Oh, hi there, welcome to another entry of my blog! I'ma talk about eating at restaurants I'm excited about, and want to love, but end up disappointed and feel required to shit all over them (i.e. said restaurants)! Sound familiar? Okay, good. Let's get 'er done.
So, I'm a bit behind the curve w/r/t Boon. I heard about its impending arrival long before the intended spring launch, and it seemed like the building had been painted and everything was ready to go for a few months before it finally opened up. The concept(*) was intriguing, and the location good, so I was interested, to say the least. Then, it opened, and the word on the street was overwhelmingly positive. One heard stories about the Boon folks running out of food on the first couple days it was open, people were flocking to it in such high numbers.
My enthusiasm was tempered somewhat by reports from the Constant Dinner Companion (who visited Boon without me!(**)), whose praise was qualified, and less than overwhelming. He still enjoyed himself overall, though, so it was with moderately high expectations that I finally made my way to Boon on a Friday evening.
The room itself is tiny, but Boon makes clever use of the space they do have by setting it up family-style. Two long tables with picnic-esque benches both maximize the available seating space and create a loose informal vibe. The down side, of course, is post-meal lingering is implicitly discouraged: done? Git ta fuck out. Anyhow, you order at the till, and are served food as it is ready. It was jam packed during our visit, and seating was at a premium. We got lucky and nabbed a seat, but it's definitely possible for your order to come up and there be nowhere for you to sit to eat.
On to the food: I'll start with the good. Actually, the GREAT. The vegan mushroom gravy Boon serves is fantastic, and not "fantastic for vegan gravy," but unqualifiedly fantastic, stack it up against any other gravy, anywhere, anytime fantastic. Rich and thick and deep in umami flavour. Yup.
The burger itself: I ordered the Boon burger--seemed the best place to start. Now, I enjoy veggie burgers, so I'm definitely not going to fault it because it fails as a hamburger, which it is not trying to be at all. And the Boon burger was not bad. It was fairly fall-apart-y (is it possible to make a vegetarian burger patty that actually holds together?) and the advertised peach chutney so scant it failed to register at all, but still fairly flavourful. The bun was quite odd--a square, almost foccia-like slab. And too big! Goddamn. Once again, the burger law: area of the burger > area of the bun. All in all, though, not bad; fresh! I also had bites of my companions' soup and salad, and both were fairly tasty.
HOWEVER.
The french fries.
Actually, the "french fries". It does say on the menu that the "fries" are baked, but you have to go looking for it, it's in the section where they tell their little stories about the food. On the menu proper, it just says "fries: sm, lg". And call me crazy, but when I read "fries", I assume there will be some frying going on.
And they do look pretty good, nicely browned and sprinkled with sesame seeds. And they may have tasted good, had they been served straight from the oven. But they were not. Oh lordy, how they certainly were not. They were stale, and dry, and chewy, and served luke-warm AT BEST. They tasted like they had been sitting under a heat lamp for three hours, because I'm pretty sure they had literally been sitting under a heat lamp for three hours. And when I say "chewy", I'm not fucking around. They were literally hard to eat.
Now, I can understand wanting to be health-conscious and all that bullshit, but come the fuck on. If you're looking for an alternative to pulling potatoes out of a frier full of hot, delicious fat and serving them immediately, let me assure you that baking them first thing in the morning then sitting them under a heat lamp all day is not it. These fries were so bad, I felt personally insulted by them. And the fact that they were dressed up in "gourmet" clothes really made them even worse. Maybe fresh from the oven, the sesame seeds pack some massive flavour punch, but in the desiccated state they were served to me the sesame seeds just seemed like misdirection, a culinary sleight of hand to distract me from the fact that I was being served sub-cafeteria-food garbage.
So, again, I have to ask myself if a single terrible dish should utterly decimate my opinion of a restaurant. In this case, it's impossible to overlook a blunder so huge. Regardless of anything else going on in that kitchen, making me pay $$$ for "french fries" that bad(***) is completely unforgivable. Sorry, Boon Burger. You fail.
Location: 79 Sherbrook St.
Price tag: Burger + fries = around 12 bux.
Website: www.boonburger.ca/
*And here I'll just take a second to bellyache about the fact that Winnipeg gets a gourmet VEGETARIAN burger restaurant BEFORE a REGULAR gourmet burger restaurant. Sheesh. Okay, I'm done.
**Fuckin' jerk.
***What I'm wondering now is, should I have said anything? I very, very rarely send food back. I can only think of a single time, at Dandelion, where I sent back roasted potatoes that were served still crunchy. (Never really had a good experience at that place, actually.) In this case, I have to doubt it would have accomplished anything. What could they have done, tossed them in the microwave?
15 September 2010
A Drink at Oui Bistro
I had initially written off Oui Bistro altogether, since it is a Wow! Hospitality venture(*). But, when a friend (and culinary arts grad) hipped me to the fact that the chef at Oui has done an apprenticeship at the French Laundry, I wrote it back on, and added Oui to my list of restaurants I should probably try, at some point. Unfortunately, its high-ish prices had thus far kept me away, not to mention the fact that when I want French bistro food, and I feel like shelling out $$$, I go to Bistro 7 1/4. And now, the Oui space is making changes, bringing in a new menu, with a new name and a new concept(**). So, when a friend suggested the Oui lounge for a drink, I thought, well, at least I'll set foot in the place before the menu changes.
The bar side of the space itself is lovely: high ceilings and lots of exposed brick; didn't make it over to the restaurant proper. We weren't dining, but decided to order a bite to share, and settled on the macaroni gratin, with chanterelle mushrooms. The chanterelles were easily the best part of the dish: flavourful and vibrantly coloured. Unfortunately, the rest of the dish was extremely lackluster, especially for such a simple, essential preparation. It was bad enough that the gratin was soupy and under-seasoned, but to make matters worse, it wasn't really a gratin. A gratin must be topped with a browned crust of SOMETHING; this is what makes a gratin a gratin. The cheese on the top of the dish was melted, but was in no way browned. Simply put: boooo.
So, Oui gets written off, once again, and just in the nick of time, before it disappears forever into the mists of the past. I have to ask myself, am I making a mistake in judging a restaurant so harshly on a single dish? Maybe. But, really, in this case, if a French bistro can't get a gratin right, what chance do they have of getting anything else right? Whatevs, it's already gone.
Location, website, etc: The past, man. In the past.
*Is this self-explanatory? Hopefully. If not: I'm of the general opinion that Wow! Hospitality's restaurants are soulless corporate bullshit. Hu's on First mini-review: middling, confused Asian-I-guess.
**Seasonal food, and Peasant, respectively. Is it just me, or does this concept (as conceptualized through the Wow! Hospitality lens) seem a bit vague and tired?
The bar side of the space itself is lovely: high ceilings and lots of exposed brick; didn't make it over to the restaurant proper. We weren't dining, but decided to order a bite to share, and settled on the macaroni gratin, with chanterelle mushrooms. The chanterelles were easily the best part of the dish: flavourful and vibrantly coloured. Unfortunately, the rest of the dish was extremely lackluster, especially for such a simple, essential preparation. It was bad enough that the gratin was soupy and under-seasoned, but to make matters worse, it wasn't really a gratin. A gratin must be topped with a browned crust of SOMETHING; this is what makes a gratin a gratin. The cheese on the top of the dish was melted, but was in no way browned. Simply put: boooo.
So, Oui gets written off, once again, and just in the nick of time, before it disappears forever into the mists of the past. I have to ask myself, am I making a mistake in judging a restaurant so harshly on a single dish? Maybe. But, really, in this case, if a French bistro can't get a gratin right, what chance do they have of getting anything else right? Whatevs, it's already gone.
Location, website, etc: The past, man. In the past.
*Is this self-explanatory? Hopefully. If not: I'm of the general opinion that Wow! Hospitality's restaurants are soulless corporate bullshit. Hu's on First mini-review: middling, confused Asian-I-guess.
