Purple Onion Restaurant

Great neighbourhood greasy spoon. The eggs aren’t fancy, the coffee doesn’t have art on it, and there is no hipster vibe — it does serve up a hearty breakfast with good service. I am a frequent diner and am happy they are doing what they’re doing.
Their homefries are baked or stovetop, not deep fried, their bacon is «maple bacon» and they have rye toast. All of these happen to be my favourite things.

Great prices, excellent dinner food. Try the pies, they are homemade. I’d say they are just like my mom makes, just way better. Waiter was awesome and attentive.

Came here earlier this week — I was looking for a place to eat while in the area.
I came here with one other person. Greeted by the server as we walked in, she told us to seat ourselves and she would be with us shortly. The atmosphere is kinda nice… it’s a quaint little diner that focuses mostly on breakfast. Now, I’m not particularly picky about how long it takes food to arrive because I know that there is a BIG difference between having your food cooked FAST and WELL; however, I do play close attention to how long it takes a server to take an order from the moment you sit down until they come by. At this restaurant, it took 30 minutes to come by and ask what we wanted, even though our menus were closed, stacked, and at the side of the table.
At one point while waiting for her to come by and take our order, I did hear another customer ask the waitress, «do you have any help?» The waitress replied with «no, it’s usually just me here taking care of everyone». I proceeded to look around to see how many tables she was taking care of. Sure enough, there were 11 tables for just 1 waitress. They definitely need to hire more people, or something. Getting the bill was also a long wait.
The menu is cheap. I ordered a daily breakfast (it’s about $ 6.95) with hot chocolate, while my guest ordered the Mega Breakfast (it’s basically the same thing, just it comes with french toast and costs $ 10.95) and a tea.
The eggs and bacon were fine. The potatoes weren’t very good at all. They were mostly burned, with a charcoal-​like taste.

Terrible beyond belief.
Burgers were boring, they use fake mayo
onion rings seemed like they were cooked in ooold oil
coleslaw was pickled? or rotten?
WARM BEER. Gah…
Almost forgot, my friend and I made the mistake of assuming that the 6 or so people in the place were customers. nop, turned out to be a whole family that was running the place hanging out. Speaking loudly in a foreign language.

Stopped by for dinner last night, we live in the area and decided to talk a walk and decide what we wanted. Had seen this place before and decided a simple, homemade meal would be nice. A great little place — nothing fancy but the food was absolutely delicious coming from 2 people that worked in the industry for years. The burgers are the nicest burgers I have had in a very long time and a great price — what a steal!

I love me a greasy spoon meal every once in a while.
Today was one of those days.
Chiara and I were strolling along Dundas West in Toronto’s Junction neighbourhood this morning and popped into The Purple Onion.
I’d heard about this popular greasy hotspot from another friend of mine, who claims to be a regular. She’s gone a number of times with her husband, her kids, with girlfriends… to me, it sounded like a versatile place that everyone would like.
And so this rainy Sunday morning, Chiara and I walked in and were directed by the busy yet pleasant hostess/​server to «take a seat wherever we wanted.» All the booths were taken, so we opted for a table near the window. As we sat at the table that looked like it belonged in an office cafeteria, we noticed that there were about a dozen more people who came in just after we did. All tables seemed to fill up within 5 minutes of us arriving. Popular spot for 9:40am on a Sunday morning.
It was just what we wanted at that moment. The busy waitress with an ever-​present coffee pot, the menu listing All-​Day breakfast options and other diner comfort foods, ketchup, HP Sauce and salt and pepper shakers right on the table. What a perfect place for a morning girlish gab session.
The tables were full. The coffee was hot. The French toast was tasty. Families were there with their babies in high chairs, elderly locals were reading their newspapers, young couples were nursing their hangovers from last night’s partying. What a strange yet familiar mix of people who all seemed to love this greasy spoon that, once upon a time, may have been an office. (One can tell if you look carefully at the décor, structure and lay out of the place)
The place isn’t fancy, but the food was tasty and cheap. If you crave bacon, eggs, pancakes, French toast, home fries, sausage and all of the other breakfast delights that you can find in a traditional greasy spoon, this is your place.
Apparently there are options for lunch and dinner that are just as tasty. I plan to back for more. I mean, I just have to try the steak now, right?

