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In attempts to fulfill my misspent twenties and thereby cross off whatever section on my life's bucket list, at least until Ms. Wu beckons me back to the hills of Gukeng where I can continue working on the family's tea farm, I found myself applying for whatever job lay in wait in Waterloo's culinary landscape. You know? To pass the time.
Luckily, someone told me Princess Cafe was giving employment a go, and while I was leery of my ability to procure work with the place, I couldn't help but elbow myself into applying for whatever mediocre, underemployed position it offered, but just until I get the call for delivery driver at Boston Pizza.
Looking more familiar than I probably should have, I said my hellos, handed in my extensive resume, and waited if there were any other questions. There was.
Its proprietor, sporting his everyday dracule haircut, and his habitual short sleeve plaid shirt combo, asked if I was the guy who wrote food reviews. Now, I WAS a guy who wrote food reviews, I don't know if I was THE guy, but that's a different beast altogether. Anyway, I complied, humoured him with a 'yes,' and then had his assurance that he would never hire me.
I asked why? He said because I wrote about Cheeses Murphy, and then reiterated, I'm sure in his mind with something a little wittier and gastronomer shaming, that he would never hire me.
I probed further. I asked what exactly he didn't like about my review, and he responded with a resounding, "It's cunty. It's just cunty. It's cunty." Over and over, and over again. As an aside, I hope he's a feminist trying to reclaim the word, otherwise, that's total slandering, innapropriate, and sexist language, and I hope every woman who goes there questions his use of the word.
What I would have preferred was an honest explanation of why my articulate, honest review, written almost a year ago, was so dissatisfying beyond ascribing it with such a hateful word.
I respected his opinion, even in lieu of his scenester, Ramones sweatshirt wearing employee cowering in the corner and snickering as if also trying to shame me like I'd just been served with the illest hook. But I felt I really didn't do anything wrong, besides give a good honest review, unless otherwise admitting not to. I humbly left, saving my smile for the exit, because when I did leave, I felt nothing but infamy. The people cared, maybe only when I disagreed with something they did, but they cared, and that made me feel pretty good about myself.
But my own infamy aside, what would have actually shamed me and impressed me about Princess Cafe's owner would have been a genuine response as to why he felt my review wasn't an honest assessment. In an ideal world, attempting to hire me in hopes of changing my opinion about the food, or showing me how good the food really is would have really changed my world view. In a more civil world, after a solid year's time of holding a grudge and hoping for the day where the place gets to confront me, I would hope they would, after assessing my review, ask me instead to try their food yet again, because we really got off on the wrong foot and it's really improved. But if it's not their ego, it's mine. And it's a crying shame. My review was harsh, I admit, so harsh that there was rumour I had shut it down months after- and I didn't bother to ask them about the review I wrote about the actual cafe almost two years ago, which could be just as harsh, I don't know. Again, I think it's honest. And I'm sure as I left, he and his employee had a good hate fest, stewing in their juices about how I'm some sort of 'cunty' food writer who thinks he's all that. I'll accept that as a good possibility; but it's a small sacrifice if it means they did consider my critique and used it, even if not admittedly, to improve something as novel as a grilled cheese sandwich, which, again, should be phenomenal if you're going to sell it to inebriated undergrads at 3:00 am. Bridges . . . you never know where you're gonna burn 'em.
So, I guess this is goodbye, Princess Cafe. I can't particularly say I'll miss your acrid coffee, your flacid cappucinos, your platitudinous paninis. I will however miss the chance to be a part of your team if only to contribute to the improvement or passion that is desperately needed in your food, not just part of a cafe that depends on rhetoric, and Rotello decor. I'll especially miss Laura, the girl behind the counter who I'm pretty sure doesn't work there anymore. Yes, Laura; she was like a sexy cross between an un-crazy Miley Cyrus and even sexier Kat Dennings. Oh, the hours I spent in that place reading Japanese and pining away for any bit of conversation with her. So Laura, if you're reading this, get in touch, I'd like to take you out for dinner. Maybe for grilled cheese. Until then, I'll have to lament the fact that I'll have to get a grown up job with my two graduate degrees, diploma, and fluency in multiple languages. It's tough, but I'll get through it, thanks to the Princess Cafe's stern, woman shaming, proprietor. Again, I thank you, まだまだ強くなれる.