**Seasonal food, and Peasant, respectively. Is it just me, or does this concept (as conceptualized through the Wow! Hospitality lens) seem a bit vague and tired?
13 September 2010
Bella Vista
Okay, so I've ragged on utility pizza before, so I'm not gonna do it again. Let's keep this brief: Bella Vista is decent utility pizza. I shared a medium three topping with a friend, and the mushrooms were fresh(*), and the crust had a nice crisp to it. Good nuff.
Location: 53 Maryland St.
Price tag: medium three topping = ~$15
*Whilst complaining about the canned mushrooms on the aforementioned Mano's Pizza, one of my friends mentioned her actual preference for canned mushrooms on pizza. At the time, I wrote her off as crazy, but then I saw this poll on Serious Eats. I think you have to register to see the results, but it ended up that 15% also preferred canned mushrooms on pizza. Colour me surprised. I still think it's crazy, though. Seriously, canned mushrooms suck.(**)
**A footnote longer than the actual post. Boo-ya.
Location: 53 Maryland St.
Price tag: medium three topping = ~$15
*Whilst complaining about the canned mushrooms on the aforementioned Mano's Pizza, one of my friends mentioned her actual preference for canned mushrooms on pizza. At the time, I wrote her off as crazy, but then I saw this poll on Serious Eats. I think you have to register to see the results, but it ended up that 15% also preferred canned mushrooms on pizza. Colour me surprised. I still think it's crazy, though. Seriously, canned mushrooms suck.(**)
**A footnote longer than the actual post. Boo-ya.
The Grove
Tubby's, at the corner of Grosvenor and Stafford, was a restaurant I've heard referred to as a "Winnipeg Institution", and I have to assume that was by virtue of the quality of its food in its heyday, or just that's it's been around FOREVER. (Which, at the risk of getting bottles full of pee hurled at me, seems to be the case for every single "Winnipeg Institution". (I don't want to get into running down the list, so I'll just leave it at this: Salsbury House? Puh-leeze.(*))) But now we have the Grove in Tubby's old location, offering a take on English pub food and branded with an upscale-ish feel.
My interest was piqued as renovations were begun on the old Tubby's space. I pass down Stafford almost daily, and as construction was underway the windows were blanked with butcher paper on which were hand-painted black silhouettes of a table full of revelers: elegant.
The former Tubby's space has been completely opened up to a single large room with the bar in the centre, flanked by the dining room on one side, and the pub on the other. The only real difference between these two seems to be the presence of television screens(**) on the pub side. The dining room was full, so we were seated on the pub side.
The space is spare, a fact acknowledged by the owner in an interview on the Free Press website. Hopefully the "few more pictures" he throws up are a bit less depressing than the black and white photos of dreary English graveyards that decorated the wall next to the table I was seated at. Despite that, though, the space is airy and fairly modern, if not really exceptional in any regard.
A word on the physical layout of the room: as designed, the bar is way too big for the space. WAY too big. It juts out so far into the room that it leaves a stingy, approximately three foot space between the centre chair seated at the bar and the end wall of the room, a space that must be navigated by every server going from kitchen to bar patrons (and back), as well as by patrons on their way to the washroom. In the hour I was in the restaurant I witnessed two near-collisions between patrons and food/beverage-laden waitresses, not to mention countless traffic jams. A veritable nightmare, and a problem it seems incredible no one foresaw.
The menu is fairly short, and mostly (we'll get to that later) focused on simple, traditional English pub grub. (Bangers and mash, natch. Which I've never actually ordered in my life. Doing so seems vaguely embarrassing, for some reason, like it's tourist-y.) The Constant Dinner Companion and I both ordered burgers. I'm always on the lookout for a burger that will live up to my (admittedly almost impossibly high) standards, and the waitress assured us that everything in the kitchen was freshly made. Yes, every time I order a hamburger, I ask the waitress if it's a frozen or fresh patty. I like burgers. They're one of my favourite things. Unfortunately, ordering a hamburger is probably the quickest and easiest route to soul-crushing disappointment available to me in a restaurant.
And hey, guess what? The burger at the Grove was a disappointment. The patty had a reasonably nice char on it, but it was woefully under-seasoned and mostly tasteless. The dominant flavour and smell of the burger was the herbs in the bun, and that's a problem. And speaking of the bun, it was massive, much too big for the patty within, leading to the Grove burger committing the cardinal sin of having its last bites be meatless bites of bun alone. This is a problem I encounter constantly in restaurants, and I just don't get it. Seriously, this is ironclad burger law: the total area of the burger > the total area of the bun.
Oh, and I ordered it with fries. They were okay. And moving on.
While perusing the menu, my dinner companion and I (of course) considered trying the pork belly appetizer. Pork belly = yum, plus we generally feel obliged to order the weirdest thing on the menu wherever we are. It was served with a sweet potato puree and something called "tare sauce". (Quick google at the table = thickened, sweetened soy sauce; okay.) We were both reasonably hungry, but a burger and fries can be a lot of food, so we deferred. After we had each eaten our burgers, we were still feeling peckish, so we ordered the pork belly appetizer for dessert. I really enjoy doing things like this in restaurants, just to see if our weird demands faze the staff.(***) They didn't, and our dessertizer (tm) was out promptly(****). Firstly, it was extremely pretty: served on an undulating, rimless plate, the strips of pork belly were arranged in an angle across, the puree next to the pork belly. Along an edge of the plate a row of various pickled julienned vegetable garnishes (radishes, scallions, beets), and scattered throughout, a few drops of the tare sauce and (I think) a parsley oil. Yes, pretty, but we were left a bit unsure of how to eat it. The dish definitely had an Asian feel, where the pickled garnishes are usually used as palate cleansers. The sweet potato puree was unseasoned, so we figured we should scoop some onto the belly bits, but once we tried incorporating everything on the plate into a single bite, we realized this was how we should be eating it. Unfortunately, we were halfway through by that point. I really fail to see how just putting everything together would have made the dish any less pretty: pork belly, puree on top, garnishes on top of the puree. And it would have been a hell of a lot easier to eat. The pork belly was cooked reasonably well, but not amazingly well, the sear not quite as crusty as I like. And there was so little of the tare sauce, it was pretty much impossible to get some on every bite. All in all, when you managed to assemble a bite with every component it was quite tasty, but the difficulty in doing so frustrated me.
What struck me most about the belly dish, though, was how inconsonant it was from the rest of the menu. Hell, it stuck out like a sore thumb. Fish and chips, welsh rarebit, bangers and mash, and...an Asian-inspired pork belly appetizer? Compared to the burgers we ate, everything about the pork belly made it seem like it came from another restaurant: the flavour profile, the presentation, its psuedo-avant garde-ness, even the plate it was served on. If I had ordered the pork belly as an actual appetizer, when it was finished I would have been thinking, "ooh, that was interesting! I wonder what kind of spin they're going to put on my burger!" And when I received a regular ol' burger and fries, I would have been disappointed. Well, more disappointed. (Heh.) I can understand a chef wanting to stretch out creatively, but it still must be kept in the general context of the restaurant it's being served in. Um, duh.
I guess it sounds like I'm shitting all over the Grove (and I didn't even mention how much I disliked their massive leather-bound menus!). I guess I am. Really, it's much, much better than your standard chain garbage--I'd take it over Tavern United bullshit any day of the week. And it's actually really, really cheap: $40 covered our entire meal, including tip. It just frustrates me when a restaurant seems to have so many of the elements required in place, but the results still miss the mark.
p.s. The prices in the menu include all taxes! This rules. Makes for a nice, even bill at the end. There, I feel much better going out on a positive note.
Location: 164 Stafford St.
Price tag: The burger was $9 with fries, same deal for the appetizer. Some entrees run a bit higher, but everything is under $20. As I said, for us the total bill with tip = $40.
