In Review: The Old Spaghetti Factory

Old Spaghetti Factory

Johnston Terminal

The old spaghetti factory is a classic. It has the distinction of being in a beautiful building in one of Winnipeg’s top tourist attractions. It has a model replica of a street car on the patio. It is filled with antiques and a collection of stain glass that would make a church feel inadequate (although that is an exaggeration) but is certain to make you feel like you are in an old parlour somewhere in the recesses of 1912 (as long as you don’t over think it).

As a bonous they serve a beer that is exclusively made for them by Fort Garry Brewing Company: Cobblestone Lager and Cobblestone Pale Ale. The internet suggests that Cobblestone Lager is made by Granville Island. I couldn't be 100% sure either way. Regardless, it was citrusy, light, and enjoyable. Nothing special, but it was worth ordering.

Apart from the Cobblestone Lager, my wife and I ordered:

·         1 Mojito

·         Veggie Lasagne

·         Spaghetti with Browned Butter and Mizithra Cheese, a la Homer

What came along with the order:

·         Classic Sourdough Bread (with whipped garlic and plain butter)

·         Greek Salad (for an extra 2$)

·         Regular Salad (with raspberry vinaigrette)

·         2 servings Spumoni ice cream

·         2 cups of tea

In other words, it was a whole heck of a lot of food for just about $50 (including a 15% tip).

The sourdough was very good, the Greek salad was night and day better than the regular salad, and the ice cream was delightful.  Of the two entrées we ordered the Veggie Lasagne was probably the better of the 2 dishes we ordered.

With 7 vegetarian options (which is a little bit intimidating) and even an entrée that looks vegan, as well as gluten free choices, and options for children, it would be pretty hard to find a reason you couldn't eat here. It’s a good price, the food is pretty good, and you get enough of it to feed an army (or me), and the atmosphere is fabulous. It’s a little piece of Winnipeg culture which might not warrant a special trip but so few of Winnipeg's food Meccas do. Like the (former) paddlewheel, and (former) kelekis, it was somehow comforting to know they were there when you needed them to be.

Until next time,   

Food Review: Sukothai

Sukothai (order in)
191 Osborne St

UPDATED: August 30th, 2013

It had the opportunity to eat at Sukothai again this weekend. It was nice to add a few more dishes to this food review. It seems to me that they have expanded the restaurant since the last time I ate there, but I might be wrong. I don't remember the a large back room and new washrooms from last time I ate in. Regardless, the atmosphere of the place is very much business-lunch. 

The group of us ordered the following dishes to share:

Mango Salad - Spice level 1

Green Papaya Salad - Spice level 1

Pad Si Ew - Spice level 6

Pad Thai - Spice level 6

Green Curry Soup - Spice level 4,7

Mat Saman - Spice level 5

Pad Kaeng Puck - Spice level 5

It is interesting to notice that my spice tolerance has increased in the last 6 months. My favourite dish was the green curry soup (spicy 7), which was just right for me. My favourite dish from this list was the Mat Saman and the green curry soup. My overall rating of the place remains the same. I liked the food, it was well made and tasty, but it apart from the fried tofu, it doesn't really stand out among Winnipeg's Thai restaurants. 

OLDER POST: December 2nd, 2013

Family dinner with my in-laws was more hectic than it usually is because family was in from out of town and as a result Thai food was ordered. This was fine for me and perfect for my wife: she could eat the stuff everyday and not get sick of it. Sort of like me with pizza. People were not feeling like going out so we ordered in Sukothai via mobile maître’d.

Here is what we ordered (minus the meat dishes):

Pad Thai – spice level 5

Tom Yum – spice level 4

Spring Rolls – spice level 4

Red Curry Soup – spice level 4

Pad Kiew Wan – spice level 4

Mee Krob – Spice level 4

The restaurant itself is a fairly classy place frequented by evening diners in Osborne Village and beyond. By this comment I don’t mean to say that it is ritzy, but I also would probably put on something nicer than a t-shirt.

I don’t have a great spice tolerance so I found the Tom Yum to be on the edge of too spicy, however, it was also my favourite dish. It was sweeter than the recipe my wife and I make at home and had more vegetables in it. I will probably petition to modify our recipe to be more like this one. Another thing that stood them apart in my mind was the way the fried tofu was fried. Somehow it was more flavourful than most, which is nice because bland tofu is a terrible crime.

The only thing I would suggest not ordering is the spring rolls, I found them disappointing. For me the apex of spring roll quality is JT Springrolls who can be found at the St.Norbert Farmers market. They are crisp and wonderfully flavourful and their plum sauce from a packet left Sukothai’s carefully crafted peanut sauce in the dust. But that is my opinion.

Their Pad Thai, which I believe is what makes or breaks a Thai restaurant, was fine. On the Pad Thai Index it is a solid 3/5.

Until next time,

Food Review: A Little Pizza Heaven

A little Pizza Heaven
120 Osborne St

When the going gets busy the busy get pizza, this is a mantra I live by. Take-out food is a treat, but sometimes the treat part is not making the food yourself. Don’t get me wrong, I love cooking fine and plenty, but it is nice to be able to focus on the task at hand. Pizza is my dream food. I can eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, hot and cold, rain or shine.

