The most impressive Winnipeg restaurant

EAT! Bistro
274 Garry Street
Closed Sundays and Mondays
www.eatbistro.ca

EAT! bistro is one of the most impressive Winnipeg restaurants.

It’s the place you want to ride your bike to for a light snack in the summer and the place you go to to find summer in the winter.

The brightly coloured flower-power theme and eclectic mix of vintage tables and chairs makes EAT’s décor refreshing, energetic and fun. However, I will warn any potential clients of EAT! to choose their chair wisely as I’m pretty sure I chose a child’s chair.

The coolest thing about EAT! is that they’re a completely nut free restaurant and have wildly popular gluten free nights. Which other Winnipeg restaurant goes out of their way to cater to allergenic people? I think this feature makes EAT’s business model pure genius.

The experience at EAT! is great too. The service is quick, enthusiastic and knowledgeable of the menu. Being a first-time visitor I had no clue what sort of ordering strategy I should take – order my own dish; share several; were they big; were they small? I wanted to know. The server had answers. And he made my guest and I feel like he wanted to answer our questions rather than rush away to his next awaiting table.


(Turns out if you’re there for the first time you may want to share, but most of the dishes (excluding the dips) are big enough for one person.)

In terms of the food, it’s very inexpensive – no more than $12, unless you order a platter. The most unique dish I tried was the black bean cakes with guacamole and salsa ($8). It has a quick pinch-your-tongue spice that lasts about three seconds and then disappears completely, which feels odd but nice. The chicken feta dips with wonton crackers ($8) make a nice starter snack for the table for those who can’t wait for the main course. The wonton crackers are like a soft taco chip that you dip into a creamy puréed (yes, even the chicken) sauce. Other tantalizing dishes range between deep-fried and health conscious and are your typical lunch or light dinner items.


Plan on going for lunch? Expect a rush around noon. But not to worry, despite what might look like a 20 minute wait will take about 5 minutes thanks to the extremely efficient and quick service. They do not take reservations during lunch hours.


As for dinner EAT! prefers you make a reservation, especially if there’s an event in Aqua Books (the store attached to EAT!) or at the MTS Centre.

Overall, EAT! bistro has innovative business ideas, a creative and freshly made menu, invigorating décor and quick service. I would go back in a heart beat.

Vancouver 2010: Best Olympics ever

'Will Vancouver Games be ‘worst’ ever?’

That’s Stephanie Levitz’ headline in today’s Winnipeg Free Press.

And really? The worst games ever?

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that we’re having the worst Olympics ever. The only thing that makes that statement true is the fact that an athlete died. And yes, that’s a pretty big fact that will forever ruin our reputation. But we can assume the luge track that killed Nodar Kumaritashvili of Georgia is safe as there’s no investigation going into the track's conditions.

Negative, and a pretty big one, aside, I think the Vancouver 2010 Olympics might be the best ever.

Vancouver’s biggest problem so far with the Olympics has been the weather which is causing event delays, poor track conditions and an uncomfortable environment for spectators who’re watching events in the rain or being blinded by the fog, particularly on Cypress Mountain. But I think the unusually warm weather, is what’s making the Olympics so great. It’s testing the athletes’ true technical and mental abilities making us spectators aknowledge their strength so much more and hopefully making the athletes feel more proud of what they can do.

I watched the women’s snowboard cross yesterday and was literally sitting on the edge of my couch with my fingers crossed praying Maëlle Ricker and Dominique Maltais made it down the hill. The event was ugly, at least three quarters of the women wiped out once over the course of the day. The fog was so heavy I could hardly see the snowboarders going down on my TV so I can’t imagine being one of the riders having to locate a 60 foot jump in the midst of it. To top things off for the athletes, it rained yesterday morning making the slope extremely icy.

By the time the finals rolled around the fog rolled away, but still the course was icy. Both the spectators and athletes knew the final run was going to be a matter of who could make it down the slope without falling. As a spectator that challenge alone made the event ten times more exciting and made me respect the winner’s abilities ten times more – thankfully that winner was Maëlle Ricker, a Canadian.

So I find it disappointing that so much of the Olympics, in any city for that matter, is qualified as a success based on the smooth running of the events when really the Olympics is about the competition between athletes. To me what would make the Vancouver 2010 Olympics the worst ever would be if a bunch of the athletes were caught cheating. In no way do the Olympics become poor when a few glitches occur, as there will always be glitches.

