Damn

Public Kitchen and Bar is wasted on location; and though I’m abraded by its dining room’s pinache, reminiscent, to me, of the first apartment a freshly minted university girl graduate passionately decorates with retro and white, I can’t help but worry if its kind of cuisine is being overlooked as it situates itself in Kitchener’s more quiet neighborhoods. But seeming cosmopolitan and stranded may be the only thing that works against the poor little tapas bar. It’s certainly not the food. And though I can’t help but argue that people would prefer it in the deep down depths of the city, especially if they want to drink and eat and drink some more, the better part of me knows eaters will have no scruples about making the uncool trek to its little strip station.

Beggarhood makes me a scrupulous gourmand, but Public gave me no excuse for some of the tastiest food I’ve had in the city’s haute circles. Yes, tapas are usually a little pricey, but for a generous hour Thursday and Friday nights you can have some of the most aggrandized dishes for a ridiculously reasonable price, and maybe a little something extra to splurge on. 

Splurge I certainly did. I got everything I could, a heaping bowl of mussels for two in a bright sweet Romesco sauce, a cassoulet of white beans and stewed pork, bruschetta, patatas bravas, all at 5 dollars apiece. It was almost cruel getting everything I did for so little. To absolve my guilt, I added rolled taquitos with an avocado mousse. It was a lounger’s dream.

The mussels were the favourite, brought out first and accompanied by thin crisp twice baked fennel speckled bread. Saffron made it glow, red peppers and tarragon (I like to imagine) made it sunny and citrus like; and a mysterious sweetness had me flabbergasted, challenged by its flavor and in love with elements that made it Asian in its phantasmagoria of taste. The cassoulet was nostalgic. Creamy stewed beans and tender pork hock infused the dish with a smoky savoury flavour my company and I were fighting over.

Next, our bruschetta, riddled with vegetable ratatouille and garnished with pecorino cheese, cubes of salami, and a pungent ramp pesto had me a little leery, if only because the pesto looked too fresh for something available only a month out of the year. Still, it was another incredible dish, with mellow tender vegetable compote cooked enough to maintain body and bite. I liked the chewy alien texture of the salami in the medley, the softer bread, but would have preferred something a little warmer in my mouth if only to prevent the cheese from becoming a little elastic. Still, it did nothing to ruin the thing.

The patatas bravas were certainly the heartiest. Crisp potatoes dusted with paprika were paired with a simple aioli sauce that left a distant brassy finish on the tongue; and though the dish had an otherwise bland pairing, nothing stopped us from dipping our potatoes in everything else. Unorthodox? Don’t ask me, I don’t know. But I liked doing it. And playing with food didn’t stop there. 

Our taquitos, rolled and stuffed with chorizo and Oaxaca cheese, came with an assembly of avocado mousse and spicy oil painted on the plate. And taking the small but potent side salad of cilantro, lime, and peppery arugula, gave us eaters a fun food palate to paint, combine, and create with. It was something neither of us had any objections to enjoying. I’m almost conflicted with the ever changing menu; sad to see good things go, but excited to see what else the place can cook up. For the city’s only tapas focused bar, I don’t see the necessity to change, but I certainly see the passion. Regardless, I am privileged to have tasted the effort.

PUBLIC  KITCHEN & BAR
295 b Lancaster Street West
Kitchener, Ontario N2H 4V4
(519) 954-8111

Thu – Sat: 5pm-1am
Sun: 5pm – 10 pm

ANY PAYMENT

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Sushi San

Once in a while I have a romantic craving for sushi, satiating myself concluding every time that it wasn’t all that great in the first place. Now, I’ve no real basis for comparison when it comes to the freshest sushi. My lens is adjusted to whatever is landlocked in my city and a little further. I’ve no idea what fresh fish from the coast tastes like. You could easily argue against my complacency though, saying sushi from a place like Toronto is better. But I won’t believe you. I’d welcome the challenge. But I won’t believe you. I can confidently say I’ve eaten at every single sushi place around here without any attempt to eat at every sushi place. It just so happened that way throughout my misspent sushi eating youth. Mr. Sushi was one place, where in the past me and the kid from Hong Kong would spend a good twelve dollars on slices of salmon sashimi and all the miso we could sip. It had a bad rep, it burned down, and it was erected yet again. Has it too been baptized by fire? My curiosity, coupled with my craving for sushi, was looking to find out.

