loudlunch

Despite spending a lot of lunches getting pizza or Subway with co-workers, every once in a while I treat myself to a quiet, sit-down lunch with a buddy to discuss matters of greater importance, in an atmosphere that supports such a thing. Last time that happened, we went to Ellison’s Bistro.  Fellow bloggers have written about the spot, especially in light of the restaurant recently turning 5 years old.

This restaurant truly is a bright spot for Kitchener lunch. There is widespread recognition of that amongst people at the ol’ office, especially those who like “good” food.

Big Smiles

The first thing that I want to note is Elvis Ellison’s, the owner and chefs, welcoming and cheerful demeanor. This restaurant is one of the few places where you can talk to the chef about what you’re eating, how things are, and feel that you’re doing something appreciated by dining there.

Big smiles abound, especially amongst the guys coming in for the famous lunch-time take-out special. The lunch menu seems like a great value in general, but the take-out specials are worth exploring if you’re just passing by and only have a $5 bill.

From the lunch menu, I had the jerk chicken with some rose-hip tea. The chicken was a great bang-for-buck, but I sincerely regretted not starting with the pumpkin soup. Jeff let me try some of his; yeah, order it, it’s fantastic.

Jerk Chicken, No Soup for Me :(

Get Busier

The only thing I would like to see happen is for Ellison’s to get .. busier.  More people need to eat here, as the food is delicious and the restaurateur vibe is real.

Part of the solution is for the community to show up to eat at place like this.  But this restaurant needs to meet people half way.  I have a question about the take-out special: Why bother?  Every time I’ve gone in there to get the take-out special, the restaurant is quiet.  Let me just eat there, at that price.  I promise I’ll buy more (a drink, an appetizer, dessert etc.) if I sit down.  Hopefully sometime soon, when I’m looking for the best Caribbean food this side of Toronto.

If you’re reading this and you’re on your way home on Fat Tuesday, stop by any of the Polish bakeries in town to pick up some traditional Lenten sweets and pastries.  It’s almost as good as being drunk in New Orleans or half-naked in Rio today!

Blak's in Windsor is the Champion of Ontario

Why Pastries? What are Pączki?

The idea is that Catholics used to give up things like lard and sugar for Lent, so they would splurge and make a whole ton of sweet things to eat for Tuesday thru Thursday.  The most popular of these desserts, at least in North America, are pączki.

If you’re wondering where there are Polish bakeries in Kitchener/Waterloo:

• Nougat Bakery on Queen, east of Highland. Just the best fancy deli/cafe in town.
• Mike’s Deli, Lawrence near Victoria and Belmont. Never been, but the butcher in me is curious.
• Glogowski Euro Food on Highland near Westmount.  It’s a very large grocery store that carries a lot of Eastern European bread, deli, pastry, dairy, etc.

If you’re in Guelph, there are several there as well:

• Klops Meat & Deli – 500 York Road, 519-837-8705
• Romex Deli & Meat – 11-130 Silvercreek Pkwy N., 519-836-0307

If there are any other sources for good paczki in town, on Mardi Gras or otherwise, feel free to comment!

There is so much to love about Caribbean food.  It’s spicy, simple, dripping rich with curries and marrow.  The ingredients seem exotic and homey at the same time. You take roti, some goat, plantain, load up with rice and beans, and power it back with some ginger beer.  Yum and awe.

The casualty of this down-home goodness is, alas, the presentation and general dining experience.   Finding a Carribean place that you would willingly take a new girlfriend to for Saturday lunch is … often challenging.  Rest assured, Rainbow Caribbean Cuisine suffers from all of these conditions, especially the dripping rich, homey food part.   We went for lunch this week, and lost one on the way because the place looks like an expensive cafeteria.  Once we finally ordered the “small lunch” for $9, seriously enjoyed the soup on a cold winter day, and barely finished our meals we knew we did the right thing.

Soup Goat Love

I’ve been complaining a lot about the poor restaurant feel in Kitchener lately. The lunchtime vibe downtown is pretty weak unless you’re willing to shell out $20 every time you leave the office (ie. go to Bolero). And seriously, Rainbow is one of the worst offenders. It feels like a high school cafeteria, especially since there’s a crowd of people lined up at lunch getting styrofoam to-go orders.

Yet the reality is that there is a line-up. Every lunch, a crowd of young people come in for the most filling, non-deep-friend lunch special on King St (just north of Frederick St.). For $9+ you get a soup or salad (get the soup), plantain, and your choice of meat.  The choices are standard Caribbean fare like curried goat and jerk chicken. My friends got the chicken, I got the goat, and either way you can’t go wrong. It’s coupled with rice, noodles, and tastes very home-made.

Small Lunch aka lies.

What else is there to say?  The “small lunch” describes this feast poorly.  Get some Irish Moss if you like Mexican horchata (or milky seaweed products).  This is my third time here for lunch and I’ll be going back whenever I have a cold and feel the need for comfort food.  The soup alone constitutes a small meal.

