Upstairs in the Village

One of the nicer views from a
Winnipeg patio, in my opinion

So, I hit this one up when, walking home from work, it was too nice to go home and eat alone in my sad, sad basement apartment. This has got to be the best patio in Winnipeg with the worst possible menu. It was small and completely unappetizing. Maybe it was because the only thing really on it was pizza and it was a stupid hot day so I was looking for something lighter; I will revise this if I ever sample the hot food and it ends up not being terrible but I was so unimpressed that I just got myself a Caesar Salad. It was fine, as Caesar Salad tends to be. At least the lettuce was crisp and all those sorts of things that a salad should be, at bare minimum.

The staff is super duper friendly and make you feel pretty normal to be hanging out alone on what I've decided is actually my favourite patio I've sat on this summer. Unfortunately there isn't much of a draw; for one of the very few times when I'm out alone I felt too old to be in an establishment. There's these club tunes going and security staff so I guess I was in a bar although the set-up to me really implies that it's supposed to be a restaurant. The drink menu consists of things that your teenage self might have drank to mask the taste and get hammered as quickly as humanly possible which, considering the night I was there was 'Triple Tuesdays' when you can get a triple of your favourite crap spirits for $10, might be the entire reason this place exists.

The flip side was burgers. Serves
me right for not checking
that the place was a restaurant
before I walked up the stairs...

Oh dear, I just went looking for a website to link up to Upstairs in the Village and all I could find was a Facebook page... the cover photo implies that, yes, I stumbled into and got lost in some kind of bar designed for and by teenagers (it's what could easily be super smashed bar-star girls with cleavage just sort of mashed together into a photo that probably defines some student's awesome Friday, or more likely Thursday, night).

So I guess my advice is, don't go here unless you've just turned 18 (or are younger with an older sibling's ID), the LC is out of coolers, and you have no desire to eat. I won't say that I'm above drinking cheap liquor, but if you've got a friend with a balcony, you could probably have a very similar experience with better booze provided you stopped at Safeway to grab a salad kit before heading over. It'll also help if the friend with the balcony is really friendly and discusses her folk fest plans with you while not judging you for your solo drinking.

Price: $

Rating: ½ (of a star. It would insult actual restaurants if I gave this place a full one. The half is purely because every server who interacted with me was a delight)