The food itself was ok. Let’s just get that out of the way. It wasn’t great, but it was decent diner food, which I was in the mood for. The reason I’m giving it 2 stars is the service was HORRIBLE. I was the only person in there except for the waitress’ family and I’m not exaggerating when I say she didn’t come over to check on me once. It took her a long time to even take my order, and once she brought my food over, I had to get up and ask for butter and water and then it literally took about 5 – 10 minutes before she ever came over with the water, because she was just hanging out with her family. She walked right by my table sweeping and cleaning up, saw when I was done, and it was another 10 minutes before that before she ever came and picked my plate up. She didn’t bring the check, I had to go up and ask for it. Pretty bad service experience all around.

Ten dollars …
If a business is charging a minimum of $ 10 per order … the food better be good. Not mediocre.
It should not leave an after taste & you should not wake up the next day with your Kidneys hurting.
I’m disappointed. How hard is it to cook a regular Hamburger.
Many ingredients are being substituted instead of meat to save «The Almighty Buck» Very unhappy with their Burger
P. S. If Unilocal feels this is outside their Guidelines? . Unilocal On This

Was here for the 14 oz Tenderloin Steak again. It did not disappoint. I observed someone enjoying a hamburger and even just the look of it looked good. I must try one and I noticed they even refurbished the the dining room furniture.

Hungover and desperate for any kind of breakfast I threw my previous experience to the wind and decided to eat here once again. I think I would have eaten just about anything to stop the queasiness in my stomach and to stop the marching band from performing a drum line in my cerebellum.
So entering with sunglasses on, and low expectations I waned simple Bacon and eggs, with a freshly squeezed OJ and an endless supply of water. Guess what? They totally delivered on all fronts.
Service was on point, snappy and attentive. When I ordered my freshly squeezed OJ and a chocolate milk for my DC they arrived right away. My water was always kept full as I tried to regulate my lingering BAC (Blood Alcohol Content).
Best of all, the food: 3 eggs over east, hash-​browned potatoes and bacon (done soft… or limp as I prefer to call it). All done awesome, PLUS the portion of maple flavoured bacon was excessively large — I think I had 4 – 5 pieces!
I’ve upgraded from a disappointing 1 star to a 3 star based on all improvements but reserve further upgrades in their rating based on previous experiences.
Thanks to the Purple Onion for saving my bacon (hehe… literally) Sunday morning — it was much appreciated!
Eatcrest Out!

Not a bad breakfast.
Not impressed with the garlic bread on the hot dog bun with a barely any cheese on it. I’m not sure if I’d return.

Came here for breakfast and won’t be doing that again. Thoroughly mediocre, with typically crappy potatoes and toast. The milkshake was pretty good, though.
bacon B–
cheese omelette B–
potatoes C
toast C–
chocolate milkshake B

My friend and I were searching for a place to brunch one Sunday morning. We decided on the Purple Onion almost solely based on Kent’s 4-​star review. I am now left wondering what life choices Kent has made to want to give this place 4-​stars.
Let’s start with the service. Wait, what service? There wasn’t any. Once we had placed our orders the waitress disappeared. After much too long of a wait we were offered coffee and tea refills and when it came time for the bill we just had to get up and ask for it at the counter. Maybe we should have just walked out without paying, I doubt they would have even noticed. My friend and I also noticed this same situation was happening at the table next to us and overheard them complaining about it too.
For my meal I chose the Ultimate Breakfast. It consists of 2 pieces of bacon and sausage, ham, hamburger patty, eggs with homefries and toast. Sounds pretty good right? Well if you look at the picture I uploaded what I actually got was the Saddest Breakfast. The Saddest Breakfast consists of 2 pieces of cold bacon, 2 dried out sausages, a rubbery slice of ham, an ok hamburger patty, eggs, a soggy mess of homefries[1], and burnt rye toast that they charge extra for and don’t tell you. Yes, they give you the option of rye toast but don’t tell you upfront that there is an additional charge.
[1] I’m a purist when if comes to homefries, french fries, etc. and never put ketchup on them. I put ketchup these ones.

