The Roost

So, even when doing something for fun, like writing reviews for your totally hip blog, motivation can be a tricky thing. Because, you know, watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine and eating popcorn is way easier than trying to be witty, in print, for a small group of people who may or may not care if I post a new thingy about how I feel when I eat at places alone in Winnipeg. ANYWAY, I work at a restaurant/dining corporation that does weddings and such as a second job and the other night, which banquet serving and feeling generally menial, one of my bosses/owners said that he'd read my blog AND HE LIKED IT; thought it was well-written n shit. Well then, if an industry professional thinks this is fun to read, then IT MUST BE SO. Anyway, with renewed enthusiasm, I present to you my latest dining adventures.

Yup, it's not the poor lighting, that
there is popcorn. Don't get me
wrong, popcorn is my favourite
vegetable, but not in this context.

The Roost is a tiny, especially if you have to exclude patio seating due to weather. It's also a walk-up, so be careful you don't miss the door entirely; I may have been known to walk past the place once or twice while looking for it. I've had trouble getting in in the past, but today was my day. The food menu here is, in my opinion, a little too small but it is an allergists delight; with all their vegan, vegetarian, gluten, and dairy free options, every food sensitivity (both real and imagined) can be accommodated here. The seating seems to be set up to allow for socializing, but it is certainly not an awkward space for one (providing that have a spare seat to give you).

The most user-friendly drink menu in this city. It even has a
pictorial guide so there are zero surprises when your beverage
arrives.

I ordered the mushrooms on toast which was super delicious for something that sounds like what university students eat for dinner instead of a real meal. It had a whipped goat cheese on it that reminded me of a Segovia dish I once loved but, alas, no longer exists. The main part of the dishes here are generally very good, save the ridiculously salty scallops I had, but the accouterments range from bland to baffling. I don't know what I expected the popcorn grits to be, but it was literally popped corn on grits. It was weird to me and not particularly tasty, so I could have gone without. Although I do enjoy eating weird things, it has to be pretty delicious if I'm going to do it. Speaking of delicious, the brussel sprouts made my day in a way that vegan food rarely does. At least I assume it was vegan since the menu called the sauce a 'cheese' sauce. I don't really want to know what it was made from, since I generally prefer my cheese to be coming from a quadruped and don't think we need to get inventive with the stuff. BUT if you're not into animal products, this'll work for you.

The only surprise you might
experience with your beverage is
how beautiful it looks

The cocktail menu is arranged from easiest drinking to the harder stuff, which is really handy if you don't know what to drink specifically. There's some pretty imaginative stuff: the rooibos tea cocktail with a cake pop reminded me of something Starbucks would have if it was a bar and the Dangeroost is dangerous indeed. I definitely enjoyed this place more for the cocktails than the menu. I think it's because I really like eating animal products; I'm kind of an economic vegetarian when I'm preparing my own meals, so I like to indulge when I take myself out. BUT, if you're not into eating animals, I think this would be a pretty cool hangout for you; a lot of schmancy date places tend not to have vegan-friendly options (especially plural 'options,' avec un 's') so this will definitely meet the coolness of both your style and dietary needs.

Price $$$
Rating: *½

Teo's/Mano a Mano

Drinking my cool drink in a cool
mason jar on a cool patio on a hot
evening

Since the weather quickly went frigid this weekend, I felt I should quickly pump out a couple of my dates that feature a patio in some way before they're completely irrelevant. I've noticed, actually, that quite a few places I've visited in town only really have their patio going for them; I suppose we're willing to suffer mediocre dining if it means we can spend some time outside during our gloriously short patio-season.  

Teo's fits that bill pretty well. Or is it Mano a Mano? I'm still a little confused as to why this bar/restaurant has two names. It seems that the kitchen itself has a specific name? I don't understand; it baffles me and I spent way to much time thinking about this as I sat on their sidewalk patio (with loads of solo seating). Actually, I wish more places in town had patios like this; I've seen a lot more in more pedestrian friendly parts of other cities like Montreal.

Pictured: Summer in a glass AKA
Gadda da Vida

Fortunately for me, Teo's (AKA Mano a Mano) stays open late if there's business to be had; it can be bloody hard to find a place open past nine on a Monday (because Winnipeg is a swinging, party town) and sometimes my date nights to myself start late. Although be aware that once the street lights snap on, it can kind of kill the ambiance. I found that this is another one of those establishments that is really more of a solo drink place than a solo meal place; there's some creative cocktails but the food is pretty ordinary. The sauce and pasta are nothing special and a lot of the fried things I ordered were rather bland. I was a huge fan though of the cauliflower in the Fritto Misto, if the whole dish was like that, we might be ok. The seafood, however, was fairly tasteless and the zucchini could have been 76% crispier. NB: The appetizers here are massive. you will likely only need one. I wanted to sample a couple of things for a more varied review and ended up taking a ton of it home. I wanted to give the antipasto a try, but it wasn't on the late night menu (remember, 9:30 on a Monday is 'late night' in Winnipeg).

