With Sunday brunch trending, everyone is on the hunt for the perfect breakfast place. Luckily, Alexander’s Breakfast and Lunch is located in the Niles Township area, on Oakton Street in downtown Skokie.

Walking into Alexander’s, customers are automatically met with their happy, energetic staff, ready to greet and seat them. The breakfast and lunch place gives off classic diner vibes, with the leather booths and bright wall colors and decorations. Customers are met with the sound of chatter from other customers and the aroma of coffee fills the room. When we walked in, we were quickly seated to our table by a large window overlooking downtown Skokie.

We arrived around 11, so although we could’ve eaten lunch, we decided to eat from their breakfast menu. We ordered the mango strawberry pancakes, tres leches French toast, two sides of their brunch potatoes and coffee to go around. Overall, the plating was beautiful with the pancakes elegantly stacked with a few strawberries and blueberries placed on top with oats and the French toast packed into a perfect square, with the banana in the middle and cream to top it off.

The mango strawberry pancakes were flawless, they were perfectly fluffy with the mango strawberry mix and cream in between each pancake. Each bite had a perfect amount of each component, and with the large portion size, there was plenty to take home and have later.

The brunch potatoes were also fantastic, and that would be the first thing we would recommend to anyone coming in.

The tres leches French toast, on the other hand, was slightly disappointing. The taste wasn’t horrible, but there wasn’t anything special to it either. Although it sounded delicious to incorporate the tres leches cake into a French toast recipe, the overall product lacked flavor and was difficult to get through.

On top of that, we found that the food, in general, was very pricey for a local diner. Yes, most of what we ordered was fantastic; however, for a local Skokie restaurant, it was a bit much. Each person typically spends between $20-25 plus tip. While this is typical for a city restaurant, it is pretty expensive for a small family dinner in the suburbs. For the two of us plus two of our friends, we spent about $70 with a $10 tip, which is about the same we spend at a high-end restaurant.

Despite the high prices and the subpar tres leches French toast, the overall experience we had was great. Although we would not consider this our go-to local diner, it’s a nice way to treat yourself once in a while. We would rate this restaurant a 7/10 based on the prices of the food and the quality of the food, the restaurant also needs to be expanded space-wise because of how little room there is to fit a decent amount of people during a busy brunch day.