Its newest manifestation was an astonishing change. No dull kitchen atmosphere; no clichéd decoration; a surprising nod, I assume, to the contemporary and Japanese aesthetic. There was an haute cosmopolitanism about the space that I couldn’t get over. Warm browns, cool greys, wicker chairs, dining tables, quarried splash backs, and luminous chandeliers with busy patterns and prints harkening on familiar Japanese principles of art. The space was enough; the menu, a gilded tomb of cherry blossoms and gold lined trims and more so. I hoped its food was as elevated as its space. Its atypical choices, along with usual classics, certainly implied as much. Things like asparagus wrapped with bacon, spicy soba noodles, dumpling quesadillas (unfortunately not offered that day), and a loud amount of seafood themed salads excited me. A unique culinary osmosis pulled popular cosmopolitan works into Korean and Japanese options, the only question was, would they work? We would have loved to find out, but our impatience and early venture to a shyly opened Mr. Sushi had us opting for familiars typical of sushi joints. Regardless, we weren’t too disappointed.
 
We started with deep fried tofu dressed with a sweet sauce. Small cubes minimally placed in a dry puddle of sauce were decorated with a sprinkling of roe, and blocky shavings I considered more embarrassing than aesthetically impressive. The portioning was close-fisted. I wondered if its construction was an attempt to play to the practice of high cuisine having controlled, chaste portions. Ultimately, no excuse would have satisfied my vexation. I could find it larger and more satisfying somewhere else. Tough batter walled around soft tofu and juxtaposed well while chewing, but the lack of sauce made it a bland appetizer I had to leave until later.

The Hoedepbap, a salad on a bed of rice, topped with fish chuck was what I wanted next. I’m keen to the stuff elsewhere and but my plate too was another chintzy construction.  The salad was paired with pungent, unexpected pairings of onions and radish which elevated the heaviness of savoury fish, but the fish was few and far between. Crab meat, sinewy salmon chuck, and white fish were sprinkled too ‘economically.’  The bed of rice on the bottom, however, gave it a nutty under-note with a satisfying, chewy bite.

Our salmon sashimi was stale and earthy, exposed bare in the fridge no doubt, but our spicy tuna roll was a great exception. Rolled in sesame seeds, it was a unique chew with a fantastic roasted quality I’d never had in a roll. Combined with tender fish and soft rice reminiscent of, of all things, mochi, made it a great piece.

Mr. Sushi certainly isn’t at the pinnacle of perfection, but it tries, and I can certainly admire its attempt to try to go there.

Mr. Sushi
140 University Ave. West
Unit 6B
Waterloo, ON
N2L 6JB
226-647-5025

ANY PAYMENT

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Contemporary Home Food

I found myself at a crossroads this week, dear eaters. After last week's eating debacle, there was a great culinary weight on my shoulders. I needed to find a place where the meals would wrap their lovin’ arms around me vicariously for you; a place where I could eat good food on all of our behalves and comfort the collective stomachache that had unforeseeably plagued us (okay, maybe just me) for so long. And so I ask you this my fellow gastronomes: what do we do when we need to alleviate the poor feelings in the pit of our stomachs, when flat tires eliminate a good portion of our days, when we wake up wondering what we're doing with our lives? Of course, there are a myriad of possibilities, but for our poor stomachs' sakes, what can we do? I’ll tell you what we can do. We can eat. And we do. We eat good, comforting food. We eat for the sake of feeling like we're coming home and all is good and right in the world. This time, for me, dare I say, for all of us, home was Hometown Eatery!, conveniently located, I might add, at a crossroads. And if that's not meaningful, well I don't know what is. It was a place, if I could describe it in three words, and after eavesdropping on the waitress, of contemporary comfort food. Three words, but three very true words at that.

But what does it mean to be contemporary? It's something tossed around a lot, so much so that I'm willing to bet you're all thinking I'm just trying to sound smart, or lack the proper descriptors to really express Hometown Eatery!'s food. So maybe, just maybe, it's something a little more than contemporary- or a little less; that is, its food that seems to mediate itself between that old nostalgic comfort food and the kind of luxurious food we hear about, or are used to hearing about today and would love to eat. Hometown Eatery does a good job of closing the gap.

