Not Much to Roar About at the Lion's Den

The Lion’s Den café can be seen behind the little pie piece median from the intersection of Fraser and Kingsway. It is a little hole in the wall with a big personality. I couldn’t help but be constantly surprised once I stepped through its doorway. At first sight, you cannot help but be accosted by the Jamaican Bob Marleyesque décor which is literally crowned with a taxidermy lion over head. The person behind the counter was, I believe, to be a wildly outspoken Japanese woman who told us that we had to serve ourselves our own coffee, because she could not take care of us all day because she was by herself and she was hung over. As we served ourselves coffee from the eclectic thrift store mugs, we couldn’t help but notice that the menu was a fusion of your diner breakfast, Jamaican dishes nicely rounded out by your option of Japanese delights. We opted for the standard eggs, hash and bacon (which we were promptly told that there may be too many of us in the café and that there may not be enough bacon for everybody!) to set at least a baseline for food. To our surprise when we looked past the dumbwaiter window, we couldn’t help but notice that the kitchen was a kitchen one might find in a rental suite with about the same quality utensils. While we waited, we noticed a steady flow of people until the second staff member arrived. The actual breakfast was a decent enough home style breakfast and the wait wasn’t nearly as long as expected. It actually appeared that the place, despite it quirks, had a steady routine of abuse customers, take their orders and give them enough service that they might come back. Would I come back? Would I be a regular? Not on your life. But it’s kind of like after being hit in dodgeball. You are briefly stunned when it happened, you realize it was fun while it lasted, but everyone’s gotta have a turn.

Out of 5 Jamaican Lion Roars Mon

Grub 2: The food we had was alright but I have to say that everything else looked pretty sketchy and peering into the kitchen didn’t instill any sense of reassurance.
Scene 3: It was kind of interesting who went in there. There were workers, a couple of people who appeared to be tourists, and a few other random folks who were in and out. Strangely t seemed like it was mostly men in there. I doubt you would see any Kits types in there.
Coffee 1: The coffee was terrible. I think they had an espresso machine in there. In fact I am pretty sure it was a Saeco Barrista from Starbucks that looked like an alley cat after a night out with the Feline Fight Club.
Note: If you every have a hankering to play two person head to head table top Pac Man from the early 80’s, this place uses one of those exact machines as their tables by the windows.

Great View. Shame About the Coffee

They say that every cloud has a silver lining and the windstorms of 2006 that eliminated a large portion of the trees around prospect point made way for a 270 degree view over looking Burrard Inlet. Absolutely beautiful. The point that you used to have to wheedle your way through the crowds in order to take in the view has just been expanded into a glorious place to sit and enjoy a coffee. It’s just too bad that the real devastation that has taken place is the fact that you can’t get a decent cup of coffee up there. The coffee that we found came from the bar associated to the Prospect Point Café restaurant in the little tourist complex. The coffee came from one of those machines one might find at a self serve gas station. The coffees are tailored for someone who doesn’t know what coffee is and wants to drink something that is bland enough not to offend, but can say that they had “a coffee”. The restaurant inside seemed to have a pleasant décor with smatterings of wrought iron, vintage stain glass windows a whole whack of wood surrounded with eye candy views. The food was a bit pricey but listed something that could satisfy almost any tourists. It’s just a shame about the coffee.
Out of 5 blown down trees

Grub: 2 – The baked goods sold at the counter were pretty borderline. They had your packaged chips and cookies and the actual “baked goods” were probably a couple of days old from a wanna-be Bread Garden.
Scene: 5 – Great for people watching and when you get tired of that you can take a look at the view from a top of the cliff point. If you get tired o that you can walk away and make your way down to the Seawall. Just be prepared to walk, and either pay for parking or park outside of Stanley Park.
Coffee: 1 – Do your self a favour and don’t drink the coffee. It’s an experience you can’t give back. There might actually be another place up there that is a little independent. Just make sure you stay away from the auto coffee machines.