Due to my new obsession with blogging I wanted to try something that wasn't my standard. I decided to go out on a limb. Circumstance sent me in the direction of A Little Pizza Heaven. It claimed to be the best pizza this side of heaven. Promising? Yes. Delivering the promise? Not really.

I had heard of the place mentioned vaguely by friends as darn good pizza for a pretty darn good price. We ordered the Mediterranean pizza and the vegetarian pizza, which are the standard veggie options at most pizza places.  Two specialty large pizzas cost 35$ (they only accept cash) and they were ready in a stunning 20 minutes. We arrived at the place and watched the fellow at the counter brush garlic butter on the crusts. The pizzas came out of the oven pretty as a picture. Yes this was exciting!

Finally, it came time to try the pizza. The crust was golden and malleable, the toppings were generous. Overall it was tasty and the vegetarian pizza (which is usually the worst pizza on the menu) was hands down better than Pizza Hotline, Garbonzo’s, or Dominos’. The Mediterranean was tastier still. But before you pick up your phone and ring them up you should know: the pizza was oozing in grease and quite salty. But more importantly it was like eating the real world equivalent to elvish waybread (lembas). What does that mean? It sat like a rock in the stomach and one piece left one feeling vaguely and uncomfortably full for hours. Apart from being a wonderful cure for hunger, that is not a quality I look for in pizza.

So, your friends or family declare “let’s order in A little Pizza Heaven”! What do you say? I would recommend somewhere else. The flavour doesn't quite beat out the waybreadishness. If, on the other hand, you have had a few too many and are stumbling around the village late at night and pizza calls your name, go in! The pinball, pizza by the slice, and the greasy fattiness will probably hit the spot.

Until next time,

Beer Reviewed: Maccabee Lager Beer

Maccabee Lager Beer

Israel

On my way home from work today I bought a king can of Maccabee Lager Beer, brewed by Tempo Beer Industries. Tempo is Israel’s largest brewery and is responsible for importing a very large range of drinks into Israel. Heineken has a 40% share in the company. Their website says that they contribute to charities and hire people with special needs and hire regardless of religion, ethnicity, or gender. They also point out that they treat their sewage (which makes me wonder what happens to sewage from other factories).  

But enough about all of that, how does it taste? Unfortunately it ended up tasting like nothing. Actually that’s not true. It tasted like unpleasant, watery beer. If I were to drink it at all, I would probably suggest drinking it by the pitcher in a bowling alley. 

Here are 4 more situations where you might drink this beer:

1. You’ve never tried it and don’t trust my opinion (or want see if I’m right)
2. It is on sale at the MLCC
3. You were going to put it in Rarebit, Beer Bread, or Batter fish with it (They deserve better)
4.  Someone gave it to you for free

If you want a lager, try one of these instead. They a comparable price (or cheaper) and I like them more:

Farmery Lager

Moosehead Lager

Sleeman’s Honey Brown

Until next time!

Craving the Order-Out Tomato Sauce

Craving the Order-Out Tomato Sauce

A confession

Dear friends and readers have you ever had a ravenous craving that springs up out of nowhere at 10:30 am or 2:30 pm (or some such inter-mealtime)? An urge so bizarre and specific that if you were pregnant people would raise their eyes and say knowingly: “ah, a craving!” But you are not, and they don’t.

Today I was ravenous for pizza sauce. But not just any kind of pizza sauce, I craved the pizza sauce that seems to be created especially for lower-end-of-moderate-to-moderately-priced pizza joints like Dominos, Garbonzo’s (review pending), Pizza Hotline, or Boston Pizza. There is something very special about those pizza sauces. They are rich and thick and bright tomato red. Compare this to my home made tomato sauce, which is pale red or even yellowy-orange, acidic, and tastes like the spices I add to it, and you might not be surprised I crave good ol’ tomato sauce once and a while. It finds my food addiction spot and activates it like lab rat with a food reward scheme.

So what could possibly make it different?

Here are some guesses:

-          Tons of Sugar

-          Garlic Powder (for that zip)

-          Not a lot of spices (oregano? Maybe a bit of basil?)

-          Lots of Tomato Paste

-          Chunked Tomatoes

-          Salt

My brother suggested adding carrots (which is what he does). The internet also suggested adding MSG. However, Dominos saves us the trouble of asking. They supply the ingredients to their sauce online. (Drum roll please):

Tomatoes, Tomato Puree (Water, Tomato Paste), Carrot Puree [Kudos to my brother!], Onions, Celery Puree, Romano and Parmesan Cheese, Sugar, Salt, Garlic, Butter, Spices [I assume they are oregano, basil, maybe parsley], Chicken Base [Dang! Another reason I am a bad vegetarian] (Chicken including: natural chicken juices, salt, chicken fat, sugar, maltodextrin, hydrolyzed corn gluten, dried whey, natural flavoring, yeast extract, turmeric for colour), olive oil, citric acid, xanthan gum.