Website: www.the-grove.ca/
*While I'm at it, a word on fatboys. For the longest time, I took a silly, mealy-mouthed stand toward the fatboy: "Oh, they're okay, for what they are, I guess. I just prefer a different kind of burger." Those days are in the past. Fuck fatboys. Seriously. Fatboys suck. A flat, frozen patty the thickness of cardboard, and some greasy disgusting chili that no one in their right mind would touch if served to them in a bowl. And don't get me started on putting mayo on a burger. That this has become the dominant form of the mighty hamburger in this city boggles the mind.
**This is turning into an extra-rant-y entry, but god, I fucking hate televisions in restaurants. I suppose that on the pub side they are required for sports bullshit, but every time I'm in a restaurant and there's a tv in my line of sight, it is a constant irritant. My eye just gets drawn to it, nothing I can do about it, and I spend much of my time fighting not to watch whatever useless bullshit I don't care about that is blaring at me.
***I recall dining with the Constant Dinner Companion at Promenade Bistro and when we asked to share the quiche entree as an appetizer (hey, we both really like quiche, okay?) the waiter's brains melted, and oozed out his ears. Well, not really, but we had to explain what we wanted at least three times, and he was essentially incredulous.
****The CDC remarked that he's going to make a habit of ordering dessertizers, since he's occasionally still hungry, but rarely feels like dessert. You go, girl!
My interest was piqued as renovations were begun on the old Tubby's space. I pass down Stafford almost daily, and as construction was underway the windows were blanked with butcher paper on which were hand-painted black silhouettes of a table full of revelers: elegant.
The former Tubby's space has been completely opened up to a single large room with the bar in the centre, flanked by the dining room on one side, and the pub on the other. The only real difference between these two seems to be the presence of television screens(**) on the pub side. The dining room was full, so we were seated on the pub side.
The space is spare, a fact acknowledged by the owner in an interview on the Free Press website. Hopefully the "few more pictures" he throws up are a bit less depressing than the black and white photos of dreary English graveyards that decorated the wall next to the table I was seated at. Despite that, though, the space is airy and fairly modern, if not really exceptional in any regard.
A word on the physical layout of the room: as designed, the bar is way too big for the space. WAY too big. It juts out so far into the room that it leaves a stingy, approximately three foot space between the centre chair seated at the bar and the end wall of the room, a space that must be navigated by every server going from kitchen to bar patrons (and back), as well as by patrons on their way to the washroom. In the hour I was in the restaurant I witnessed two near-collisions between patrons and food/beverage-laden waitresses, not to mention countless traffic jams. A veritable nightmare, and a problem it seems incredible no one foresaw.
The menu is fairly short, and mostly (we'll get to that later) focused on simple, traditional English pub grub. (Bangers and mash, natch. Which I've never actually ordered in my life. Doing so seems vaguely embarrassing, for some reason, like it's tourist-y.) The Constant Dinner Companion and I both ordered burgers. I'm always on the lookout for a burger that will live up to my (admittedly almost impossibly high) standards, and the waitress assured us that everything in the kitchen was freshly made. Yes, every time I order a hamburger, I ask the waitress if it's a frozen or fresh patty. I like burgers. They're one of my favourite things. Unfortunately, ordering a hamburger is probably the quickest and easiest route to soul-crushing disappointment available to me in a restaurant.
And hey, guess what? The burger at the Grove was a disappointment. The patty had a reasonably nice char on it, but it was woefully under-seasoned and mostly tasteless. The dominant flavour and smell of the burger was the herbs in the bun, and that's a problem. And speaking of the bun, it was massive, much too big for the patty within, leading to the Grove burger committing the cardinal sin of having its last bites be meatless bites of bun alone. This is a problem I encounter constantly in restaurants, and I just don't get it. Seriously, this is ironclad burger law: the total area of the burger > the total area of the bun.
Oh, and I ordered it with fries. They were okay. And moving on.
While perusing the menu, my dinner companion and I (of course) considered trying the pork belly appetizer. Pork belly = yum, plus we generally feel obliged to order the weirdest thing on the menu wherever we are. It was served with a sweet potato puree and something called "tare sauce". (Quick google at the table = thickened, sweetened soy sauce; okay.) We were both reasonably hungry, but a burger and fries can be a lot of food, so we deferred. After we had each eaten our burgers, we were still feeling peckish, so we ordered the pork belly appetizer for dessert. I really enjoy doing things like this in restaurants, just to see if our weird demands faze the staff.(***) They didn't, and our dessertizer (tm) was out promptly(****). Firstly, it was extremely pretty: served on an undulating, rimless plate, the strips of pork belly were arranged in an angle across, the puree next to the pork belly. Along an edge of the plate a row of various pickled julienned vegetable garnishes (radishes, scallions, beets), and scattered throughout, a few drops of the tare sauce and (I think) a parsley oil. Yes, pretty, but we were left a bit unsure of how to eat it. The dish definitely had an Asian feel, where the pickled garnishes are usually used as palate cleansers. The sweet potato puree was unseasoned, so we figured we should scoop some onto the belly bits, but once we tried incorporating everything on the plate into a single bite, we realized this was how we should be eating it. Unfortunately, we were halfway through by that point. I really fail to see how just putting everything together would have made the dish any less pretty: pork belly, puree on top, garnishes on top of the puree. And it would have been a hell of a lot easier to eat. The pork belly was cooked reasonably well, but not amazingly well, the sear not quite as crusty as I like. And there was so little of the tare sauce, it was pretty much impossible to get some on every bite. All in all, when you managed to assemble a bite with every component it was quite tasty, but the difficulty in doing so frustrated me.
What struck me most about the belly dish, though, was how inconsonant it was from the rest of the menu. Hell, it stuck out like a sore thumb. Fish and chips, welsh rarebit, bangers and mash, and...an Asian-inspired pork belly appetizer? Compared to the burgers we ate, everything about the pork belly made it seem like it came from another restaurant: the flavour profile, the presentation, its psuedo-avant garde-ness, even the plate it was served on. If I had ordered the pork belly as an actual appetizer, when it was finished I would have been thinking, "ooh, that was interesting! I wonder what kind of spin they're going to put on my burger!" And when I received a regular ol' burger and fries, I would have been disappointed. Well, more disappointed. (Heh.) I can understand a chef wanting to stretch out creatively, but it still must be kept in the general context of the restaurant it's being served in. Um, duh.
I guess it sounds like I'm shitting all over the Grove (and I didn't even mention how much I disliked their massive leather-bound menus!). I guess I am. Really, it's much, much better than your standard chain garbage--I'd take it over Tavern United bullshit any day of the week. And it's actually really, really cheap: $40 covered our entire meal, including tip. It just frustrates me when a restaurant seems to have so many of the elements required in place, but the results still miss the mark.
p.s. The prices in the menu include all taxes! This rules. Makes for a nice, even bill at the end. There, I feel much better going out on a positive note.
Location: 164 Stafford St.
Price tag: The burger was $9 with fries, same deal for the appetizer. Some entrees run a bit higher, but everything is under $20. As I said, for us the total bill with tip = $40.
Website: www.the-grove.ca/
*While I'm at it, a word on fatboys. For the longest time, I took a silly, mealy-mouthed stand toward the fatboy: "Oh, they're okay, for what they are, I guess. I just prefer a different kind of burger." Those days are in the past. Fuck fatboys. Seriously. Fatboys suck. A flat, frozen patty the thickness of cardboard, and some greasy disgusting chili that no one in their right mind would touch if served to them in a bowl. And don't get me started on putting mayo on a burger. That this has become the dominant form of the mighty hamburger in this city boggles the mind.
**This is turning into an extra-rant-y entry, but god, I fucking hate televisions in restaurants. I suppose that on the pub side they are required for sports bullshit, but every time I'm in a restaurant and there's a tv in my line of sight, it is a constant irritant. My eye just gets drawn to it, nothing I can do about it, and I spend much of my time fighting not to watch whatever useless bullshit I don't care about that is blaring at me.
***I recall dining with the Constant Dinner Companion at Promenade Bistro and when we asked to share the quiche entree as an appetizer (hey, we both really like quiche, okay?) the waiter's brains melted, and oozed out his ears. Well, not really, but we had to explain what we wanted at least three times, and he was essentially incredulous.