I’ve been at home for the past five days on the couch with a raging headache, a stuffed up nasal passage and a cough so bad I could blow the snow from Russia to Cypress Mountain and still I find myself on the edge of my seat cheering on the athletes. So don’t tell me the Vancouver 2010 Olympics are the worst ever – I’m not even a sports fan and I’m sick and I’m watching so it must be good.

(See Ricker's gold medal run at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oRBEtG030o.)

Crepe Expectations

It has been less than a month since Kawaii Crepe has opened, but people are already packing in to this Osborne Village crêperie like migratory birds relieved to escape from the slushy winter snow. And for good reason too. Kawaii Crepe is affordable, quick, convenient and the food selection is large enough to kick whatever craving one may have.

Kawaii, a Japanese word meaning cute, is exactly what this place is. Every time I think of it the Chordettes’ Lollipop song plays through my head and I picture a 10 year-old boy and girl sitting in a colourful diner gazing into each others eyes sharing a milkshake, only at Kawaii Crepe it would be bubble tea, with two straws – just like the movies.

This diner style restaurant feels like you’re in a candy world. The baby blue walls with red, green, yellow and pink dripping gumball shapes combined with the sweet smell of melting marshmallows, chocolate and honey literally has you panting upon your entrance.

But sweet isn’t the only tooth Kawaii Crepe caters to. If you prefer a savoury dinner, you're in luck. The ‘ninja’ crepe ($ 6.95), one of their most popular crepes, has a sweet peanut flavour that fills your mouth with a soft crunch and a slightly spicy kick. It is a definite favourite. The ‘Osborne branch’ ($6.50), is basically a sweeter version of a chicken, bacon and ranch wrap. It’s rich and creamy but nevertheless tasty.

But then came ‘the hurricane’ ($6.75), literally. Something was off – it was too sharp. The creamy mushroom dill sauce tasted like a too-strong vinaigrette. Like every hurricane, I just wanted it to be over.

Dessert, however, brought back the sunshine following the storm. The ‘it’s-a-smore’
($5.25) is the smore that doesn’t crumble. The pillowy melted marshmallows and chocolate soaked the graham wafers just enough, for optimum chewiness. It’s-a-smore is sure to kick whatever sweet craving you may have – and for a long time as it’s huge.

If you’re seeking a lighter finish to top off your savoury meal the ‘divine brown’
($3.25), melted butter and brown sugar, and the ‘lovely pear’ ($4.25), almonds, pear and honey, and ‘and everything nice’ ($2.95), brown sugar and cinnamon will do just that for you.

The best part (well, nearly as nice as the 'it's a smore' crepe) is that these lovely crepes are quick. It takes no longer than five minutes to receive your crepes and the craving can be kicked six days a week from ten to ten (midnight on Friday's and Saturday's). Choosing one will be your only obstacle as there are just over 30 crepes on the menu.

Overall, the place provides a nice escape into a fantasy world amidst winter's harsh realities.
Note: This article can also be found in The Projector, Red River College's student newspaper.

Why restaurants need a website

Johnny’s stressed out and nervous. His friend Clara (and secret crush of four years) is coming to town to visit from Vancouver and she’s agreed to meet Johnny for dinner. He knows this is his big shot to impress her so he wants to take her somewhere nice.

But the problem is Johnny doesn’t eat at fancy restaurants because they’re too expensive for his student budget and he’s pretty sure Clara has an extensive list of allergies. The occasion to meet Clara is too important to mess up by thinking his restaurant of choice is a good one only to find out it’s too expensive, not the menu he’s looking for or worse doesn’t accommodate to Clara’s allergies. So what’s a guy to do?

Johnny’s not the only one who faces this dilemma; I think many of us can agree that there’ve been occasions where we just can’t choose a restaurant. Case in point, my sister and I do a dinner club once a month and being the hungry students we are we toss around dozens of potential spots to go – what helps us decide? Checking out each restaurants’ menu. What’s the quickest way to do that? Online. My point? It’s absolutely critical in today’s web-based society for a restaurant to have its own website with their menu posted on it.