Checking out Teo' bar; not to be
confused with the Mano a Mano
kitchen

There's a chalkboard along the sidewalk that stated there were both food and drink specials available although I never did hear what either of them were and water wasn't provided even though it was crazy hot out at the time. It would have been nice to have had some, but no one else on the patio seemed to have a water glass either, so perhaps pure alcohol is the custom on this one. The server's suggestion for said alcohol, Gadda da Vida, was pretty much summer in a glass and helped cut the heat almost as well as H2O might have. The cocktails here generally did it for me; 2 oz, girly, but not crazy sweet. I get the feeling that this patio might be a better pre/post meal/outing kind of place to hang, especially after having the starchy, tasteless Arancinis which, to their credit were at least satisfyingly hot and crunchy.

I feel if you're not too adventurous palate-wise, this might be the kind of place for you. I found the food boring although it was rather inoffensive and the drinks were just fine. Since Winnipeg nights are going to be cooler and kick in sooner each and every day, you may want to hold off on this one for next summer so that you can enjoy the patio later on a weeknight, if that's your kind of self-date.

Price: $$$
Rating: *

Saperavi

Om nom nom, why do not more people
sit on this patio and eat these amazing
things?

Ok, moment of truth: sometimes I write a review for my blog and don't post it right away. I have it so I can roll these things out in a consistent way. Sometimes I have a page of notes and don't write the review until I'm bored or procrastinating, or haven't gone out recently. This is not one of those cases; I could not freaking WAIT to tell y'all about this place and Jesus H. Christ, you get yourself there while you can. I get the feeling that Saperavi doesn't get as much business as it should and, as I understand it, it takes quite a bit of cash to run a restaurant so, seriously, patronize this place before it's too late.

Soup was great but could stand to
lose the ice cubes; how chill do we
really need to be?

I genuinely don't understand why this place isn't hopping; it's got a choice patio right on Corydon and amazing food. Maybe people are hesitant to try Georgian cuisine for some reason? Maybe they figure the Georgia in question is the state and not the country (which might be good too, I don't know what American Georgians eat traditionally)? Do they confuse it with other businesses that share the building? Who the hell knows, but when you walk by these days, they've got a table with their menu, business cards, and a freaking free sample to try to show you how delicious this stuff is. The sample was this amazing baked cheese flaky pita thing called Khachapuri Imeruli served with a delightful tomato cilantro sauce that they don't name in the menu, but is available either mild or spicy. Since I tried the cheese one from the sample, I ordered a meat one for dinner (Kubdari). Dumplings also seemed to be the food to get. They were out of meat ones but the server suggested the mushroom and I do love mushroom, so we were cool. I kind of wish there was more filling in it, but they came with sour cream which made the extra dough delicious anyhow. 

Suppers for large group. *Sigh*
Wish I had a family that loved me
and/or would eat out with me at
cool places.

It was stupid hot, as it has been the past few days, so I figured I'd start off my meal with some chilled cucumber soup and sangria. The soup was refreshing and I really dug the walnuts on top, but the fact that it had ice cubes in it made it kind of hard to navigate; I get that you want it to be cold, but eating around ice cubes with a spoon is a little tough. The sangria was solid, available white or red, and the bartender came out to see if I liked it since she said she didn't make white sangria all that often. It was great but it was nice that she checked in. For the most part this is a beer/wine place, nothing special on the cocktail side. I was a little disappointed that the Georgina wines were only available by the bottle. I'm not going to pretend that, as a solo diner, I have never consumed the equivalent of a bottle of wine, but it seems a little much to order a bottle of wine for one. I'm not even sure if that's legal in this province.

Over all, I would definitely say this is a hot, comfort food kind of establishment although it's certainly worth the visit on a hot day for the patio if for nothing else than beverages. The menu was a little overwhelming for going solo; there was a lot of choice and large-ish portions made it hard to have a variety but the food kept well enough for a take-home container. If you're thinking of making it out here with others, it looks like they have a set dinner for x number of people, which looks like it might be fun to try if I wasn't so very, very alone.

Price: $$
Rating: **½

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: **