****The CDC remarked that he's going to make a habit of ordering dessertizers, since he's occasionally still hungry, but rarely feels like dessert. You go, girl!
01 August 2010
Dessert at EAT! bistro
I just posted on EAT! recently (psst!), so I don't think I need to cover the same ground over again. I'll just make a few points:
- First time eating dessert here, and it definitely lived up to its homemade billing. My companion and I both had the rhubarb tart, and it was served with a vanilla gelati. A fine combination of tart/sweet, warm/cool, crumbly/gooey. Yum.
- They have special "just about to close" menus, and they are NOT sandwiched between old used book covers. Boo.
- The "ugh!" remains in these "just about to close" menus. Maybe they don't update as frequently?
- I should really make a point to NOT mention loose tea in my next post, but: I know for a fact that they generally serve loose teas at EAT!, but I ordered a decaf green and received a tea bag.
Man, this sure ended up being a complain-y post for a generally positive experience. Ah, well.
I like EAT!! Is that better?
Location: 274 Garry St., in Aqua Books.
Price tag: $17 for two desserts and a tea, before tip.
Website: www.eatbistro.ca
- First time eating dessert here, and it definitely lived up to its homemade billing. My companion and I both had the rhubarb tart, and it was served with a vanilla gelati. A fine combination of tart/sweet, warm/cool, crumbly/gooey. Yum.
- They have special "just about to close" menus, and they are NOT sandwiched between old used book covers. Boo.
- The "ugh!" remains in these "just about to close" menus. Maybe they don't update as frequently?
- I should really make a point to NOT mention loose tea in my next post, but: I know for a fact that they generally serve loose teas at EAT!, but I ordered a decaf green and received a tea bag.
Man, this sure ended up being a complain-y post for a generally positive experience. Ah, well.
I like EAT!! Is that better?
Location: 274 Garry St., in Aqua Books.
Price tag: $17 for two desserts and a tea, before tip.
Website: www.eatbistro.ca
28 July 2010
Lunch at Bread & Circuses Bakery Cafe
Fresh ingredients + simple, classic preparations = tasty food. Duh. It's really amazing how many shitty restaurants there are that manage to fuck up this math.
Running a restaurant can't be easy. The vagaries of the marketplace and public whim can be murderous, I'm sure. But a place like Bread & Circuses seems like a no-fail proposition. It's located on Corydon in a beautifully sunny room (big windows, eastern and southern exposure) with simple furniture and accents, and functions as both a breakfast/lunch eatery and a bakery. I'm not certain in the minds of its owners (or accountants) which aspect dominates, but on the Thursday lunch hour I visited the place was packed with lunch-goers; maybe the bakery packs 'em in before and after work.
The service is canteen-style, but the folks behind the counter are friendly and knowledgeable. The menu is small--a few sandwiches, a few soups. Unfortunately, the friendly folks behind the counter were unable to find a soup to accommodate my lunch companion's onion allergy(*), but plenty of sandwiches fit the bill.
I had the gazpacho and a ham and swiss sandwich on multigrain, and both were fresh and clean. My companion's rye bread looked darker and heartier than my multigrain, so I'll have to make a point to try it on my next visit. The gazpacho was summery and exactly what I wanted at that exact moment. We were eating indoors, since a morning rain had driven the patio gear under cover, but the day was already heating up and a cold soup cools like few other dishes. The ham and swiss were both quality (the cheese may have been jarlsberg, but my palette is kind of crap) and they were accompanied with large, fresh(**) slices of cucumber and tomato. The sandwich was served with mayo; I generally think of dijon mustard as being the obvious condiment to add to a ham and swiss, but the mayo wasn't slabbed on with a putty knife, so I could dig it.
They do lose a few points for serving Stash(***) teas--you'd think a joint with the hippy vibe of this place would be down with loose tea. Maybe I just mistakenly ascribe a hippy vibe to any and all bakeries.
Sure, I could have pulled off a ham and swiss sandwich and a bowl of gazpacho at home. But not every restaurant needs to wow. Bread & Circuses isn't reaching for the stars, and that's okay. It doesn't have to. It serves fresh, simple, delicious food. Done.
Location: 238 Lilac St
Price tag: Lunch for two: ~$25
*And really, you can't fault the place for not being able to accommodate an onion allergy. This has got to be the single most difficult allergy to eat out with. Bummer.
**Fuck it. I'm just gonna keep saying "fresh" over and over again.
***Still, probably one of my favourite floor sweepings teas. Tazo is ok, too.
Running a restaurant can't be easy. The vagaries of the marketplace and public whim can be murderous, I'm sure. But a place like Bread & Circuses seems like a no-fail proposition. It's located on Corydon in a beautifully sunny room (big windows, eastern and southern exposure) with simple furniture and accents, and functions as both a breakfast/lunch eatery and a bakery. I'm not certain in the minds of its owners (or accountants) which aspect dominates, but on the Thursday lunch hour I visited the place was packed with lunch-goers; maybe the bakery packs 'em in before and after work.
The service is canteen-style, but the folks behind the counter are friendly and knowledgeable. The menu is small--a few sandwiches, a few soups. Unfortunately, the friendly folks behind the counter were unable to find a soup to accommodate my lunch companion's onion allergy(*), but plenty of sandwiches fit the bill.
I had the gazpacho and a ham and swiss sandwich on multigrain, and both were fresh and clean. My companion's rye bread looked darker and heartier than my multigrain, so I'll have to make a point to try it on my next visit. The gazpacho was summery and exactly what I wanted at that exact moment. We were eating indoors, since a morning rain had driven the patio gear under cover, but the day was already heating up and a cold soup cools like few other dishes. The ham and swiss were both quality (the cheese may have been jarlsberg, but my palette is kind of crap) and they were accompanied with large, fresh(**) slices of cucumber and tomato. The sandwich was served with mayo; I generally think of dijon mustard as being the obvious condiment to add to a ham and swiss, but the mayo wasn't slabbed on with a putty knife, so I could dig it.
They do lose a few points for serving Stash(***) teas--you'd think a joint with the hippy vibe of this place would be down with loose tea. Maybe I just mistakenly ascribe a hippy vibe to any and all bakeries.
Sure, I could have pulled off a ham and swiss sandwich and a bowl of gazpacho at home. But not every restaurant needs to wow. Bread & Circuses isn't reaching for the stars, and that's okay. It doesn't have to. It serves fresh, simple, delicious food. Done.
Location: 238 Lilac St
Price tag: Lunch for two: ~$25
*And really, you can't fault the place for not being able to accommodate an onion allergy. This has got to be the single most difficult allergy to eat out with. Bummer.
**Fuck it. I'm just gonna keep saying "fresh" over and over again.
***Still, probably one of my favourite floor sweepings teas. Tazo is ok, too.
Random: Tomato Pie Renos
Transcription of a text sent to a friend: "Tomato Pie says it's closed for renos, and it's under new ownership. Don't fix what ain't broke, dummies!"
21 July 2010
EAT! bistro
Eating downtown at a reasonable price is a fairly dire proposition. Of course, the Village and the Exchange are both close by, but the core area is mainly a sad wasteland, restaurant-wise. Of course, I'm focusing on modern, contemporary restaurants within my relatively modest means when I say that(*); Amici, Hy's and Dubrovnik are a bit outside my casual price-range. That leaves East India, Edohei, and, yes, EAT! Bistro(**).
Located in the rear of Aqua Books, EAT! is a vegan-and-celiac-friendly eatery with a self-described "unpretentious yet innovative" menu. The restaurant's approach can't be easily summarized; the only moniker I can think to apply is (the admittedly lame) "modern Canadian". The menu is short and relatively simple: frittatas and flatbread pizzas that change daily, and various other salads and snacky finger foods. (Although while perusing the menu for this here writeup, I noticed a vegetarian lasagna that I believe is new and that will have to be tried.)