We’re a busy society. People don’t have time to jump restaurants because they don’t like the menu.

Also, allergies are a huge deal and still many restaurants don’t accommodate to such parties. For example, 529 Wellington (not that we’re all going there once a week) cooks all of its dishes in peanut oil – now that is something you need to know before going if one of your guests has a nut allergy. Luckily, however, 529 does have its menu posted online.

Furthermore, a restaurants website will indicate the prices of their dishes. I know I sure want to spare myself the embarrassment of making my reservation, opening up my menu and realizing I can’t even afford the soup du jour. Or perhaps worse, what if I open up my menu and realize I hate the soup du hour along with every other foreign-seeming item on the menu? No thanks, I’ll do my research before I go. Websites solve these issues for me.

Needless to say I think I’m beginning to exhaust my point. But allow me to point out one more. That is, depending on the time of day one is going to eat he or she may be time constrained. Perhaps they only have a one hour lunch break and want to grab something to eat. Well by just by looking at the types of dishes on the menu one can guess how long it may take to prepare the dishes and whether or not a reservation may be required. Both are things that a restaurant’s website can tell a potential guest.

Remember those things with phone numbers running down the pages called a phone book? The outdated use of them is like comparing talk radio to its original days of the Morse code. And the Morse code is exactly what filtering through a phone book feels like – Google is my preferred option.

Therefore I think restaurants should be including room in its budget to have a website set up for itself. Websites bring awareness to a restaurants existence, sell the potential guest on going there and avoid any hassles with the managers over misunderstandings with the menu selection, hours of operation, payment options or reservation requirements.

I know I rarely go to a restaurant without checking out its menu before. And if they think I’m going to walk around this big city checking out the menu on the outside of their business, they’re dead wrong. It’s February…in Winnipeg…it’s minus 7 million degrees. Instead I will type that magical website called Google into my laptop in my cozy warm house and see if the restaurant in question interests me. If there’s no website, I can almost guarantee that that restaurant is off my list.

Ron Brown, executive director for the Manitoba Cycling Association, agrees. When he goes for lunch with work, he says he always checks out the restaurant’s website before.

“If there’s no website,” he says, “we almost always don’t go.”

Five reasons why you should have reservations to Cafe Carlo tonight

They are:
1.Consistent: Each dish is prepared the same way every time.
2.Experienced: The servers are attentive, friendly and professional. Things like proper wine service and impeccable timing between your starters, salads, entrees and desserts can be expected.
3.Reasonable: Dinner entrees range between $20-30, which isn’t exactly inexpensive; however everything is made from scratch with good quality ingredients – there are no pre-made sauces at this place. Plus, the portion sizes are huge.
4.Intimate: The restaurant’s dimly lit lights and sprawled out tables create a very romantic and private atmosphere – the perfect place for an anniversary dinner or first date.
5.Delicious: Eating at Café Carlo is like eating rich homemade food – but the kind you never have because it takes all day to cook.

For more information about Café Carlo visit http://www.cafecarlo.com/.

Not exactly bang on

I feel bad, but I cannot eagerly promote Bangkok Thai. I’ve been dying to try the place for some time and I finally got to, only to be disappointed.

However, Bangkok Thai, located on the 2nd floor of the Second Cup building in Osborne Village, is great in some ways. For example the atmosphere is relaxing and spacious, thus great for large dinner parties. Also the lighting is nice, dimly lit, and features warm colours such as deep reds and yellows, making it a romantic place to bring a date. And overall, Bangkok is a comfortable restaurant to be in.

The service as well is excellent. They are very attentive –a little on the shy side, but that’s okay because you don’t want aggressive servers trying to up-sell. And all of them knew plenty about the menu and could offer recommendations, which is a bonus considering Bangkok has quite an extensive list of items to choose from (at least 40 I would say).

The problem though is their food, which really is a problem considering that’s ultimately what people are coming for. The curried dishes, for example, aren’t very curry-like. They almost have a soapy taste –too much ginger perhaps? And the potatoes in one dish were quite over done, making it seem like they had been pre-cooked and then reheated. The summer rolls lacked in flavour and were bogged down in lettuce but the peanut sauce was nice and sweet. However, once the sauce ran out, and there wasn’t much sauce for four large summer rolls, you were back to the lettuce. Finally, the pad thai, an item they have listed as a specialty, was disappointing in that the noodles were awkwardly chewy, giving the dish an all around gummy texture.

