So you take a café, tuck it into a crack-in-the-wall spot on the seedy end of Victoria Street next to the adult shops, make your signage really small and don't mention the word "café" in your name. You're doomed, right?
Not, apparently, if you are Hazel Hayes. This place does the implausible, and it's packed on a weekday morning. The north end of downtown Hamilton is dying at the moment; shops all around the café are shutting up, and yet Hazel Hayes is hopping with all sorts: businessmen and women, two young mothers with children, an older lady I recognize from Raglan, and it feels the way a downtown cafe should.
Nick orders the homemade hash browns with poached eggs, Portobello mushrooms, spinach and hollandaise sauce ($15.50). The hash browns turn out to be scrumptious balls of mashed potato and herbs, fried with crispy outers and creamy inners, delicious. His eggs are underdone with some of the whites still runny, but the hollandaise is excellent.