The space itself is small-ish, but the ramshackle decor charms, with mismatched thrift-store furnishings and doutang'd menus snuggled between the hard covers of old used books. The latter is a lovely touch, really.
My dinner companion and I opted to share the EAT! platter, and I added a bowl of soup for myself. I've dined at EAT! (and yes, I'm getting sick of the all-caps-and-silly-exclamation-point-edness of the name, after the fifth writing) a handful of times previous, and the soups NEVER disappoint. On this occasion it was a bowl of tortilla soup, with ground beef and a dollop of crème fraiche. It packed a slight but distinct spicy wallop--pretty much perfect.
The platter contains chickpea fritters, deep-fried tortilla chips, black bean cakes, crab fritters, and grilled veggies. The presentation of the dish is subtly elegant, without being at all fussy. The chickpea fritters were perhaps the weakest element, both texturally and flavour-wise a bit bland, but definitely elevated when topped with the included chicken feta spread. The black bean cakes were served with a bit of guacamole, and walked the same perfect spice line the soup did. The crab fritter was also topped with a bit of guac, in addition to the tiniest, cutest lil' lime wedge I've ever seen. The cakes were tasty, but fell to pieces with the slightest touch, like they were just waiting for a waft of air from my approaching fork to crumble, making them a bit of a chore to eat. The grilled veggies were perfectly simple, and perfectly good for it. Summary: a quality platter that's a good bit of fun to share.
The service was quick and friendly, but I really can't say too much good or bad about it, since our server was a friend of my dinner companion. Service has always been fine, though, on my previous visits.
EAT! stocks quality beverages, which I always appreciate, although they were out of my stand-by Boylan Creamy Red Birch Beer. I also had a sip of my companions house-made iced tea, and it was bright and spicy and completely unexpected. We opted out of dessert, but EAT! also prides itself on its desserts; its menu informs that all desserts are made in house. Quoth the menu: "We don't get our desserts from Goodies or Sisco"(***).
EAT! really just has a lovely vibe--the open kitchen, the simple menu, the dog-eared charm that fits perfectly within its used-bookstore environs. I guess I'm a bit of a hippie, after all. The food fits this vibe perfectly, as well. Recommended!
Location: 274 Garry St., in Aqua Books.
Price tag: $18 for the platter for two; I believe the whole thing came to about $30. (Okay, I really need to start taking notes for this enterprise. Sheesh.)
Website: www.eatbistro.ca (Also: whatsoupisit.ca. Be sure to check it out on a Sunday or a Monday.)
*If you want to go oldschool greasy spoon, the clubhouse at the Wagon Wheel is fresh and ridiculously large (as featured in Readers' Digest!!!). I've also heard good things about Mitzi's and the Kraut King, but haven't visited either. Am I missing the boat?
**Yeah, yeah. I'm sure there are some obvious omissions to this list. This came off the top of my head; fuck you.
***I am CERTAIN that a previous incarnation of the menu read "We don't get our desserts from Goodies or (ugh!) Sisco", which struck me as quite funny, but also a little odd; is it really a good idea to express disgust anywhere near a restaurant menu? I still dig the offbeat touch this added, and part of me laments the "ugh!"'s (probably wise) removal. (Elsewhere in the menu: "...if you want a big hunk of meat, the Keg is down the street." Ugh! (Regarding the Keg, not the big hunk of meat.))
Located in the rear of Aqua Books, EAT! is a vegan-and-celiac-friendly eatery with a self-described "unpretentious yet innovative" menu. The restaurant's approach can't be easily summarized; the only moniker I can think to apply is (the admittedly lame) "modern Canadian". The menu is short and relatively simple: frittatas and flatbread pizzas that change daily, and various other salads and snacky finger foods. (Although while perusing the menu for this here writeup, I noticed a vegetarian lasagna that I believe is new and that will have to be tried.)
The space itself is small-ish, but the ramshackle decor charms, with mismatched thrift-store furnishings and doutang'd menus snuggled between the hard covers of old used books. The latter is a lovely touch, really.
My dinner companion and I opted to share the EAT! platter, and I added a bowl of soup for myself. I've dined at EAT! (and yes, I'm getting sick of the all-caps-and-silly-exclamation-point-edness of the name, after the fifth writing) a handful of times previous, and the soups NEVER disappoint. On this occasion it was a bowl of tortilla soup, with ground beef and a dollop of crème fraiche. It packed a slight but distinct spicy wallop--pretty much perfect.
The platter contains chickpea fritters, deep-fried tortilla chips, black bean cakes, crab fritters, and grilled veggies. The presentation of the dish is subtly elegant, without being at all fussy. The chickpea fritters were perhaps the weakest element, both texturally and flavour-wise a bit bland, but definitely elevated when topped with the included chicken feta spread. The black bean cakes were served with a bit of guacamole, and walked the same perfect spice line the soup did. The crab fritter was also topped with a bit of guac, in addition to the tiniest, cutest lil' lime wedge I've ever seen. The cakes were tasty, but fell to pieces with the slightest touch, like they were just waiting for a waft of air from my approaching fork to crumble, making them a bit of a chore to eat. The grilled veggies were perfectly simple, and perfectly good for it. Summary: a quality platter that's a good bit of fun to share.
The service was quick and friendly, but I really can't say too much good or bad about it, since our server was a friend of my dinner companion. Service has always been fine, though, on my previous visits.
EAT! stocks quality beverages, which I always appreciate, although they were out of my stand-by Boylan Creamy Red Birch Beer. I also had a sip of my companions house-made iced tea, and it was bright and spicy and completely unexpected. We opted out of dessert, but EAT! also prides itself on its desserts; its menu informs that all desserts are made in house. Quoth the menu: "We don't get our desserts from Goodies or Sisco"(***).
EAT! really just has a lovely vibe--the open kitchen, the simple menu, the dog-eared charm that fits perfectly within its used-bookstore environs. I guess I'm a bit of a hippie, after all. The food fits this vibe perfectly, as well. Recommended!
Location: 274 Garry St., in Aqua Books.
Price tag: $18 for the platter for two; I believe the whole thing came to about $30. (Okay, I really need to start taking notes for this enterprise. Sheesh.)
Website: www.eatbistro.ca (Also: whatsoupisit.ca. Be sure to check it out on a Sunday or a Monday.)
*If you want to go oldschool greasy spoon, the clubhouse at the Wagon Wheel is fresh and ridiculously large (as featured in Readers' Digest!!!). I've also heard good things about Mitzi's and the Kraut King, but haven't visited either. Am I missing the boat?
**Yeah, yeah. I'm sure there are some obvious omissions to this list. This came off the top of my head; fuck you.
***I am CERTAIN that a previous incarnation of the menu read "We don't get our desserts from Goodies or (ugh!) Sisco", which struck me as quite funny, but also a little odd; is it really a good idea to express disgust anywhere near a restaurant menu? I still dig the offbeat touch this added, and part of me laments the "ugh!"'s (probably wise) removal. (Elsewhere in the menu: "...if you want a big hunk of meat, the Keg is down the street." Ugh! (Regarding the Keg, not the big hunk of meat.))
12 July 2010
Random: Santa Lucia's Fug Reno
The renovations of the Santa Lucia on St. Mary's (or Queen Elizabeth Way, or whatever) are nearing completion, and holy fuck, is it ugly. Have you seen this monstrosity? It's a barf-coloured tex-mex mini-castle. It's uglier than a Keg, for chrissake. Why does a pizza restaurant need turrets?
Kokeb
Okay, so, I know that the word "pile" isn't exactly appetizing; I'm going to try EXTREMELY hard to make it through this review with using it. Lordy, it's going to be difficult.
For the uninitiated, Ethiopian food presents probably the most exotic dining experience one can have in a restaurant (at least in this honky city*). All the dishes are served on injera, a pancake-like flatbread made with fermented teff flour, which lends it a distinctive tang. Most dishes consist of braises of some sort; these stews are served in dollops directly on the injera bread. To eat, you break off a portion of the bread, and use it to pinch a bite of the stew--no utensils are used.