	Formerly Yukiko's

Still, I can't deny its au courant or contempo disposition; at least when it comes to the place you sit down and eat in. A picturesque house from the outside, its white semi-stucco walls, warm coloured light fixtures, avant-garde wall facsimiles, novelty kitchen appliances and cowboy plants, combined with those other nostalgic restaurant room pieces like menu chalk boards and swinging kitchen doors only magnify its appeal to the degree, at least to me, where it reminded me of the kinds of dining spaces seen so often in the loft apartments of television shows. Lived in, yet oh so- what's the word? Aw, yes, contemporary. Combine that with small dining room extensions that mimic intimate breakfast nooks and a kind of obligatory jazz music over the radio and you can pretty much get a feel for the kind of place it is. For a late lunch, it was buzzing, and I could only imagine how cramped- or cozy- it might get at dinner.

It seemed friendly enough. Although, I admit, there was an awkward beat when I came in and made my way to the register asking if they had a menu. In a place like this I would have expected at least one of two things: to be greeted and seated, menu placed in front of me; or, playing to some old sentimental idea of visiting my grandmother's kitchen, being told to have a seat and lovingly asked what I would like. If that sounds redundant, trust me, it isn't. My point is, I hate feeling things out when I come into a place, but maybe that's the point of Hometown's hip informality. Regardless, I like to be led to the food rather than stand around haphazardly until I gather my wits. But so it goes.

	Say something funny, listen for a laugh track~

Having found a seat, reviewing the menu and making my choice between pastas, salads and sandwiches, I made my way back to the register and ordered what seemed a hell of an intriguing idea: a grill cheese sandwich with brie instead of the typical cheddar (though that was offered). This is what I mean when I describe Hometown Eatery! as contemporary comfort food. Taking quotidian meals and elevating them to something a little less sentimental and a little more sophisticated seems almost ingenious. It wasn't a lightbulby moment for me or anything, because in the back of my mind I knew things like this existed- I just couldn't believe I hadn't really paid attention to them before. Next, and since I still have some yearnings for authenticity, I chose to have my meal accompanied with a home-brewed ice tea, because isn't that what we need when eating out? A little bit of novelty and uniqueness? Though not as tart and sweet as I would have preferred, it certainly had that mild and therefore humble flavour of being brewed at home. That is, it wasn't loaded with an overbearing, artificial sweetness found in branded ice teas, nor did it leave that chalky aftertaste like so many teas before it, or the paradoxically dry, rough feeling that makes your teeth feel like wet cobblestones when you run your tongue across them after polishing off a tall glass of the stuff. Anyway, and the lemon wedge accompanying it added the tartness I was looking for.

	Grilled brie with coleslaw for a smooth 10 dollars.

I'd lost track of the time when my meal had arrived, a grilled brie sandwich with a side of the luncheonette's original coleslaw, an epitaph to the place's previous identity and creator, Yukiko. It was crisp, much more than coleslaw dictates, but a texture I thoroughly enjoyed, bathed in a mild lemon, mayonnaise and poppy seed sauce that emulsified well and had a good creamy quality rather than wet and vinegary. One thing seemed for certain, Yukiko must have certainly had a delicate palette because it certainly showed in the food. Just eating it made me feel cleaner.

Setting my slaw aside, and giving my sandwich ample time to gain composure, I bit into a mild brie joining two slices of marbled rye bread. The balmy, grassy notes of the brie balanced well with the rye's own grain flavour and their tone never too dull due to the fact that the cheese's rind had been included in the sandwich, contributing a savoury ammoniac flavour to a sandwich that might otherwise have been a little too mellow.

	Chocolate banana cake: 6.95. Shoot.

I wasn't done there, fellow eaters; I was still very much looking forward to dessert and had my eye on a slice of caramel cheesecake. However, after an inquisitive talk with a darling waitress I turned my attention to the in house cakes offered and chose the most popular slice: chocolate banana. Another stellar combination of chocolate cake settled by ganache on a separate loaf of banana bread convinced me that Hometown had a thing for simple pairings. Whatever dryness the cake had was eluded by the rich, creamy ganache, though I admit by the end of it, its sweetness was a little too much to take. That said, the slice was a hearty size, much bigger than slices I've had elsewhere. My only qualm may have been the price, the slice costing as much as a bottle of draft sake (by the way, the place serves an array of local beers; and why not? A brewery's right across the street). Overall, lunch for one may have been a little pricey, but once and a while I suppose it's okay to spoil yourself, especially for such (did I say ingenious?) food.

Home-brew icetea: 2.50
Grilled Brie with slaw: 10.00
Banana chocolate cake: 6.95

Hometown Eatery
30 William Street West, Waterloo, ON
(519) 576-9424
Mon-Wed: 11:30am -9:00pm
Thurs & Fri: 11:30 am -10:00pm
Sat: 9:00am-10:00pm
Sun: 9:00am-9:00pm

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