Nevertheless, the prices are reasonable, around $10 per dish, so if you’re looking for an inexpensive quick bite to eat then I would suggest you try the place. In fact they were quite busy, primarily with large dinner parties, and it seemed as though the people weren’t new to the place, so if they can keep regulars then why not try Bangkok right?

But in general, I probably wouldn’t go there again. If you’re in the Village and looking for some Thai food, I hear Sukhothai is best. (Sorry Bangkok.)

The effort was there, I'm just not the right audience

Theatre Projects Manitoba’s In the chamber 2010: Last Men came and went this past weekend. And thank goodness it went.

What?

Was a question half the audience could be heard muffling to one another throughout the two hour production, directed by Sarah Constible, Friday night.

The other half of the sold out audience, however, continued to laugh hysterically throughout Gordon Tanner and Steven Ratzlaff’s monologues: Last Man in Krakendorf and Last Man in Puntarenas.

The first half of the audience at Friday’s show was a group of 18-25 year-old Creative Communications students who know little about two heavily political subjects: hog farming and the Health Science Centre’s pediatric coronary surgery inquest of the 1990’s. Heck I was practically born in the 1990’s, so needless to say right off the bat that In the Chamber’s target audience was definitely not my age category.

The subject matter was so intense, I felt dumb being there.

Last Man in Krakendorf, part one of the two part play, was written and performed by Gordon Tanner. It opened with a graphic depiction of a man with an erection dreaming in bed. A female was by his side “taking care of business for him” and then quickly left never to be seen again. My first what question.

The set was simple and clear, however, leaving no questions; it was a hotel room. It had a beige backdrop, a double bed to the left with beige sheets, a small night table with a lamp and a red phone and a small table and red chair to the right.

Tanner, who played a 40 something Richard Gere look-a-like agricultural engineer for Agrotech, was exited. His plan was to film a video of himself explaining his concerns with hog farming to Warren Buffet –the head of a hog farming company in Iowa. His character was zany, anal, anxious and short attention spanned.

The character’s short attention span was my second problem with Tanner’s 50 minute monologue. Because the character drifted in and out of focus (at one point he stopped to eat and spoke about the sauce in his food) of his message to Buffet, it made it hard for listeners to follow the point of the story because we were constantly trying to censor where the breaks in the conversations were.

To top off the censoring, we quite literally had to censor Tanner’s language. The monologue was so bogged down in ‘shits’ and ‘fucks’ that we had to continuously filter them out in our heads just to get to the point. But I will admit the swearing and breaks in the conversation did fit the character’s wacky personality flawlessly.

And flawlessly the character was played. Near the beginning of the monologue Tanner pronounced ‘rival’ rev-elle and, still, I’m not sure if it was his own slip up or if it was the characters. Overall Tanner’s character was well played as he was heard clearly from the audience, his pitch fluctuated dramatically, and his body was continuously pacing and flailing about in his wild rant giving the audience something exciting to watch.

The overall subject matter was the only thing that I felt confused about while watching The Last Man in Krakendorf.


Part two of In the Chamber, Last Man in Puntarenas, was written and performed by Steven Ratzlaff, a character who holds a retirement party for himself at a restaurant where he prepares a long winded speech for his guests who slowly leave throughout.

The main problem with Ratzlaff’s speech is that it was purposely made (by Ratzlaff) to bore his guests, making me wonder why I paid to listen to a ‘boring’ speech. It seemed Ratzlaff’s intention with the boring speech idea, however, was to make it interesting by really dramatizing it. But, although Ratzlaff was a great actor in his 50 minute skit, he lacked action, thus failing his mission. There was nothing to watch, only a dramatic voice to hear which unfortunately caused many heads to nod off.

Last Man in Puntarenas was flat and difficult to follow.

But then again, what do I know about these plays? I’m just one of those 20 something-year-olds who doesn’t get ‘grown-up talk’.

And I’m certain I didn’t get the ‘grown-up talk’ because the rest of the non-CreComm-35+ audience was laughing hysterically.

(All photos courtesy of www.theatreprojectsmanitoba.ca)