The exotic nature of the cuisine doesn't end with presentation and manner of consumption; Ethiopian food is spiced in a way that is, well, foreign, in a way that most other ethnic cuisines just aren't. This could be a result of its reliance on niter kibbeh, a spiced clarified butter that forms the base of most dishes. But, really, I have no idea. I've never even come close to attempting Ethiopian at home.
I've been to Masawa on a handful of occasions, Osborne Village's Ethiopian restaurant, but this was my first trip to Kokeb. Masawa definitely delivers the goods, flavour-wise, but the service is unfortunately less than quick. There is even a note on every table which reads "The food takes forever, so you're not allowed to bitch if it takes forever, because it's going to. So shut up." I'm paraphrasing, of course. This could be considered a charming feature of the restaurant, depending on hunger level upon entry.
But, Kokeb: we started with a round of samosas, which spent a minute or two longer in the deep-frier than needed, but the filling was delicious, and the condiment served with it remarkable. A salsa (sort of?) of cilantro and minced green chiles and who knows what else. It was very salty and very spicy and WONDERFUL. If I had a little bowl of it beside me right now, I would eat it by the spoonful. (Maybe not. I wasn't kidding when I said "very spicy".)
There were six of us, so for our main course we ordered two of the dinner for three sample platters--really, the way to go in an Ethiopian restaurant. It came with dark, braised chicken drumsticks, a few hardboiled eggs, piles (fuck) of stewed yellow lentils, brown lentils, spinach, a braised meat that may have been beef, but also possibly goat, an iceberg salad**) with a lovely bright yet reserved simple vinaigrette, and probably much more that I've forgotten. Plenty of food to satisfy three, and easily Massawa's equal as far as flavour is concerned. And served in a timely manner, to boot.
The decor is slightly shabby, but therein lies some of the charm of eating in the Ellice/Sargeant vicinity. Service was friendly, and speedy. After the meal, some of my dinner companions expressed interest in the menu's specialty coffee, but it takes 30 minutes to prepare, so order in advance. It's apparently served with salt and clarified butter, which sounds interesting, but a caffeine sensitivity keeps me from coffee permanently, unfortunately.
All in all--solid Ethiopian for the experienced, a trip off the beaten path of standard restaurant fare for the squares. Not for the faint of heart (faint of stomach? faint of tastebud?), though--bear in mind the adventure tolerance of your dinner companions. Oddly, the bite I'm still thinking about is that vinaigrette. Go figure.
Price tag: $29.99 for the dinner for three.
Website: Why am I even bothering with this?
*I love Winnipeg, don't get me wrong.
**Okay, so for a while I looked down my nose at iceberg lettuce. It's boring, right? Tastes like air. When directly compared to something like arugula, there's no contest. But I can remember an argument I had with a friend about a year ago wherein he defended the humble iceberg, solely on the basis of its single positive attribute: texture. I'm starting to come around.
For the uninitiated, Ethiopian food presents probably the most exotic dining experience one can have in a restaurant (at least in this honky city*). All the dishes are served on injera, a pancake-like flatbread made with fermented teff flour, which lends it a distinctive tang. Most dishes consist of braises of some sort; these stews are served in dollops directly on the injera bread. To eat, you break off a portion of the bread, and use it to pinch a bite of the stew--no utensils are used.
The exotic nature of the cuisine doesn't end with presentation and manner of consumption; Ethiopian food is spiced in a way that is, well, foreign, in a way that most other ethnic cuisines just aren't. This could be a result of its reliance on niter kibbeh, a spiced clarified butter that forms the base of most dishes. But, really, I have no idea. I've never even come close to attempting Ethiopian at home.
I've been to Masawa on a handful of occasions, Osborne Village's Ethiopian restaurant, but this was my first trip to Kokeb. Masawa definitely delivers the goods, flavour-wise, but the service is unfortunately less than quick. There is even a note on every table which reads "The food takes forever, so you're not allowed to bitch if it takes forever, because it's going to. So shut up." I'm paraphrasing, of course. This could be considered a charming feature of the restaurant, depending on hunger level upon entry.
But, Kokeb: we started with a round of samosas, which spent a minute or two longer in the deep-frier than needed, but the filling was delicious, and the condiment served with it remarkable. A salsa (sort of?) of cilantro and minced green chiles and who knows what else. It was very salty and very spicy and WONDERFUL. If I had a little bowl of it beside me right now, I would eat it by the spoonful. (Maybe not. I wasn't kidding when I said "very spicy".)
There were six of us, so for our main course we ordered two of the dinner for three sample platters--really, the way to go in an Ethiopian restaurant. It came with dark, braised chicken drumsticks, a few hardboiled eggs, piles (fuck) of stewed yellow lentils, brown lentils, spinach, a braised meat that may have been beef, but also possibly goat, an iceberg salad**) with a lovely bright yet reserved simple vinaigrette, and probably much more that I've forgotten. Plenty of food to satisfy three, and easily Massawa's equal as far as flavour is concerned. And served in a timely manner, to boot.
The decor is slightly shabby, but therein lies some of the charm of eating in the Ellice/Sargeant vicinity. Service was friendly, and speedy. After the meal, some of my dinner companions expressed interest in the menu's specialty coffee, but it takes 30 minutes to prepare, so order in advance. It's apparently served with salt and clarified butter, which sounds interesting, but a caffeine sensitivity keeps me from coffee permanently, unfortunately.
All in all--solid Ethiopian for the experienced, a trip off the beaten path of standard restaurant fare for the squares. Not for the faint of heart (faint of stomach? faint of tastebud?), though--bear in mind the adventure tolerance of your dinner companions. Oddly, the bite I'm still thinking about is that vinaigrette. Go figure.
Price tag: $29.99 for the dinner for three.
Website: Why am I even bothering with this?
*I love Winnipeg, don't get me wrong.
**Okay, so for a while I looked down my nose at iceberg lettuce. It's boring, right? Tastes like air. When directly compared to something like arugula, there's no contest. But I can remember an argument I had with a friend about a year ago wherein he defended the humble iceberg, solely on the basis of its single positive attribute: texture. I'm starting to come around.
10 July 2010
Clear Lake Feedbag: Wig Wam
Okay, one more post, then I can get back to writing about food that I actually want to eat, rather than food I ate to keep me alive.
Somewhat (in)famous* around the Clear Lake area for its incredibly slow service, the Wig Wam aspires to Moxie's-level chain restaurant food, with a vaguely racist wood-panelled tee-pee theme to the interior. We sat on the giant, well-appointed patio, though (natch).
I had the turkey avocado burger, mainly because I'm currently obsessed with avocados. I fully expected (and received) a frozen, mostly tasteless turkey patty, but the fries were decent. What can I say? I'm starting to feel like a snobby jerk dumping all over these middling, uninspired, chain-esque restaurants. I am sure there MUST be decent meal to be had in Clear Lake; I just was on vacation, and with friends, and I went with the flow. Trust me, I'm much more insufferable on this blog than in person. Hopefully, anyway.
True to the word on the street, the service was indeed incredibly slow. I'm pretty sure about fifteen minutes elapsed between ordering drinks and mains, and it was in the neighbourhood of thirty minutes to receive our orders. We kept trying to figure out exactly why it was so slow; there seemed to be plenty of wait staff buzzing around. Inadequately staffed kitchen? Who knows? I'm done thinking about it...now.
Price tag: Most entrees around $12-17.
Website: Nuh-uh.
*I had originally written "famed" here, when I realized that "infamous" was probably the more accurate label to apply. Famous/infamous, but not famed/infamed? English is weird. /nerd
Somewhat (in)famous* around the Clear Lake area for its incredibly slow service, the Wig Wam aspires to Moxie's-level chain restaurant food, with a vaguely racist wood-panelled tee-pee theme to the interior. We sat on the giant, well-appointed patio, though (natch).
