Tim Hortons (ONroute Cambridge North)
290 ON-401One last day of travel.
Our weeklong adventure to the Lake Placid Ice Dance Championships were coming to an end. We left Lake Placid Thursday night, crossed over in to Canada in Ogdensburg, NY via the Ogdensburg-Prescott International Bridge and stayed the night in a surprisingly nice Motel 6 in Kingston, ON.
J’s typical weekday alarm is set for around 5:30 AM and she just decided to leave that alarm on. We were all ready to get home. We still had about an eight hour drive so getting up and on the road by 6 AM would get us back to Kalamazoo late afternoon.
We didn’t stop for breakfast or really anything before we left Kingston. We just got on the road.
About the time we got to Toronto, B asked if we could find a bathroom. I told him as soon as we got out of the city, we’d find something.
Not too long after that, I saw a sign for an ONroute in Cambridge. It said it was about 35km away so about 20 minutes….at least it would have been 20 minutes had we not been going through Toronto during the morning rush. It wasn’t too bad though. 20 turned in to 40 but he was fine.
I decided to try and make it to the ONroute because I knew we could kill two birds with one stone. None of us had eaten yet and we all had to use the bathroom. We could do it all in one place.
The ONroutes are travel plazas just like you see on the Indiana or Ohio toll road. They’re large building that look like a mall food court. We stopped at the Cambridge North On Route which is on ON-401 east of the City of Cambridge. You hit a large parking lot east of the building first but there are also parking lots in front of and to the west where the gas pumps are. We pulled in to the first spot we could find and headed inside quickly to find a bathroom.
The building is set up like a mall food court with several restaurants. There’s a Subway, a Burger King, and a Popeyes that weren’t open yet. There is also a Starbucks and Tim Hortons that both were open. We were heading to the Tim Hortons.
There are several order kiosks throughout the space and I found an empty one while I was waiting on everyone to come from the bathrooms. Yes, we have Tim Hortons in Kalamazoo. No, I haven’t eaten at one in a very long time. It’s been so long that the one on West Main is now a Dunkin’ and I likely haven’t eaten at the one on Westnedge since I wrote my blog post on the restaurant way back in 2012.
If you don’t like the whole kiosk thing, there is an order counter but the line was really long. It was way easier just to use the kiosk and get the order in.
Our order started coming up in pieces. They didn’t wait until the whole thing was ready. Once a piece of it was ready, they just called out the number. It was actually on you to make sure you had everything and didn’t leave before they were done putting it together.
The first thing to come out was the Timbits. They’re donut holes and one of the things Tim Hortons is known for. She picked about ten that she wanted to try and made the other ten random. We had no way of knowing what was what so it was a surprise every time we bit in to one. Timbits are like a box of chocolates. Never know what you’re gonna get.
We also got B a regular donut with sprinkles but I think he thought there were too many sprinkles on it. I don’t think he finished this.
Our drinks were the next thing that came up next. B got a Lemonade and J got an iced coffee. L didn’t want to give Timmy’s a try. She went over to the Starbucks to get her drink. I hit up the market and grabbed a couple of Canadian Pepsi’s that warned me they were high in sugar.
Our sandwiches started coming up one by one. I think the first one that got called out was mine. It was the Double Stacked Breakfast sandwich. It’s a English muffin with a sausage patty, bacon, egg, and cheese. This was a really good sandwich and makes me want to go back to that Tim’s on Westnedge. The fact that is has both a sausage patty and bacon makes it a really hearty sandwich. I typically eat two or three sandwiches from other places. I can just do one of these and be satisfied.
B doesn’t like sausage so we just got him the Bacon Breakfast Sandwich. This is a standard Bacon, Egg, and Cheese on an English Muffin. He typically likes his BEC in wrap form (Wake up wraps from Dunkin‘) but he didn’t complain about this and ate it very quickly. I think he surprised both J and me.
J did the Scrambled Egg Loaded Croissant. This thing was so big they had to serve it in a box. The buttery croissant is stacked with scrambled eggs, bacon (or sausage) and cheese. It’s a breakfast sandwich but instead of the round egg, they used scrambled. She really liked this sandwich even though she had to use a fork for some of it. Again, I think she was surprised by how good it was since we never even think of Tim Horton’s as a place to stop here in town.
L got a bagel with cream cheese. She was going to get it from Starbucks but decided to just let us order it at Tim Horton’s. It was simple. Plain bagel. Plain cream cheese.
The thing J said as were driving down ON-401 towards Detroit was that everything from our stop at Tim Horton’s tasted fresh. We do Dunkin’ a lot…..like….a lot….because B really likes the Wake Up Wraps and will actually eat them for breakfast. The thing with Dunkin’ is everything tastes microwaved….because it pretty much is. That wasn’t the case at this Tim Horton’s. I don’t know if they’re all like this or it’s only like this in Canada or maybe it was just this one. Whatever the case is, we should probably give the one in Portage another chance because this was the best fast food breakfast we’ve had in a while.
