The chophouses we so cosmopolitanly refer to as restaurants can be great spaces for culinary learning. I've been in the dark for quite some time on the vegetarian and vegan front. But let my meandering be a lesson: if you want to learn about particular food, all you need do is merely go out and eat it. See what you can do with it, look for something you like, and make it on your own (provided there are no paranoid cooks with secret recipes). Lately, if I had a personal, yet somewhat obtuse and unpremeditated, mission, it was to prove to myself that there is vegan and vegetarian food out there that is substantial, and I believe I've found it these last couple of weeks. Kinda. Because when it boils down to it, there's a big wide world out there.
The Duke St. Muse is nothing new. But I don't say this sardonically. It's settled itself for as long as I've seen it just outside the heart of kitchener's downtown and I admire that. However, my own prejudice to vegetarian eating in the past has always denied it a place on my palette. Not today, however. Today, it called out to me. And if it was called the Duke St. Siren I could have made a more clever transition here, but I think I have your attention.
It's a quaint little eatery- its takeout menu says so. I’d go so far as to add that it's unpretentious. But there's a paradox here, because although The Duke St. Muse is quaint, it also has the feeling of being a space that is very public, almost like a strange university cafeteria from A Different World (too old a reference? That's my point). Some call this kitsch; I don't know what to call it. All I know is that its orange and green and off yellow walls combined with its hanging ceiling lamps, wood tables and plastic chairs (we sometimes see in class-rooms), and hybrid African-South Western abstract art call to mind those spaces where social activists, slam poets, and environmentalists like to hang out. But out of my austere criticism of interior design comes a truth that there definitely is a sense of community. I especially got it in the basement where there's even more seating and a mural that looks like it could be put on a brownstone somewhere in Brooklyn Heights (that's another TV reference for you).
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Duke St. Muse seems like a place with no focus. Even its menu is a mash-up of styles. Yet, even then there are things that anchor it. It's obviously vegan and vegetarian; it serves vegan and vegetarian things, like sandwiches and salads (staples, I'm sure). But herein lays its redeeming qualities: its culinary compass points far and wide. Yes there's soup, yes there's salad, but there's also interesting eats like burritos, quesadillas, chillis and curries. It combines Indian and South American tastes which I found intriguing and excited to try. Again, most likely because I know so little about vegetarian and vegan food and was happy to discover that such food didn't have to be boring. My only regret was safely choosing the option I did. A familiar sandwich-salad combo, which I seem to have an affinity for lately in such places, even though there was so much more on the menu! I suppose if anything my decision came from my own romance about how a vegan sandwich could be and how it actually was. A lot more plane than I had imagined. A lot easier to recreate than I would have liked. Is vegan food so easy? I guess so. But there was some equivocation on The Duke St. Muse's part; because, though they claim to serve fresh homemade meals (perhaps meals similar to those we make at home) and use local produce, this isn't the whole truth. I paid 6.50 for a California Raspberry salad that was nothing more than a store bought mixed prewashed salad combined with carrot shavings, raw sesame seeds, sparse cashews, canned mandarin oranges and a very familiar raspberry vinaigrette (a generic, too sweet, too sour, brand). There was nothing local about it. First of all, no one grows mandarin oranges in Waterloo, Ontario.
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Next, I asked for a vegan sandwich. Multigrain processed bread toasted and stuffed with the same mix that made my salad, a piece of processed soy cheese, tomato, cucumber, and cilantro pesto. It was called the Mumbai, which may have been why I tried it. I partnered it with a 3.50 mango lassi (a kind of mango puree sprinkled with cinnamon). The attempt to toast the bread was a little too much, but I can't be too harsh in this instance, because if it wasn't toasted, it may have become raw and gummy with all the vegetable ingredients packed between its triangular slices. I was a bit remorseful at first, regretting having gotten the thing because it seemed there was too much leaf used just to give the sandwich body, overpowering all its other fillings with blandness. If it wasn't for the cilantro pesto I may have given up early. Luckily, thanks to the spread, the sandwich had a bit of personality. Then again, I'm a sucker for cilantro. The vibrant, bright, citrus smell of cilantro hit me even before letting the sandwich touch my lips. So naturally, I was excited. Excited for food again, for spring, for the summers I would spend bombarding my garden with the herb and harvesting its leaves in early August whilst bees buzzed venerably around me, pollinating white little flowers so I could plant even more in the future. My first bite into it hit me hard in the face; I loved that I discovered cilantro pesto- that I could very well not only save cilantro for bread salad or a mere (listen to me) bowl of pho, but something else. Sadly, the flavour fizzled out like a star in the night, the sensation it left briefly on my tongue overpowered again by all those salad greens.
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Nothing stopped me from sucking my thick (most likely not homemade) mango lassi offensively through its straw. It was a flavour I knew too well from the cans of mango puree I'd used in many kitchens before, and passed off as a mango drink. I liked that they had mango lassis. I didn't like that they were so plain and, well, mass produced.
You may not get a lot of locally grown ingredients at Duke St. Muse in the winter (or first day of spring), but you'll certainly find some thrifty uses for food; and for 14 dollars, my meal was pretty substantial. Then again, what I needed was a good diplomatic meal. Something that encompassed the true character of a place like Duke St. Muse so I could see what it was really made of. I suppose I missed the mark, because after what I ate I realized there were potentially better options on the menu, like the daily lunch combo: a pile of curried vegetables and bean stew poured over a big bed of rice. I couldn't deny its popularity; it was the first thing a customer told me about when coming in, and another fought over by three friends who were forced to fight for the last lunch special of the day, it having been sold out. Then there were the heaping 9 dollar vegan quesadillas. But you never know, I may be doing the same thing I did with my sandwich: romanticizing a flashy chalkboard menu. Alas, dear eaters, like Heraclitus said: “an opportunity lost is one lost forever.” But then, I could always go back. OR. You could all go for me.
The Duke Street Muse
6 Duke St. E,Kitchener, ON, N2H 1A3
(519) 342-0550
www.dukestreetmuse.com
Mon-Fri 10am -7pm
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