I had the turkey avocado burger, mainly because I'm currently obsessed with avocados. I fully expected (and received) a frozen, mostly tasteless turkey patty, but the fries were decent. What can I say? I'm starting to feel like a snobby jerk dumping all over these middling, uninspired, chain-esque restaurants. I am sure there MUST be decent meal to be had in Clear Lake; I just was on vacation, and with friends, and I went with the flow. Trust me, I'm much more insufferable on this blog than in person. Hopefully, anyway.
True to the word on the street, the service was indeed incredibly slow. I'm pretty sure about fifteen minutes elapsed between ordering drinks and mains, and it was in the neighbourhood of thirty minutes to receive our orders. We kept trying to figure out exactly why it was so slow; there seemed to be plenty of wait staff buzzing around. Inadequately staffed kitchen? Who knows? I'm done thinking about it...now.
Price tag: Most entrees around $12-17.
Website: Nuh-uh.
*I had originally written "famed" here, when I realized that "infamous" was probably the more accurate label to apply. Famous/infamous, but not famed/infamed? English is weird. /nerd
09 July 2010
Clear Lake Feedbag: Mano's Pizza
Man, nothing makes me feel like more of a snob than going out for pizza with non-foody friends. (Not that I'm all that comfortable applying the "foody" label to myself. Maybe I need to get over it, already.)
I'm not sure if Anthony Bourdain coined the term "utility pizza", but I first encountered it coming out his mouth, and I love it. Sometimes you don't need fancy, artisanal pizza from a wood-fired oven; there's something to be said for the pleasures of a greasy slab of cheap pizza. But seriously, I would much rather eat fancy, artisanal pizza from a wood-fired oven, topped with quality ingredients.
Mano's is pretty middle of the road, as far as utility pizza goes: medium-thick crust, nicely crisp, a little over-loaded with low-ish quality toppings. While my friends were making yummy noises, I was noting the canned mushrooms and bargain-basement-quality cured meats. I had a piece of ham and pineapple, and the pineapple was also canned, but I'm not crazy enough to expect fresh pineapple on utility pizza. Give me some credit.
I've said more than once that the difference between fresh pineapple and canned pineapple is so pronounced, they're practically different foods. And really, so is the difference between utility pizza and (forgive the snobbery) real pizza. It's impossible to not note the difference. Mano's delivers a decent slice of utility pizza, which is what it aspires to.
The Wasagming Mano's location is pickup/delivery only, but they do have a few picnic tables parked out front, which did the job nicely on a sunny afternoon.
Price tag: Around $30 for a large loaded pizza.
Website: Nope.
I'm not sure if Anthony Bourdain coined the term "utility pizza", but I first encountered it coming out his mouth, and I love it. Sometimes you don't need fancy, artisanal pizza from a wood-fired oven; there's something to be said for the pleasures of a greasy slab of cheap pizza. But seriously, I would much rather eat fancy, artisanal pizza from a wood-fired oven, topped with quality ingredients.
Mano's is pretty middle of the road, as far as utility pizza goes: medium-thick crust, nicely crisp, a little over-loaded with low-ish quality toppings. While my friends were making yummy noises, I was noting the canned mushrooms and bargain-basement-quality cured meats. I had a piece of ham and pineapple, and the pineapple was also canned, but I'm not crazy enough to expect fresh pineapple on utility pizza. Give me some credit.
I've said more than once that the difference between fresh pineapple and canned pineapple is so pronounced, they're practically different foods. And really, so is the difference between utility pizza and (forgive the snobbery) real pizza. It's impossible to not note the difference. Mano's delivers a decent slice of utility pizza, which is what it aspires to.
The Wasagming Mano's location is pickup/delivery only, but they do have a few picnic tables parked out front, which did the job nicely on a sunny afternoon.
Price tag: Around $30 for a large loaded pizza.
Website: Nope.
Clear Lake Feedbag: Breakfast at The Gates
I recently stayed at the slightly grungey Southgate Motor Hotel in Onanole for a few nights and had breakfast once in the adjoining greasy spoon. This is only the second breakfast report on here, and I'm already beginning to question their worth. I might as well just write "I'm pretty sure they didn't spit in my food" and leave it at that. Not that I'm too good for the occasional greasy-spoon breakfast, it's just there's really not much to say. The yolks on my softly-poached eggs were runny, the hashbrowns decent, but not quite crispy as I like, the ham (this time) of passable quality. Sound familiar?
Price tag: $5.99 for your standard two eggs, hashbrowns, choice of meat and toast. This was a Saturday, not sure if they run a weekday breakfast special.
Website: Shyeah, right.
Price tag: $5.99 for your standard two eggs, hashbrowns, choice of meat and toast. This was a Saturday, not sure if they run a weekday breakfast special.
Website: Shyeah, right.
27 June 2010
Sunday Breakfast at the Pembina Village Restaurant
What can I say? Probably not gonna devote a thousand words to breakfast at the Pembina Village Restaurant. My first visit, and I only stepped inside to pay the bill. (The less said about the interior decor the better, I think.) Decent patio, cheap weekend breakfast special--job done. The yolk on my softly poached egg was runny, the breakfast sausage passable, the hashbrowns not as crispy as I generally enjoy them, but still fairly tasty. (They come pre-salted, though, so watch out!) Service was friendly, and our party of five had all our breakfasts served close to unison. Whaddaya want for five bucks?
Price tag: $4.99 for two eggs, hashbrowns, toast, and choice of bacon or sausage (but not ham, weirdly.)
Website: Nothing, that I could find.
Price tag: $4.99 for two eggs, hashbrowns, toast, and choice of bacon or sausage (but not ham, weirdly.)
Website: Nothing, that I could find.
26 June 2010
Bistro 7 1/4
Oh, Bistro 7 1/4. Whenever asked, I name you as my favourite Winnipeg restaurant. Your central open kitchen, giving the room a sense of vitality and verve, your ambitious yet unpretentious menu, your on-point service--all usually make for an exceptionally enjoyable dining experience.
So why did I leave my 7th (or 8th, maybe) visit last night feeling slightly disappointed?
The restaurant summarizes itself as serving "luxurious comfort food". I think of it as equal parts French bistro and modern Canadian fare--really, my platonic ideal of a restaurant. The room itself strikes a fine balance between stark modernism and inviting homeyness. Dark woods, close quarters.
Friday nights are usually a bustling affair at Bistro, with diners waiting for a table crowding the (pretty much non-existant) foyer. The room isn't huge, but the somewhat tight quarters give the room an enjoyable boisterousness. Not everyone may enjoy this, though--it can definitely get loud, especially if a nearby table is populated by jackasses that can't modulate their laugh volume (which is usually the case).
However, whenever I eat at Bistro 7 1/4, I'm reminded of a quote from Thomas Keller's Bouchon cookbook:
"Bistros are boisterous and energetic and jostling, servers squeezing between tables, the smells of sizzling steak and fried potatoes in the air. You enter a bistro and you feel almost as if you've walked onto a stage and are part of a drama."
We began our evening by enquiring about the Chef's Odds and Ends. One of my dinner companions and I enjoy offal, and eating off the beaten path; previous visits had yielded some nice surprises, such as a delicate yet robustly gamey horse carpaccio. We started with a pig snout salad and a pickled tongue dish, as well as the chicken livers (a regular menu item) and a five cheese plate. Again, during previous visits the cheese plate had wowed, so we put ourselves in the hands of the kitchen in the choice of cheeses.
Before the appetizers arrived, a complimentary half baguette is served, with a tomato confit and a small mound of rosemary salt--a simple yet extremely elegant starter.
The cheese plate is beautifully composed, and served with bread, crackers, fresh fruit and a raspberry compote. Among the selections was a biting fresh blue cheese, and a Spanish semi-hard, yet no single cheese stood out and hollered of the genius of its making, as during previous visits.