Love,
The 'Infamous' Weezee
Muscled onto the 401 by three Mack trucks mere car lengths before our exit, your enraged narrator and his despot compatriot, Joey, found themselves driving, driving, driving yet again- without any cellphone service, without any direction, without any canteens (that I haven’t already been to), lost first on the bucolic roadways of Ayr, then Cambridge, and then, hours later- cars later- in the downtown of our boondock sibling city, Elmira, which by the way, I didn’t even know had a downtown. A downtown that’s only a few block long mind you; but, a downtown nonetheless. And as a quick aside, if you’re from Elmira, and find yourself angered by my own ignorance, don’t be, I’m already angry at myself for not knowing its dives, its expensive dollar stores, and its damn friendly locals, who seem to have had a radar for two guys who don’t live in the town and came off as the kind of folk who drive Mack trucks and muscle people onto the highway. Seriously though, the amount of hellos, ‘can I help you’s, parables, and blushing school girls were uncanny. I can’t for the life of me remember so much charm, especially when I spent a good deal of my own youth terrorizing so many parties in its neighbourhoods as a teenager.
That said, today was no different, because it wasn’t long before Joey and I were polling residents, comin’ off as big city folk, askin’ for the three best places to eat, laughing because there were only three places to eat, having strangers interrupt strangers, making jeunesse teenage girls feel embarrassed by the sojourning temperament of their town, wishing they could, like Joey and I, come from the big city where we sauna, drive recklessly, and drink all of our parents' vermouth.
But eventually, we settled for the most amusing novelty suggested, a Mennonite diner called Donuts & Deli, chaperoned to the spot by one of the locals, this time an old lady on her way to the hardware store. Are your hearts gushing yet? They should be, it happened.
And so there it was, unconceited, nowhere near overblown, filled with storeys, filled, no doubt, with stories, painted plain with walls the shade of emerald somewhere and lime somewhere else, old oak wood, eggwashed ceilings, Kulture, gold ambience, quilts, bread, it was like being baked into your grandmother’s meringue and left out for days. We loved it. Its cheap banana splits, its donuts, its baked goods, its bizarre house specials. Its life lessons. Joey’s being, that for a diner you should expect the food it gives you. So, if a plate says taco salad, don’t expect fixings in a tortilla bowl, expect nacho chips crumbled over salad with cheese.
I want to write about Donuts & Deli, dear readers, but I don’t want to be honest. Not at all. The governing gourmand in me says, ‘No,’, but the novel seeking adventurer says, ‘Yes’, all the way with Donuts & Deli. It was a confusing escape. I ordered the day’s special, chucked ham and cheese on a Kaiser, broiled, mashed, tough around the edges, a salty, buttery mess that set my stomach on fire, that destroyed me cognitively, releasing dopamine from eating something that was so bad it was good. Combine that with a ridiculously inexpensive price and no one could resist even the most ill-suited thing on the menu of a diner run by Mennonites. Again, I’m talking about the taco salad. It’s so far removed from restaurants, it can’t be judged.
The locals loved the food they were eating, they asked if we got what they got. They loved their egg salad sandwiches, Joey his turkey sandwich, his potato sausage soup. The stuff was dull as dishwater, but we knew we’d be coming back- for breakfast, for donuts, for girls in bonnets, for the baked goods we love because they’re simply nostalgic. How could we not. Like the blue hair leaving the place told us, ‘better soup with a friend, than steak with the Enemy.’ Damn right, darlin’, damn right.
Elmira Donut & Deli
22 Church St W,
Elmira, ON
N3B 1M3
519-669-5353
PAYMENT: CASH DEBIT
Wayfaring for food with Joey has once again taken me to the farthest reaches of the region’s culinary landscape. But dread not fellow eaters, because I still managed to keep my iron stomach in town, though this particular place may be a ways in our culinary pond. Still, if you are like me, the chancing culinary type, you would risk wandering somewhere far for something potentially good, as Joey and I do, and always seem to be doing lately, our meandering mouths aptly choosing a place that suits the wilds its situated in. I’m talking about the Rabbid Fox. Not particularly wild, but in the wilds of Kitchener, as wild and suburban as things can admittedly get. And as wild as the place allows its actual essence to be, its selling point being that, as rabid as the fox is, it has a ‘twist.’