I like this place. It’s perfect diner food plus decent steaks. My regular order is a small steak and eggs, medium rare, over medium, fries, dry brown toast with a half and half of mushrooms and onions on the side. The steak is just so much better than it has any right being. I’ve had it dozens of times and I think it was overdone twice. I order my eggs over medium because, elsewhere, when I order over easy, sometimes they’re just a little too raw. Perfect over medium every time.
Great local diner. (my buddy’s brother drives in from Markham)

I am not a big breakfast lover… generally I need to be wowed (and sometimes dragged out of bed) to really enjoy breakfast. That being said the Purple Onion was pretty good but still has some room for improvement
I ordered the steak and eggs; my steak was cooked perfectly and tasted great. I asked for a boiled egg (cuz I prefer eating egg whites) and the waitress practically puzzled as if I had asked her for my egg to be dipped in sewage! Her look indicated she had no clue what a boiled egg was and/​or they didn’t make them. I ordered a well done fried egg instead and ate around the yoke.
The home fries here are pretty lackluster and even though I will usually pick at even the worse variety I lost my appetite for these ones quite quickly.
Overall my dining experience was ok and the price was very reasonable at $ 9.99.

The place looks way better inside than you’d expect. Large comfortable and clean booths, dark wood accents, and lots of room.
I went for a breakfast and for 8 $ had breaded chicken cutlets, eggs, hashbrowns, and rye bread. Chicken cutlets for breakfast. They were a tad greasy but still heavenly. I recommend the Purple Onion highly… even if the name sounds like slang for an unidentified body part.

My mum had a dream about this place before we even knew it existed, and, being from around the area we decided to check it out.
It’s quite small, and the kitchen is located behind the seating instead of in front like I’m normally used to for a diner-​style joint (I know it says steakhouse but they mostly seem to have a lot of diner food).
We ordered a burger and a large breakfast plate. The waiting service was satisfactory, but not overly friendly, and for a slow day it took about 25 minutes for the food to come out.
Now the burger itself was super, but it was drowning in mustard when I had specifically asked for mayonnaise, and my boyfriend’s pancake was burnt which was kind of weird.
The rest of it was great though, I liked the option of having peameal bacon instead of regular, because peameal is –super-​. :D
All in all though, it was. okay. I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat there, though.
Thinking of value per money I’d rate it 3.5÷5 stars.

Great Neighbourhood Diner! What can you say? It’s a typical diner menu. Well priced. Consistently good food. What I was shocked about, was how well the steaks are prepared. Perfectly timed broiled steaks. I always have the 10 oz. serloin and it’s always perfect. The sides are a bit unimaginatively prepared (it comes with some boiled broccoli, cauliflower and carrots with a garlic bun). But the meat is first class. I haven’t tried the other cuts. The chops were delish as well!
The souvlaki dinners are a mountain of food and very well done as well. I also very much enjoy the club sandwitch although, I find it somewhat skimpy in the amount of meat.
They have daily specials which are well worth trying. The Sunday roast beef was a typical diner roast with gravy and mash. Tasty and satisfying.
The service is always VERY friendly and helpful. We’ve never had any issues. They do seem to have a bit of a high turnover though. Not sure why. Perhaps just the age of the servers.
Great place for the family! It can be very busy on a Friday or Saturday night.

Only been here for weekend brunch but the food is always really good.
Service is a bit ditzy (hey when you bring me milk packets for my tea can you not just drop a handful on the table from 5 feet like I’m a chicken?) but what can you do.
My wife was pretty annoyed at the place last time we went but that has nothing to do with the restaurant itself, we were just seated next to a screaming, anxious, ADD-​riddled 6 year old who liked to climb all over her mom and my wife’s jacket and scream nonsense for an hour.
Awesome.
Anyway prices are fair, food is consistently good (for brunch anyway, dunno about the rest), and I will be going back if I can convince the wife this place isn’t a baby-​fest.

I lived in the area for over 15 years but never been to Purple Onion. Finally, last week I decided to check it out with a friend. We had their famous steak and eggs breakfast. The food was yummy, inexpensive and the service was great.
I gave it 5 stars because I don’t find anything wrong with this type of restaurant/​local dive. It gets 5 stars because it is exactly what you’d expect from the neighborhood diner.