Cochrane Cafe

If I could give this zero stars I would. Ordered ribs and chicken chow mien, not sure what they gave me…
Ribs were coated in breadcrumb batter so u couldn’t see what you were eating, no meat, just lumps of gristle and sinew, from frozen as had that off taste. More coating than anything g else! So start on my… well what’s supposed to be chicken chow mein, perhaps they forgot to add the chicken and other ingredients that’s supposed to be in it, because all it was, was dry rice!
I asked for the bill and I told her that it was disgusting… Her response, «yeah I should have told you, they’re not too good!»!!!

Today was the second attempt to check out this place and I can only confirm my last experience: the food we had was disappointing.
We tried their fish & chips. The fish came out of the freezer, the side veggies came from a can and the arrangement was rather unusual for a restaurant meal.
It is a diner and nothing more. No reason for us to come back a third time.

Plain unassuming interior but food was great. They have western as well as Chinese food. We ordered Denver sandwiches and shrimp chow mein. They use fresh ingredients. The chow mein did not have bean sprouts but was otherwise packed with vegetables and a generous amount of shrimp! The sandwiches were very good as well. Prices were quite reasonable for the food. Glad we stopped in.

You know that warm, fuzzy feeling NORMAL people get from remembering going to a grandparents house for dinner or something along those lines? For me, that’s the Cochrane Café.
This place will never be featured in any fine dining journals, will never have it’s kitchen staff sent in to «Iron Chef», and will certainly never be in any tourism guides or best of lists… but that’s less about quality and more about scope. «The Café» as many locals simply know it doesn’t aspire to gigantic dinner parties with huge reservation lists and dimmed dining rooms covered in chandeliers — it’s more of a throw back to the old days where leather booths sat on black and white alternating tile and a waitress with huge hair stood behind a counter with a pot of coffee, freshening up the cups of a select group of customers who all know her by name as they serve up the stereotypical «grub» of their respective location.
This place is very similar to that old cliché in a number of ways. Their menu doesn’t have this modern «fanciness» where everything has to be elaborate and flashy: it’s pure, simple, diner-​style fare, but done in a way that also doesn’t feel mass produced, as almost everything is made right from scratch to the point that I’m almost tempted to dip into an old cliché and claim one of the ingedients must be love. The one big difference being that on top of the typical north american «diner food» (burgers, steaks, soups, sandwiches, and the like) they also offer some of the most loved chinese food in town. I remember going there as a kid and seeing the divide in styles between my family — with my mother, sisters and I taking in the western side of things while my dad and brothers gorged themselves on the café’s signature ginger beef — which is undoubtably their calling card.
For those like me who aren’t big on chinese, and enjoy the occasional throw back to a simpler time when food wasn’t all about stacking complicated flavors, and things just were what they were, I’d recommend one of my old lunch favorites — a grilled cheese sandwich dipped in the café’s AMAZING «home made» tomato soup (and I don’t mean the quotations to suggest they don’t really make it there, I worked there as a dish washer in my early teens and Iv’e seen first hand that they do make it from scratch right there, I just find it weird to call anything in a restaurant «home» made.)
No matter which side of this local gems dual specialty you choose to select from, you can count on a nice quiet, simple (but charming) atmosphere, some great service, and food that has just a hint of «old fashioned» appeal to it. I really don’t think you can possibly go wrong here… so if you live in Cochrane, or happen to find yourself going through that way and want a nice affordable, old fashioned meal… roll back the old fashioned diner clock with flipping advertisement panels (they have one of those too!) and pull up to this little gem of small town dining.
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