The flushed aroma of beer hit us hard, and the patrons at the bar would have otherwise intimidated us if we hadn’t been, by some act of Providence, dressed for the occasion. Yes, Joey and I fit in well, what with his handle bar mustache and my thermal undershirt button-front combo. But that’s enough small talk.
There’s nothing particularly rabid about the Rabbid Fox, unless you consider its attempt at pretension, because behind its manifesto one will discover, as I did immediately walking through its proletariat sports bar decorated with lethargic, unwincing browns, hockey jerseys, and flat screens commingling with a dining section that can only remind a person of those large mysterious mansions we see while driving in the countryside, no doubt belonging to misanthropic surgeons, that the Fox is just a gastro pub. Certainly, the butcher paper tablecloths and silverware combination cements the conception.
And, like all gastro-pubs, the Fox does everything it can to coalesce the best of the two rivaling sibling worlds that have existed ever since the birth of the Market. So much so, that the special of the day was escargot; combine that with poutine and you might have some sort of sibylline utopia. I’ll never know.
Nevertheless, you can have a hardy, but well thought out meal for just under 20 dollars. I can’t deny my interest in all of the things I wanted to combine on the menu, offering trivialities and house specials which did catch Joey and my fancies.
We started with the saganaki appetizer, a Greek cheese flambéed in an anise flavoured liquor, contrasting salty and sweet powerfully by way of melted, curdled cheese mellowing in a wonderfully reduced syrup of liquor. If we were patient, we would have taken our time to dip our flat breads in the stuff, but we were having too much fun piling cheese on bread and chewing away. I had to settle for dipping my knife in the stuff when all was good and done, it was that fantastic.
Next, I was misdirected by the waitress into trying the bar’s special Po’Boy sandwich, stacked with sliced beef, cheese, caramelized onions, deep fried pickles (the coup de grace), and a creole sauce. I had high expectations that fell too short for it, and all Po’Boy sandwiches in this town, because I’ve never really had one I’ve enjoyed, simply because they’ve never been done well. My bun was soft and warm, my beef, boiled, fatty and bland, which did no good to balance the textural quality of the bread. The caramelized onions too were weak and squeaky, with no real flavour. Half way through I found myself pulling out my deep fried pickles before they lost any composure, but I’m always a sucker for the things. I thought maybe the dipping sauce it came with was reason for its dull composure, but it just made it a salty mess, visually reminiscent of some oil spill somewhere. Too bad.
Now, the Fox’s locale may make eating there forgivable, but I can only hope my bad sandwich was the only bad undomesticated thing on the menu.
THE RABBID FOX
123 Pioneer drive,
Kitchener, ON(519) 748-2404
Mon - Tue: 11:00 am - 11:00 pm
Wed - Sat: 11:00 am - 1:00 am
Sun: 11:00 am - 10:00 pm
PAYMENT: VISA MASTERCARD DEBIT CASH
A Table for Maple is the epiphanic name of a 'local foodie's' blog which, to the trained, critical, culinary eye, appears as nothing more than a blog rhetorically pandering with a bombardment of instagram photographs nostalgically turning the author into some individual of some charmed, experienced circle. Obviously, this is a dangerous thing, because Maple, whoever she is, is just that. A foodie. Not a journalist. Not a food writer. And it's this irresponsibility that makes food writing a laughable thing, and a destructive thing to the poor restaurants who do their best to serve, but have individuals eat, without perspective, or proper knowledge, and post their thoughts about the place on their blogs. But I won't go into that. There is no need. Not in Maple's case. Her short sentences, her pandering photos- all obvious contemporary requisites appealing to the market. Again, flashy rhetoric. But the red flag for me, was Maple's 'To Be Reviewed' page. A page of restaurants the foodie wishes to review in the future, if not already, which explicitly states at the top
'*Not interested in chain restaurants.'
