Bonjour Brioche

Bonjour Brioche puts the bakery in its name, and that is the right order to read the place in. The French bakery and bistro on the corner of Queen Street East and Degrassi works best when a visit starts at the pastry case and the brunch is built around it — a quiche or a croissant first, the eggs second. There are two ways in. The first-come dining room handles the sit-down brunch, with no reservations and no wait list, while a separate window on Queen Street keeps coffee, pastries, sandwiches, and pickup orders moving for anyone who would rather not wait for a table.

The savoury side runs on quiches and brioche. Whole quiches anchor both the dine-in plate and the pre-order menu, and the brioche turns up sweet — a Blueberry Custard Brioche — alongside butter and cinnamon raisin croissants in the case. Brunch fills out from there. French Toast and the Bonjour Benny cover the sweet and the egg ends of the table, the Spicy Bacon Sandwich layers avocado, tomato, and cheddar for anyone who wants lunch weight, and a vegan-friendly Moroccan tofu scramble comes with sourdough for the plant-based corner. There is a French Onion Soup, a Tomato, Basil, and Goat Cheese Flan among the savoury tarts, and a dessert case that runs from Flourless Chocolate Cake to Basque Cheesecake. A board item such as the Meatloaf Breakfast — caramelized onion, two eggs, rosti potato, and baguette — rounds out the savoury side on a given morning.

Reading the bakery first changes what the savoury plates are doing. A quiche backed by a kitchen that bakes its own crusts, breads, and tarts carries more character than the same dish from a standard brunch cafe, and that pastry foundation is what gives the eggs and the sandwiches their footing. Pricing stays modest for the neighbourhood, whether the order is a pastry and a coffee or a fuller brunch plate. The trade-off is daytime hours and a narrow window. The kitchen runs breakfast and brunch, closes by mid-afternoon, and goes dark on Tuesdays, and the signature bakery items sell out, often early — the cafe's own warning to anyone treating the visit as a late-morning stroll. Come for the pastry selection and timing matters; come for the sit-down brunch and the line is the cost of admission.

The longevity is a family project. Lori and Henri Feasson opened Bonjour Brioche in 1997, with Henri as the founding pastry chef, and the bakery has held the same corner near Queen and Degrassi ever since — long enough, by local accounts, to read as a Riverside fixture across nearly three decades. That tenure is why the cafe feels like a neighbourhood habit as much as a brunch destination. It predates much of the development that filled in around Leslieville and the east end, and it has kept the same daytime, bakery-first rhythm the whole way through.

What ties it together is how the two modes cover for each other. On a good morning the dining room fills first-come and the bakery case thins as the line moves; when a table is not worth the wait, the Queen Street window turns the same trip into a coffee, a brioche, and a box of pastries carried home. Pre-orders push it further still — whole quiches, tarts, cakes, breads, and sandwich batches with about a day's notice, enough to build a brunch at the kitchen table instead of in the dining room. The same case handles small occasions, from a cake picked up for a birthday to a pastry box for a weekend table, and a solo visit can stay simple: a coffee, a croissant, a bowl of soup at the counter. The best version is planned. Arrive early enough that the croissants are still stacked, choose between the dining room and the window, and let the bakery do the deciding from there.