Downtown Kitchener is actually blessed with two top-notch Caribbean joints, Rainbow and Ellison’s Bistro.  Ellison’s I’m a fan of (as are many people), and will write about a little later.  In the mean time, feel free to stop by Rainbow and congratulate them on how little their decor changed given that their storefront was torn down and replaced a few months ago.  And enjoy.

Friday is the big group lunch day at work, and last Friday we decided to get in the car and try something different.  Local internet database celebrity Michael Swart had mentioned Three Kretans, a well-established Greek place on Frederick St east of Weber.

We got in the cars, called ahead to make 10-minute-ahead reservations (none needed), and found the place which arguably has one of the worst street-fronts I’ve ever seen for casual dining, but some of the best Greek food in Kitchener.

Location Location Location?

Not to be a jerk, but this place has a hilarious location. It’s in the basement of an mid-century office “tower”, sharing its space with the YWCA Resource Centre. Inspiring.

Oh There It Is, Hurray! White Sign, Left.

Once we took the elevator to the back door (there’s a much more inviting front door actually, as we found out later) and got into the place, my mood and approach to the place changed entirely. It’s great. It’s big, loud, tall, friendly, and accommodates a group of ten or more comfortably. The menu is serious but  not overwhelming, the wine selection is reasonable, and there were many  lunch-sized things that came out in good time. It’s not cheap nor expensive, with many meals available for under $10.

Greek Coffee and Salad. Oh something else.

With no offense to the kitchen, I regret getting the vegetable moussaka. Everyone else’s meals looked more interesting and from the sound of it, were delicious.  The moussaka was … bland and tasted like they used powder potatoes. The Greek salad was very nice, simple, tasty, and fresh. Easily the toast of the whole meal was the drink. The Greek-style coffee, with very fine grounds still at the bottom and lightly chalky texture, was delicious and got me in the mood for more Greece.

Moussaka, meh, salad, nice, coffee, amazing.

Despite the outer shell, Three Kretans is very much worth a visit, especially with a large lunch group.  On a related note: next time you’re at a Greek place, ask for a glass of retsina to start your meal. It’s wine that tastes like tree sap. Seriously, don’t judge until you try it ;-)

Here’s a quick Sunday night post, just to set the tone before the work week gets going.   The topics are burgers, Polish deli, and a great food-related report from the Middle East.

Burger at Bobby’s

So as many downtown drinkers know, there used to be this really popular pub called The Still in downtown Kitchener. It got taken over by those London/Guelphites at Partytown, renamed Bobby O’Briens, and boasts some pretty great daily specials!  The special wings are tiny, but the burgers on Wednesdays are a huge hit.

Their cheeseburger is called the Shanahan Burger, and at $4.99+ with fries it’s the best lunch burger ever a refreshingly great deal. The salad-substitution is a reasonable $1.50. Order a Rickard’s White to accompany and you have yourself some lunchtime conversation.

Six Burger Specials, Please!

Nougat Bakery, One Day

The Nougat Bakery and Deli, for those that are lucky enough to live in the Victoria Park area of town, is the hidden treasure on Queen’s Blvd that is not only popular for lunch, but has a solidly stocked Polish deli, a great cafe, and a wicked sweets selection.

I stop in for Illy coffee for take-out every once in a while and highly recommend it for a stop-over on the way home.  This blog will feature something about their lunch special at some point, I’m sure.  The KW Record published a great review of the cafe last spring.

Cross Cultural Food Love

My friends at the Toronto Review published a really great photo essay on food in Palestine.

TorontoReview.ca: Mana'eesh in Palestine

The attention to aesthetics and the social nature of eating is a nice change from Canadian working lunch reality, and the pictures remind me of street food at its finest. We need inspiration for more street food, and street vending, in this country.

Kava Bean Commons is a great little coffee shop on the corner of Gaukel and Charles [GMap] downtown K-town, attached to a classic downtown auto garage kitty corner from the bus station.   The place is very pretty, with high ceilings, classic exposed red brick, and nice hardwood furniture.  They serve great coffee, the service is friendly, and the number of peacoats in the winter standing in line for lunch makes me think that they’re doing something right.

I come here for coffee and business meetings, so I decided to try it for lunch when my lawyer was in from out of town (no joke).   Their box lunch special is super flexible:  pick a sandwich, a salad, a drink, and some dessert.  The only thing I was disappointed with is that coffee isn’t an option on the drink choices menu for the lunch special!  Juice, milk, pop, water, basically anything but.

Options, Options

So I ordered the boxed lunch because it was 7.99+, no lie. A complete lunch for  under $10 is a blessing.   My choice was the turkey, with a mexican bean salad, and a brownie.  The standout was the bean salad, and I’d highly recommend it; cilantro with bean and light tomato, nice.

Boxed Lunch from Kava Bean

They apparently also have great chili, and the tuna wrap is solid.  I wish their cafe mocha used a slightly less sweet hot chocolate, but that’s a matter of preference, and probably more inline with the needs of the clientele.

