With so much pastry, fine dining, and Canadian comfort food to be sampled on our brief visit to Montreal 'breakfasts' as a proper sit-down entity were still not to be overlooked (much to my family's dismay and with a schedule heavy on museums, churches, and hockey along with the food mornings would be early - and thankfully so would be the opening times of each of the three breakfast spots we decided to try.\n\nBeginning first with perhaps the most oft raved breakfast in the city we almost ended up taking a pass on Olive + Gourmando because the traffic and parking on the tight streets of the busy business district is nothing short of a nightmare during the morning rush - but thankfully, as fate would have it a spot opened up on our third trip around the block and with streets uneven and crowd bustling we made our way into the small store and restaurant only a few minutes later than anticipated.\n\nOwned and operated by Dyan Solomon and Eric Girard Olive + Gourmando reminds one much of Panera as you walk in - a few dry goods and baked items up front along with the local paper plus a busy kitchen in back, but with communal tables consistently packed as people vie for space and the air rife with notes of coffee, butter, and vanilla there is clearly more than \"quick casual\" at play - specifically the use of all natural, organic, and high quality local ingredients in each of the restaurant's creations; items I was left to select for the group as my mother and aunt attempted (successfully) to procure seating.\n\nUtilizing both the pastry counter, kitchen, and servers to facilitate service the modus operandi at O+G is to order at the pastry counter, find a seat, and wait for the items to arrive - a successful approach even despite my over-ordering that led to an impressive pile of food arriving perhaps 10 minutes later - each item warmed or hot and from the coffee to the sandwich to each of our four baked goods everything looked fantastic despite the simple style of preparation on brown paper in wooden baskets.\n\nBeginning first with the coffee - mostly espresso but also offering an Americano I eschewed my traditional ordering and went with a double based on the recommendation of the barista that the beans taste best without the added water and with the roast very low in acidity I had to agree, particularly given the smoky top notes and mellow caramel tones underneath - no sugar was added and none was needed.\n\nMoving next to the pastries, a quartet was selected and attempting to make selections that would appease all I ran the gamut of flavors from fruit to chocolate and light to heavy beginning first with two spirals of brioche; one Raspberry Cheesecake, the other Valrhona Chocolate, and both exemplary.  Beginning first with the eggy bread - crisp on the shell with a wispy and rich pull-apart within and lightly kissed with an egg wash before its trip to the oven both curls were rife with their respective ingredients and as much as I love Valrhona dark it was the cheesecake that impressed most - a rich balance of the cream cheese's smoothness with sweet pureed raspberries complete with seeds.\n\nMoving on to the measuring stick, an oblong almond croissant, I found myself somewhat less impressed than I had expected largely due to the texture produced by such a tightly wound crumb.  Certainly tinged with almond and packed with butter this simply was not the texture I would expect for a croissant - more like a breadstick in its lack of an air-pocketed leavened crumb.  Good, but not on par with the rest of the choices, including the Chausson Aux Pommes sharing its basket.  Translated literally as 'slipper of apples' it would be hard for me to find something more comforting than this hand-pie and no matter what language the crispy golden shell and dense core of pan cooked cinnamon apples was lovely - the only thing that would have made it better was ice, or perhaps whipped, cream.\n\nFor our final choice, the only kitchen item that screamed 'must order' we received the \"Poached Egg on Your Face Sandwich\" - a pressed panini made with house ciabatta filled with sauteed onions, a thick curl of aged Comte, confit tomatoes, griddled speck, and 'cooked egg salad.'  Hitting on pretty much all of the savory notes with the caramelized onions and bright tomatoes acting to cut the fat just a bit the most intriguing aspect of this dish to me was the 'salad' - a texture somewhere between rough chopped hardboiled eggs and a lightly poached egg but very interesting on the tongue.  A great meal from first sip to last bite with only a slightly disappointing almond croissant to mar the experience I definitely understand the hype around Olive + Gourmando and compared to our other Montreal Breakfasts it is the only one to which I'd return.