The xanthan gum probably keeps sauce thick. The chicken base also probably adds thickness, but it also probably adds the umami (i.e meatiness).  My panel of judges (me, my brother, a chef friend, and my wife) predicted 7 of the 28 ingredients (a solid 25%). I guess the thing I wasn't expecting was the chicken Base and, more interestingly, the celery puree.

Ultimately, these tomato sauces are a guilt trip for me because they don’t taste like anything I have made, or know how to make, so I grudgingly call them fake and feel guilty when I order them. But they are real tomato sauces because there are definitely tomatoes in the recipe.

So I guess I will just have to try adding some of these things to my sauce and see what happens. 

Until Next Time,

A

Food Review: Magic Thailand

Magic Thailand
842 Logan Ave



When I started this blog I had promised myself that I wouldn't do restaurant reviews. There were enough other people blogging about what they eat in Winnipeg that I don't really feel the need to tread on their expert feet. But then I realized how long it has been since I posted and my inhibition floated away. 

I will comment on my approach to this: I will write to the following situation: you are at a restaurant either because a friend pressured you into going, or you are on a date and the person chose this place. Maybe you just wandered in. In all cases, you are already there. What should/shouldn't you order? Should you go dangle the hook of a different restaurant in front of their eyes to reel them toward better pastures (err...riverbeds(?))?

So here we go:

Magic Thailand seems to be a house-turned-restaurant located in the middle of the Logan-CPR/West Alexander neighbourhoods, or, as I tend to imagine them: the north end of the west end. Don't expect glamour, but the place was packed with the sort of happy conversational people which you want sitting around you when you eat. 

A group of 6 of us ordered:

Green Curry Udon (with Tofu) - 5 on the spicy scale
Pad Thai (With Tofu) - 5 spice on the spicy scale
Matsaman (With Beef) - 5 on the spicy scale -  WAIT, I though you said you were vegetarian! Yes, well...I can sometimes be tempted into eating meat-steeped sauce (but more about that some other time).
Green Curry Soup - 5 on the spicy scale
Ginger Stir-Fry (Pat Keeng Puck) with Tofu - 5 on the spicy scale
"New Dish" - 4 on the spicy scale - I can't remember the name, but it was basically mixed vegetables and shrimp
Jasmine Rice

Of those dishes, the Green Curry Udon was by far the best. Then the Pad Thai, which was extremely flavourful, and the Green Curry Soup. The rest of the dishes didn't stand out from the crowd of similar dishes in other Thai restaurants around Winnipeg. But that Pad Thai, and that Green Curry...mmmm...they were exceptional. I don't know what it was, but they were a class onto themselves. 

Each dish was about 10-12$ (menu is available on urban spoon) which gets you a large dish of food (enough to make a hungry person like me about 85% full).

So if you end up at Magic Thailand you are in safe hands.

Until next time!

An Introduction

Adrian

Blogger

Hi! I'm Adrian. I'm going to tell you my food story.

It starts in utero but I am going to skip to when I remember things. One of my first memories about food is picking nanking cherries from a bush in my parents front yard as a very young child. When I was young my parents lived in a house that had a grape vine, a nanking cherry bush, raspberries, strawberries, chokecherries, and apples. During that time we would also pick strawberries and saskatoons with my grandparents. Hot summer days with pails full of berries and hands full of juice we would wash and hull endless strawberries on 'the porch' still brings up a powerful scent memory which instantly makes me nostalgic. During this time my mom shopped at small organic groceries and bakeries and lived what is pretty much my food sourcing dream. Then we moved, but the dream continued. My family were a part of the Weins farm vegetable share, and later a different share. My dad build a cold cellar in the basement and we ordered all of our meat from a farmer in Saskatchewan whom we visited occasionally. But those days weren't meant to last, something changed somehow and we started shopping at superstore and everything but the apples stopped being picked. Then my parents separated.

I think it wasn't possible for either of them to support a household and work and keep up the same energy they had for food production. Although it wasn't overly fancy, I remember the computer desk filled with zucchini the size of children, large braids of garlic, and rhubarb crisp made from amazingly tart apples. These memories lay dormant throughout my adolescence.

During my teen years there were also a few memorable months where the meal rotation was between smokies served with Caesar salad and farmer sausage with perogies. But it was also during this time that I was forced to learn how to do dishes, and help a little bit with the cooking. The meals I made were unexceptional, and sometimes quite ghastly (peppercorn soup comes to mind) but it was a start. 
A second food transformation occurred when I dated (and eventually married) a life-long vegetarian. Her parents were much more engaged with food, they baked their own bread, and their fridge was always full of fancy cheese and endless quantities of vegetables. I love the food my (now) in-laws make, and it was not hard to decide to become vegetarian. This life-style change taught me to experiment with food and flavour and I have not turned back. I would call myself an avid amateur cook whose favourite social events are potlucks. My favourite food is pizza.  

In the future I would like to be able to purchase milk from dairy farmers, keep chickens and bees. These dreams also mean that my wife and I have to move out of the small apartment we live in. Until then we will bake and garden and eat, and most of all enjoy food.