The pig snout salad was composed of breaded, deep-fried pig snout bits, (including a single slice of the end of the snout, its genesis playfully obvious) served atop a lightly dressed salad of fennel and raisins. The sweetness of the fennel and raisins played well together; the pig snout bits were very crispy, and the innards tender nearly to the point of gooeyness. I didn't, however, detect any notes of offal's usual tang, and the flavour of the breading slightly overwhelmed the pig snout. This was my first pig snout experience, but I wasn't thoroughly impressed.
I had but a small bite of the pickled tongue, but it was served diced in a hot salad of beets and onions. Again, none of the gaminess or tangy bite that I usually look for in offal, but the sauce it was served in was quite appealing, if a bit sweet.
The chicken livers are poached in Fort Garry Dark Ale with huge lardons of bacon and caramelized onions, served with hunks of bread. The presentation is quite nice, one piece of bread hip-deep in the broth in the centre of the bowl supporting the remaining pieces of bread. The chicken livers were wonderfully tender, and the whole dish possessed an earthy, almost primal base note that flavoured every element within. This dish was probably the highlight of the meal, for me.
For the main course, I chose the evening's special, a Bison strip loin served with asparagus, beet hash and mission figs. The beet hash is mostly what sold me, since beets figure prominently in the novel I am currently reading (Tom Robbins' Jitterbug Perfume). The bison was cooked wonderfully, the potatoes in the beet hash were crisp and the beets tender. Everything was well cooked, aside from a few extra-large, woody pieces of asparagus, but the dish lacked a certain cohesiveness; there was nothing on the plate to tie all the disparate elements together. A tasty dish, to be sure--just not revelatory.
And this is the crux of the problem, the reason for my slight pangs of disappointment: every other visit to Bistro 7 1/4 has afforded me at least one of those moments of revelation. The moment that every serious diner lives for, when you put a piece of food in the your mouth, and you can't believe food can be this good, this unique, this amazing. (The supremely smoky barbecue sauce from a previous visit's special! (Why, oh why, is there not a bbq dish on the regular menu?) The intensely rich veal and foie gras sliders! I could go on, and on...) I discussed my slight disappointment with one of my dinner companions, and he agreed--socks firmly not knocked off. Have we set the bar too high? Have we been spoiled by so many delicious Bistro dinners that we're now jaded? Are we just burning out on our favourite restaurant?
Of course, it was a perfectly pleasant evening, full of perfectly fine food. The service was uniformly excellent, as it always is: unhurried, but prompt; friendly, knowledgeable. And when one of my dinner companions accidentally knocked over the wine bottle full of water each table carries, staff swooped in with napkins within seconds, carrying nary a look of scolding disapproval. (A small thing, yes, but surely you know this look that I refer to?) One of our appetizers did lag behind the others ever so slightly, but not to an extreme degree.
All told, if you haven't been, GO! What are you waiting for? I just hope my next trip will blow my socks clean off, again.
Price tag: $240 for four entrees, three appetizers, a cheese plate, and a bottle of wine, not including gratuity. So, yes, definitely on the expensive side of things. But two of the entrees were pretty much only half eaten--the portion sizes can border on the ridiculous.
Website: www.alexanderskitchen.com
So why did I leave my 7th (or 8th, maybe) visit last night feeling slightly disappointed?
The restaurant summarizes itself as serving "luxurious comfort food". I think of it as equal parts French bistro and modern Canadian fare--really, my platonic ideal of a restaurant. The room itself strikes a fine balance between stark modernism and inviting homeyness. Dark woods, close quarters.
Friday nights are usually a bustling affair at Bistro, with diners waiting for a table crowding the (pretty much non-existant) foyer. The room isn't huge, but the somewhat tight quarters give the room an enjoyable boisterousness. Not everyone may enjoy this, though--it can definitely get loud, especially if a nearby table is populated by jackasses that can't modulate their laugh volume (which is usually the case).
However, whenever I eat at Bistro 7 1/4, I'm reminded of a quote from Thomas Keller's Bouchon cookbook:
"Bistros are boisterous and energetic and jostling, servers squeezing between tables, the smells of sizzling steak and fried potatoes in the air. You enter a bistro and you feel almost as if you've walked onto a stage and are part of a drama."
We began our evening by enquiring about the Chef's Odds and Ends. One of my dinner companions and I enjoy offal, and eating off the beaten path; previous visits had yielded some nice surprises, such as a delicate yet robustly gamey horse carpaccio. We started with a pig snout salad and a pickled tongue dish, as well as the chicken livers (a regular menu item) and a five cheese plate. Again, during previous visits the cheese plate had wowed, so we put ourselves in the hands of the kitchen in the choice of cheeses.
Before the appetizers arrived, a complimentary half baguette is served, with a tomato confit and a small mound of rosemary salt--a simple yet extremely elegant starter.
The cheese plate is beautifully composed, and served with bread, crackers, fresh fruit and a raspberry compote. Among the selections was a biting fresh blue cheese, and a Spanish semi-hard, yet no single cheese stood out and hollered of the genius of its making, as during previous visits.
The pig snout salad was composed of breaded, deep-fried pig snout bits, (including a single slice of the end of the snout, its genesis playfully obvious) served atop a lightly dressed salad of fennel and raisins. The sweetness of the fennel and raisins played well together; the pig snout bits were very crispy, and the innards tender nearly to the point of gooeyness. I didn't, however, detect any notes of offal's usual tang, and the flavour of the breading slightly overwhelmed the pig snout. This was my first pig snout experience, but I wasn't thoroughly impressed.
I had but a small bite of the pickled tongue, but it was served diced in a hot salad of beets and onions. Again, none of the gaminess or tangy bite that I usually look for in offal, but the sauce it was served in was quite appealing, if a bit sweet.
The chicken livers are poached in Fort Garry Dark Ale with huge lardons of bacon and caramelized onions, served with hunks of bread. The presentation is quite nice, one piece of bread hip-deep in the broth in the centre of the bowl supporting the remaining pieces of bread. The chicken livers were wonderfully tender, and the whole dish possessed an earthy, almost primal base note that flavoured every element within. This dish was probably the highlight of the meal, for me.
For the main course, I chose the evening's special, a Bison strip loin served with asparagus, beet hash and mission figs. The beet hash is mostly what sold me, since beets figure prominently in the novel I am currently reading (Tom Robbins' Jitterbug Perfume). The bison was cooked wonderfully, the potatoes in the beet hash were crisp and the beets tender. Everything was well cooked, aside from a few extra-large, woody pieces of asparagus, but the dish lacked a certain cohesiveness; there was nothing on the plate to tie all the disparate elements together. A tasty dish, to be sure--just not revelatory.
And this is the crux of the problem, the reason for my slight pangs of disappointment: every other visit to Bistro 7 1/4 has afforded me at least one of those moments of revelation. The moment that every serious diner lives for, when you put a piece of food in the your mouth, and you can't believe food can be this good, this unique, this amazing. (The supremely smoky barbecue sauce from a previous visit's special! (Why, oh why, is there not a bbq dish on the regular menu?) The intensely rich veal and foie gras sliders! I could go on, and on...) I discussed my slight disappointment with one of my dinner companions, and he agreed--socks firmly not knocked off. Have we set the bar too high? Have we been spoiled by so many delicious Bistro dinners that we're now jaded? Are we just burning out on our favourite restaurant?
Of course, it was a perfectly pleasant evening, full of perfectly fine food. The service was uniformly excellent, as it always is: unhurried, but prompt; friendly, knowledgeable. And when one of my dinner companions accidentally knocked over the wine bottle full of water each table carries, staff swooped in with napkins within seconds, carrying nary a look of scolding disapproval. (A small thing, yes, but surely you know this look that I refer to?) One of our appetizers did lag behind the others ever so slightly, but not to an extreme degree.
All told, if you haven't been, GO! What are you waiting for? I just hope my next trip will blow my socks clean off, again.
Price tag: $240 for four entrees, three appetizers, a cheese plate, and a bottle of wine, not including gratuity. So, yes, definitely on the expensive side of things. But two of the entrees were pretty much only half eaten--the portion sizes can border on the ridiculous.
Website: www.alexanderskitchen.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)