Last Temptation

At one in the morning the kitchen at Last Temptation is still sending out breakfast. Its all-day eggs share the menu with Pad Thai, perogies, Greek salads, pita pizzas and Mexican burritos — a spread that refuses to pick a country and treats that refusal as the point. Last Temptation is a Kensington Market pub and café on Kensington Avenue, priced for a casual stop and built for a table where nobody orders the same thing.

The house-named plates are where the kitchen shows its hand. Last Temptation Eggs anchor the all-day breakfast with shrimp, garlic, lemon, pepper and onions, a morning dish specific enough to read as the room's signature rather than another eggs-and-toast line. The Vegetarian Spring Rolls are made in house, fried, and served with peanut sauce, and they work as the shared plate before an order splinters. From there the menu keeps widening: Dijon breaded chicken with mushrooms and rice, potato perogies under sauteed onions, a grilled kolbassa sandwich, French onion soup below toast and cheese, and pita pizzas that run from a Greek build to a meat-heavy one. Few of these dishes share a tradition. All of them share a price.

Breakfast is the section that most rewards showing up off-hours. Beyond the house eggs, the all-day list runs to stuffed French toast filled with ham and cheese or with apple, raisins and honey, along with omelettes, pancakes, steak and eggs, and both eggs Benedict and a tofu version of it. Because the kitchen keeps the section on the menu from open to close, it doubles as a late brunch, a hangover plate, or a full dinner alternative for anyone who would rather order eggs than an entrée at nine at night.

The breadth points to a kitchen that plans for whoever comes through the door. Vegetarian diners get more than a token substitution — hummus and pita, fried tofu, summer rolls, vegetarian chili, a warm market salad, a veggie burger, pita pizza, Pad Thai and fried rice all hold a place on the standing menu, which makes a mixed table easy to seat. The Asian plates — chow mein, Shanghai noodles, curry chicken, tom yum — run alongside the wings, nachos and chili cheese fries, and the menu never suggests that one side belongs more than the other. For a group that cannot agree, that is the practical draw: everyone finds a plate without the table having to negotiate a single cuisine.

The drink board gives the place a bar rhythm the food alone would not. House sangria arrives with seasonal fruit, orange juice and lime soda, and the cocktail list adds house pours like the Temptation Sunrise and the Kensington Lemonade beside beer and coffee drinks. The board gives it more range than a food-only café, enough that a visit can tilt toward a drink-led stop or a sit-down meal. In warm weather the patio on Kensington Avenue becomes the better seat, and the kitchen stays open from noon until two in the morning, seven days a week — long enough that one address turns out a breakfast plate, an afternoon pint and a plate of chili cheese fries well after midnight.

The appeal is low-stakes by design. A group with five different cravings can take the patio, split an order of spring rolls, and let the meal wander from breakfast to noodles to a sandwich without anyone having to settle. The prices keep the visit from becoming a production, and the hours keep it available long after most kitchens have closed. That the same Kensington Avenue counter does all of this from noon until close, every day, is what has kept it a neighbourhood fixture through years of storefront turnover around it — a place measured less by any single plate than by how many different reasons there are to walk in.