Yet, poor Maple does just that. She lists chains and has visited chains, and makes no apology for doing so, even when I requested she change her interests (feel free to check our twitter conversations). Obviously, a dangerous thing. Because clearly, Maple doesn't do her research, and assumes she knows what's what. That something's originally placed, when in fact it isn't. Not only is Maple a bad food blogger, she's a bad journalist, and has little integrity, because she'd rather post a reply of 'Nah' so as to not bruise her own ego, or justify her actions by meaning 'non-local corporate chains', whatever that means. But if being really picky, there are still some on her list. I can think of two. And I will name them if you ask me. That's the biggest red flag of them all. She doesn't care about being honest, or restaurants, as far as I'm concerned. She only cares about herself.
So what do we do? Well, I can't do much more than what I've done, which is bring attention to it. It's up to you dear readers, to suggest Maple have some integrity and reassess what she aims to speak about, without elevating herself to a more worthy authority by 'being local', and caring about 'local' business, because she's not. She's lost in a Bourdieuian mess of cultural capital. Trying to join the ranks of people hypnotized by ecologism, which is today's worst kind of consumerism.
I implore you all, please help before it's too late.
Love,
Weezee.
Joey’s stomach knows no bounds. And when it receives the call for a particular cuisine, not even a sushi spot where the host calls him handsome could make him choose otherwise. Not even a 2 hour’s drive could make him change his mind. No, it would only make him want it more. Even if it meant driving out of town; even if it meant driving to Cambridge. That’s right, my dreaded culinary wasteland. What keeps bringing me back to this place? A jaded palate in Kitchener-Waterloo, a big wide culinary world, and a little bit of serendipity, I suppose. But all that aside, I was humbled by Joey’s tenacity because it brought us to what I consider the only true Mexican restaurant between the two cities: El Rinconcito Mexicano. Forget the stalls, forget the tienda-esque Mexican places in Waterloo, they can’t compare. Its own name is even too humble for the sturdy meals that bolster it to local culinary admiration.
If you’re in the mood for Mexican, you’d be foolish not to make the journey to a fantastic, and already well received place like El Rinconcito. And if you already live in Cambridge: congratulations. You have somewhere worth eating.
El Rinconcito’s great kitchen is pulled together by its culturally themed dining room, well thought out with Mexico's colours, as well as edifice that you’d like to expect in any South American restaurant, but done well, even with whatever items of kitsch strewn along the walls, which surprisingly don’t unravel the illusion, but make it more inviting.
The menu is nothing short of manageable; reading it, you may think the prices daunting, but when you receive your meals, you’re most likely to change your mind, thinking you ordered too much, as Joey and I both did asking for sides of poloze soup, a phenomenal Mexican stew rooted in culinary ritual and complex flavor. Garnished with crisp diced lettuce and radishes, the maize based stew was reminiscent of nothing else but Creation. An earthy flavor bound up in its savoury tomato tart broth, and accented further by oregano and juicy pulled pork, the 5.99 dish came as a side, but could have easily been a meal all alone, especially with the deep fried, puffed up tortilla shells that accompanied it.
 |
| Pozole and laughter. |
We took our time extolling the dish, adding copious amounts of lime, dipping in constant shells, deciding that if anything came close to a garden, the pozole was it.
My entrée, another meal in itself, was a delightful, generous combination of gorditas, rice, and refried beans.
I can’t begin to describe how my sandwiches lifted my spirits. Stacked between two of the most texturally satisfying corn cakes was more pulled pork (my choice), creamy goat cheese, and a pungent, but reviving medley of bright coriander, onions and lettuce, which, it seemed in all of El Rinconcito’s dishes, do an excellent job of lifting up the heaviest of savory, otherwise over-satiating flavours. My chewy, but exteriorly crunchy gordita shells had a unique smoked corn quality that contributed to the pork’s meaty and reminiscent barbeque quality, even though stewed. And, contrary to what you may think, the goat cheese, though mild, took nothing away from the flavor.
My only qualm with the dish was the rice and bean sides. Though the beans tasted canny, and the rice, riddled with diced vegetables, and too familiar to the stuff we boil from boxes, I was imparted with some advice by another party joining Joey and I on our meal: we didn’t come for the rice and beans. I was apt to agree, even though it was my first time. I’d be apt not to, however, if everything wasn’t as delicious as it was. That said, it was delicious. It was food I could eat every day. I thank you El Rinconcito; eating is exciting again.
EL RINCONCITO MEXICANO
49 main street
Cambridge, Ontario
N1R 1V6
(519) 623-4100
CASH AND DEBIT
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