Earls (on Main)

...but not on your own.

When I started on this blog, I decided that I wasn't going to review chain restaurants because it didn't make sense to me (Solo in Winnipeg should be restaurants exclusive to Winnipeg, I figure). But also, when I started this blog, I decided I was going to post twice a week. Sometimes we have good reason to break our own rules. Sometimes we don't. Reviewing Earls on Main is the former. I think. I'd received a gift card and saw they had a pretty cool happy hour menu, so I took myself there after work, and eating there alone brought on all the clichés that people assume you'd experience when going out alone that I hadn't experienced until now.

Didn't try these, but I appreciate that there are
options for people who want to be Happy but
don't imbibe.

I sat in the lounge, because that's where the Happy Hour menu is served. The server set a second place at my table without asking and then kind of ignored me  since she probably assumed I was meeting with something. She came by and asked if I'd like a drink... Which she set down at my imaginary friend's place instead of at mine. I didn't get the chance to put in a food order then because she was a big fan of kind of dropping off my order and then walking away really quickly. I cut her some slack for about four seconds, thinking she was the only server, but then saw that there were two others working the lounge with her. I don't know if this is a reasonable number of staff for the lounge at this time, but the others seemed to have the time for their tables so... Maybe I pissed my waitress off by not bringing a date when she so clearly set a place for him? Who knows. I was a little worried I'd sit there until Happy Hour was over and/or starve to death waiting for a date who would never arrive that I assume was the signal my server was waiting for, but I was able to use my laser eyes to get her attention before either of these things happened.

The drink that couldn't save the day.

The Happy Hour menu includes both food and drinks and is as reasonably priced as you'd expect it to be. The Margherita pizza was good enough, but the avocado toast was definitely not worth forgoing a mortgage for. If you want that level of good, you have to take yourself to Forth. My Moscow Mule was somehow indistinguishable from my Mojito... I don't know if that's because my server had decided to not listen to me since I'm clearly crazy, eating alone in a lounge after work, or because the bar is just 'meh.' In any case, for the price, it's hard to complain; the drinks had booze in them and the food was palatable. It's hard to ask for more than that.

The lounge is a cool enough place to sit alone, as long as you are okay with your waitress largely ignoring you. My solo date lasted about 45 minutes longer that I wanted, but fortunately there were enough TVs with sports on them to distract me from the person who wasn't taking my orders. Since the speedy service took me past Happy Hour, I got myself a fancy tiki drink at the end that wasn't on that menu. It was nicely spiced with ginger and possibly clove in with all the fruit flavour. It was a nice drink but not nice enough to save the experience.

Rating: * 

Price: $ (Happy Hour Menu)

Winnipeg Fringe!

So I haven't posted too much lately because I've been too busy hanging out at the Winnipeg Fringe which, incidentally, is a great place to go on a solo date. Pick some shows for times that work for you, no need to work something out with your friends. You can't chat once the show goes up anyway, so it's totally not weird to do that solo. I've also been doing some reviewing there, so check it out if you want to see some of the shows I think are pretty rad. The Fringe Exchange also lets patrons submit reviews too, so you can post what you think too :) Happy Fringe.

Price: $

Rating: *** (dependent on show; results may vary)

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)

Asian Hot Pot

Okay, I'm going to start this one off by saying that just because someplace is not so great of a solo dining place does not mean that it's not a great place to go. I decided (finally) to stop into Asian Hot Pot for the first time a couple weeks ago and I liked it so much that I brought a friend a week later.

The place is literally tucked in a corner on Corydon between Nikos and Freshii and I've seen it a zillion times over since I moved to Winnipeg, always wondering what it was like, but never trying it. But the beauty of going out alone is you can just say to yourself, 'Self, we're finding out what this restaurant is like right NOW.' So that's what I did.

Their website is for take-out, so I don't
believe their in-house menu is online.
Mmmmm... lookit all the noodles...

I don't know if there's other places that do this in Winnipeg, but I've never seen it; what they do at Asian Hot Pot is... a hot pot. They give you a burner, you pick a broth and then you kind of cook the stuff you ordered yourself.This was intimidating since I'd never done it before but only for about 13 seconds; the service here is AMAZING. The server did everything short of actually holding my hand to help me through this first hot pot experience. It's all-you-can-eat which she wisely picked up would not be a great option for me, so she graciously sold me the lunch special even though it was about 9 PM  and told me precisely what I should order (one veg, one meat, one ball, one noodle). She then walked me over to the sort of condiment bar that they have (included in the price) and told me how that works (it's got green onions, garlic, spices, sauces - soy, oyster, and the like). They even have handy combos printed on the wall in case you are not sure what goes well together.

The broth is $2-5 above the cost of the all-you-can-eat (or in my case, 5 topping lunch special) and comes with free refills to accommodate your culinary endeavours. I'd ordered green onion and ginger broth and soft tofu, udon, bean sprouts, quail egg, and lobster ball for 'toppings'. My server gave suggestions on how long I should simmer everything and we had a great talk about how awesome noodles are and she invited me back to try all of them (I will).

Now, the down side of all this (for a solo diner) is that it is definitely a social eating kind of place. Going with others would have allowed me to try more things and dicking around on my phone was hard to do when trying to cook. It wasn't a cocktail kind of place, although there was beer and wine, so I just stuck with tea. Food-wise, everything was perfect. The only thing I'd recommend in terms of what to order/not order is to make sure you grab salt from the condiment bar - I didn't since, typically, Chinese food is super salty. The broth here doesn't seem to be salted at all, which is great if you're sharing since everyone has different tastes. Another sort of negative seems to be entirely with me; I made a huge freaking mess. A quick look around at other diners seems to dictate that this was my problem alone. If anyone can give some pro-tips on how to not look like a slob when eating here, I'll take them.

Even though I enjoy eating animals,
I am super pleased by all the tofu;I
really enjoy the stuff. I think I
counted eight different options
 (two with fish in it though, sorry
veg friends)

Since this is a solo dining blog, this may seem a little off topic, but going with my friend who is super duper vegetarian brought out some points that might assist someone like me who doesn't eat animals. Again, the service was spectacular when we went and there is a good variety of vegetarian broths (all of the $2 ones can be vegetarian. The $5 ones can't since the upsell on those is that they have chunks of meat in them). You can see from my menu shots that there is a huge variety of vegetarian stuff and none of it has hidden animal products in it - if it says it's a noodle, it's just a noodle. Again, one of the servers accompanied us to the condiment bar where he gave my friend a personal tour of the vegetarian options (which was about 75% of the selection). There was also one point where my friend was about to say we should get a second pair of tongs as we were trying to figure out the order of things so that my animal choices didn't taint his soup, but before he finished his thought, a server just kind of materialized with a second set for us. As I said, every server here was almost magic they were so genuine and I really regret that I lack the income to lavishly and obnoxiously over-tip them.

So, to sum up: unless you have a much bigger appetite than me, this probably isn't a great option for you, dear solo date. But the food is unique and delightful, and the service rocks. Skip this one if you're looking for something more than ordinary in the alcoholic sense or want to look classy, because unless you discovered the secret that every other patron there seems to have mastered, you might get soup on your everything.

Price: $
Rating: **