There is a poster hanging on the cork board at work, but no URL to share. Looks pretty sweet!

A Taste of Downtown at City Hall

The text goes like this:

A Taste of Downtown
Here’s your chance to discover downtown Kitchener restaurants – and sample some of their delicious menu options!

Monday March 29
11:30am – 1:30pm
The Rotunda, Kitchener City Hall
Free Admission

More than 20 restaurants attending.

Updates

Great event! Really well attended, so the local restaurateurs were obviously busy.  The Best-of-Show goes to Botanica, the Indian restaurant at the Delta Hotel.  Honorable mention goes to the generous coffee, desserts, and smiles from Coffee Culture.

Scene at City Hall

Help Me Help You! (by finding patio bars)

If anyone knows of any sweet, underrated patios between downtown Kitchener and uptown Waterloo, please share! I will update this list as I find awesome places.  They will be in my unscientific order of preference.

Kitchener Patios

• Bobby O’Briens – Large patio right dowtown, complete with beach volleyball court and a bar right there on the deck. Good lunch specials.
• One Eyed Jacks – Sketchy and cheap, convenient location, inexpensive deliciously greasy food.  Great for after-softball.  Opens for the summer season only.
• City Cafe Bakery – Small, quaint, and super busy on nice Saturday afternoons.

Waterloo Patios

• Ethel’s Lounge – Great patio with questionable service. Taco Tuesday is the best day ever, weekly. The long patio season and a diverse crowd make for a local success!
• Heuther Hotel – 2nd Floor – The serious local favourite.  (Thanks CJ)
• Symposium Cafe – Out the back of the cafe, which has great breakfast and fancy coffee.
• University Plaza – McGinnis Front Row, Mongolian Grill all have fun patios. (Thanks Dave)
• The Bombshelter – On campus but still a great patio (Thanks Dave)

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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

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 ;-)

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.

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.

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.

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.