early, especially on a weekend, keep a first-choice order in mind, and the daytime pace works in your favour; come late and the wait itself becomes part of the visit. The scale rewards small parties and solo diners — a single order still lands on the kitchen's strengths, and for two, the move is to split sweet and savoury and cover both lanes at once. Larger groups are better off arriving flexible than treating it like a booked brunch.

The kitchen plans for dietary needs instead of improvising around them. Vegetarians have the avocado eggs and the Florentine benny; vegans get tofu-built versions of the classic breakfast and the eggs in purgatory rather than a plate of omissions; gluten-aware options are part of the regular rhythm, though strict needs are worth confirming at the counter before ordering. The sandwiches, fries, and heartier plates travel well for takeout and delivery, even if the benedicts are best eaten where they're plated. What ties it all together is a daytime kitchen that knows its hours and keeps them — open from morning, scratch-cooking through the brunch rush, and dark by two in the afternoon, every day it opens.