One thing that I like about the Kava Bean (broad, sweeping generalisation) is that the people who eat there look like they work for a living.  The hurrying, the uniforms, the auto shop next door – the pace is human, and it makes lunch feel communal.

I had walked by The Silver Spoon at 217 King St. [GMap] about a hundred times before I realised it was more than a chocolate shop!  It’s like the The Boathouse in Guelph, except with that downtown Kitchener (cough) ambiance.   :-)

There is a really quaint English Tea room in the back where they serve a Prix Fixe offering at lunch.  Since it’s Friday a few co-workers and I decided to check it out.  We left with mixed feelings, mostly because it really could be a great $10 lunch experience.

Best Service Ever

Before I get into the food, I wanted to say that the service was fantastic. The server was polite, engaging, and knew when to take my stuff away. This is important when you’re serving three separate courses to a group of people, and is in line with what I’d expect at a “tea house.”  If you plan on being generous with the tip, the stupid debit machine is not set up for tipping.  It’s a small thing, but it turns me off when courtesies like that aren’t extended to the staff.

Sequentially Worse?

Onto the food. The $7.75+ Prix Fixe lunch seems like a great deal, especially given the environment (an upscale chocolate shop).  As each of the three courses came out, each was sequentially less impressive. The coffee, tea, and hot chocolate selection got us excited, and the people who got the hot chocolate won. The hot chocolate was delicious, not too sweet, a good Friday winter starter.  I got coffee like an idiot (also really good).

Look How Good the Menu Looks!

The soup, home-made ginger squash, was fantastic.    After that, the salad was fine but very barren. I commented that some walnuts or cranberries would dramatically improve the course.

The sandwich selection looked amazing on paper. It was tasty, but the presentation was poor (little sandwich, huge plate, following a meek salad). Looking around the table as the sandwiches came out, everyone had on that “Oh, that’s .. pleasant” face.  But once again, the service was great.

Put it Together

If I were to make one suggestion to the restaurateur: just serve the salad and sandwich together. They’re nothing special individually, but together it’d feel like a serious meal. Especially if the hungry plan on having a quick lunch.

Feel free to check out The Silver Spoon, and let me know your thoughts.  Everyone there seemed to be loving the atmosphere, as well as the slow and steady pace of a Friday afternoon.

I work at a software company, so naturally Chinese food is a staple of my subsistence.  Of the Chinese/Pan-Asian lunch specials downtown, one dish at the The Lotus Leaf is one of my favourites.

Location, Bam!

Lotus Leaf has these really cost effective $6.20+tax specials that many of my co-workers love: lots of options and combinations, all of which come in about 5 minutes.  Compared to King Wok, which costs a tiny bit less, the food is more generous, better prepared, but unfortunately more greasy and straight-up bland at times.  I’d like to try Lai Lai’s as well after hearing a stream of positive reviews.

But what The Lotus Leaf does offer is:  a really convenient location on 151 King St. [GMap] which is kitty-corner from Kitchener City Hall,  as well as a generous and tasty Mango Chicken dish for $7.50+.  Tea is free, bringing the total with tax and bad tip to just over $9.

Mango, chicken, rice, peppers.

To be honest, me gusta mango and find that fruit + cooking = great lunch.  The red and green peppers aren’t amazing, and asking for a little less sauce makes the experience better.  The pineapple equivalent of this dish was awful, and not worth experimenting with.

But to be honest, especially if you have a group of carnivores with you The Lotus Leaf is a good place for some old fashioned work-bashing lunch.  Don’t be afraid to shell out an extra dollar for what I think is their best lunch dish.

For the second time this week, I took a stroll down to the Queen Street Commons in downtown Kitchener and got myself some pizza. The Commons are just west of King St. on Queen St [GMap].

The Commons

First and foremost, it’s simply the least expensive place to get a warm meal in an inspiring atmosphere downtown.  It’s inexpensive for a few good reasons:  the food is vegetarian, it’s staffed mostly by young volunteers, and proceeds from the restaurant fund a local community organisation, The Working Centre.

You win friends with salad.

It’s very nice inside.  Tall ceilings, wooden furniture, a piano, a huge storefront window.  You’re surrounded by eclectic people, and definitely feel that you’re participating in something meaningful.  There are books about gardening, bicycles, and disabilities. Obviously, the coffee is fair trade, the tea is served in ceramic, and you put your own dishes away.

The Meal

There are too many dishes on the menu (rather, on display), but my personal favourite is the pizza.  They have a soup and salad combo for under $4 (!!) but the salads are touch-and-go depending on the day.  The pizza, on the other hand, is consistently delicious.  It’s baked when you order it, the dough is soft, the toppings are delicious, and there is usually too much for me to finish.   This time I got a mint tea to go along with it.  Total cost of the meal with a light tip is $6.

Pizza, Mint Tea, Great Deal!

If you’re feeling bored with local coffee shop culture (no dig at the awesome, brand new Coffee Culture just down the street! Heck yes!), give the Queen Street Commons a try. You’ll end up having business lunch there, seriously.