Love for the Locals: The Bag Lady

I can't express enough how much I love finding quaint, little local places that are so full of character and pizzazz. I'd been hesitant about approaching The Bag Lady at first, but after hearing that one of my London friends actually worked at the place before, I decided to give it a shot. Boy, was that a shot worth taking, or what?

When you visit the website, it looks a little busy and questionable, but when you visit the actual little eatery, it all makes much more sense. The Bag Lady (474 Pall Mall Street, London, ON) is located close to downtown, just at the corner of Pall Mall and Maitland. If you're going from campus, just take the 13 Wellington southbound to the stop at Richmond & Mill, head south until you hit Pall Mall, and turn left, continuing east on Pall Mall until you reach Maitland.

The Bag Lady is open Monday to Friday from 7:30am until 4:00pm, and Saturdays and Sundays from 10:00am until 2:00pm - offering all day breakfast everyday, and lunch only during the week. They offer in-house dining, take-out, and even catering! It reminds me of all the little places I love back home so much :)

And there is a reason why there's a bright pink sign that says "Variety"...

 

Another London friend, Cat joined me for a late lunch at The Bag Lady today.

Thank you for trudging through the slush and puddles with me! :)

Honestly, what do you even look at first? I had to scan the room several times in order to look at everything there. Cat pointed out a leg lamp like the one from A Christmas Story. It's a shame that I didn't snap a picture of it!

The place was so packed when we arrived around 1! And would you look at all of that pizzazz and character?? So much vintage and retro going on! It's fantastic!

I love chalkboard menus, but they must be so much work to clean and keep from smudging!

The shelf was full of vintage Fisher Price toys, boardgames, trinkets, and more! At the other end of the shelf, there were actually DVD's that you can rent for $2.49!

Because it was so busy, we started out by sitting on the couch to order tea while waiting for a table to clear. (But, this picture was taken after the lunch rush.)

The little, blue laminated menus somehow stood out amongst all of the things to look at, and there were a lot of things to look at.

Cat and I shared a pot of the tea recommended to us by our server; Earl Grey Vanilla. It smelled so lovely, and it was so nice and smooth...

At each table, there was a set of little ceramic ornaments. We got little elephants! The tables next to us had pickles (ceramic pickles) and a pair of vintage clothes irons. 

Cat opted for the Roast Turkey sandwich. It had slices of Havarti cheese, slices of green apple, arugula leaves, sweet potato and sage butter, and mayo all on a toasty multigrain ciabatta bun.

I had the pizza special. Every day, they have two specials, where one will be vegetarian. And apparently, on Fridays, it's Pizza Day, because why not? I'd been having a pizza craving for the past while, and it seemed as though the McCain's frozen pizza I got on sale at Loblaws just didn't cut it. This? This definitely hit the spot. I apologize for the blurry photo. I know, I know. It's kind of taboo for a food blog to have such an awfully blurry photo, but this is the only one I took of it. I was so hungry... It was called the Americano Pizza. It had sliced ham, mushrooms, roasted red peppers, basil pesto, and mozzarella cheese on a whole wheat crust. So good. It also came with a side of mixed greens consisting of spinach, arugula, cabbage, cherry tomatoes, carrot, and cucumber, with a light vinaigrette dressing.

The Bag Lady had been touted as having the "best brownies in town", so Cat and I decided to taste for ourselves! It's a dense layer of semi-sweet chocolate fudge brownie, with a sort of toffee/caramel layer, and another layer of marbled milk and white chocolate topping! Because of the layers of harder, denser chocolate, it's a little bit of work to take bite-sized portions of the brownie with your fork, but definitely worth the effort ;)

Really...if you're ever in London, Ontario, you have to go here. I am totally going back.

-M

P.S. I'm finally doing the Urbanspoon thing, so you'll notice that all of the places that I post about with Urbanspoon pages will have a little image that can take you straight there. What's very interesting is the rating that some of them have... for the most part, I would say go with your gut, and take those reviews and ratings (mine included) with a grain of salt!