Great Wave Off Kanagawa

You may not know this, my dear readers, but I’m leery about sushi places in these here parts. I find buffets especially fishy (mind the pun, because it was on purpose). I’ve no right to argue about quality, because we eat in a place far from bodies of water that provide fresh fish (or real sushi chefs for that matter). However, I hold firm to the personal belief that I have perspective in regards to everything sushi related in Kitchener-Waterloo; and therefore, a little reason to say what is worth buying. Indeed, no spot has escaped this trawling tongue. I’m a big fish in a small pond, and although the nautical metaphors may seem a little much they are not without due cause. Mine’s a mind that’s anchored with a whole lot of cynicism.

The all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant is a perfect example. It coddles the growling stomach and staunch wallet and therefore can compromise good eatin’; that is, if you know what else is out there. I unfortunately, do not. However, this works to my advantage, because I can give an honest, well catered review. Now, when it comes to any kind of authenticity in food I’ve loosened my kung-fu grip over the years, because there is no need for such crude inflexibilities. The French culinary school may be the only form of cooking trying to hold onto any kind of charmed legitimacy, but I dare say if food tastes good, it tastes good. But why this digression? Simple. The all-you-can-eat sushi bar antagonizes this dynamic perfectly, and shows that authenticity isn’t all that important, so long as it tastes palatable. What this says about our culture, I’ll save for a Baudrillard paper.

It’s easy to find what’s wrong and Othering with foreign restaurants catering to Western palettes: phonetic mis-spellings, inherent Orientalizations of names. This next place is certainly a portent of what can happen if we all don’t pay much attention to where we eat. The name alone alerted in me a kind of casus belli which made me quick to judge. An honourific Japanese ‘O’ in the title and an Orientalizing phonetic diminutive for ‘delicious’, packaged into a submissive, charming synonym of ‘Yummy,’ with ‘Sushi’ tacked on the end, made my company and I both guarded and hesitant. I haven’t been to an acceptable all-you-can-eat Sushi place in town since July 2006; my memory sinks that deep. All times after have been full of mis-orderings, hair in food, and callow servers who swoop in like seagulls to take your scraps away and make you feel unwelcome, spurring you to leave at a faster pace. Thankfully, it was a Monday and lunch, so there was no chance of the later happening. As for anything else, I’d have to eat and see.

It was O’Yummy Sushi’s grand opening, and the smell of the place certainly signified the newness of the establishment. Though I couldn’t exactly say how long it was open for, I could certainly sniff out that it was still in need of customers and cooked food to break it in. The smell of drywall and plaster still permeated its banquet hall, but that only made me all the more excited for trying what it had to offer; that and seeing if there was anything worth sticking around, save for the obvious 12.99 all-you-can-eat lunch price.

The space was another chronic creation of a contemporary all-you-can-eat sushi place. Brown, red, black and beige decorated a hall with booths along the windows and tables in the middle with a sushi bar up ahead where diners could happily watch their sushi being made and servers rush in and out of the kitchen feverishly. Orb shaped flood lights and ceiling hearths that washed the ceiling in pools of changing colour gave the hall a kind of urbane feel, reminiscent of the neon lighting that pervades huge metropolises. These kinds of stylistics materialize in so many all-you-can-eat sushi places around town. If there is any other design at the end of the sushi place spectrum it usually offers beige walls with bamboo trims, bonsai trees and lucky cats.

Taking it in cautiously, we were greeted by a server that took our orders to start rather than handing us the proverbial order sheet. This may have taken away from the ambiguity of customer/server but I couldn’t help but wonder how time consuming it eventually would become, having to eat and order again and again. The sentiment was certainly appreciated, and there’s no doubt in my mind that people often feel neglected even at arm’s length, but this effort could hardly last in an all-you-can-eat place. And it didn’t, we were eventually given order sheets. Yes, there was some confusion; yes, servers misunderstood our questions about items on the menu, but that kind of feature seems so common in every all-you-can-eat place, why bother to worry about it? The staff was quick to clear up any confusion by coming back and asking about our orders if there were any problems anyway. My only beef may have been that our tea was refilled too often, usually more than half still left, and the over-service became somewhat unbearable, but better than none at all.

The menu was simple trial and error. Ambiguous but well stocked, my company and I often had trouble deciphering how much of something we’d get, and often received items feeling foolish, especially when we thought we’d get more in a serving. This problem could have easily been avoided if the already bare menu gave a description of items. My face was red enough when I got what the dessert menu called a sugar ball and what came back as a dollar sized ball of deep fried dough slathered in cheap chocolate sauce. Customers may be familiar with sushi, but not everything on the menu is found at every sushi spot. Speaking of variety, assortment was a refreshing change at O’Yummy Sushi. Aside from offering the obvious, it offered some original ideas like cream cheese filled wantons. Crunchy on the outside, rich and smooth on the inside, it was a Western flavor that amalgamated well into a package from the East. There were other seemingly out of place but well appreciated options, like onion rings and, believe it or not, French fries. I can’t complain. Although at times I often wondered about particular item ideas. Baked mushrooms come to mind. They were nothing more than poorly stemmed mushroom caps baked in an oven sans stuffing or any kind of sauce. And a good amount of roll combinations were almost identical to others. The only difference was maybe one or two ingredients less in a roll or two kinds of rolls combined into one maki reminiscent of what one might see in the drain of a kitchen sink. That sounds harsh, but I never said they tasted bad.

We started our meal with seaweed salad and beef soba noodle soup. The salad was a pleasure. I couldn’t recall the last time I had a seaweed salad with just seaweed. Though a little sweet, I was glad to have found it. My soba on the other hand was a slap in the face. As if trying to pull the noodles over my own eyes, the dish wasn’t the buckwheat noodles I breathlessly expected, but instead the wheat based instant noodles one can expect to find in a tub. Though the stock was sweet and delicate and the beef added a surprising buttery taste to the dish, equivocation is inexcusable and a huge insult to any customer that comes to eat. The menu had other ambiguous names for dishes, like ‘sexy snapper roll’ and ‘ice island roll’. Needless to say, when they came to my table, I couldn’t tell what was potentially sexy or from an island. The salmon roses were actually an example of good culinary presentation: thin slices of fish wrapped around a ball of rice with a dollop of mayonnaise all in attempt to mimic the shape of a rose. Delicious and delicate, each piece demanded a hand gently pick it up; it would otherwise fall apart by way of chopsticks.

O’Yummy’s menu has infinite things to talk about: sweet and pleasing short ribs, an extensive vegetarian menu, pretty garnishes (though tasteless, seemingly tired and dried out, and no doubt prepped ahead of time) that it may just be the saving grace for the all you-can-eat sushi place in town. I can only hope it doesn’t become overwhelmed by an influx of customers in the future and compromise quality. I’m glad to have been humbled by such a seemingly unoriginal place. I’ve disqualified sushi a great deal, and considered O’Yummy just another drop in a pond which to my surprise turned into a great wave off the coast of Kanagawa.

O'Yummy Sushi

646 Erb Street West #101

Waterloo, ON

Phone: (519) 954-6555

Mon – Sat: 11:30 a.m. – 10:30 p.m.

Sun: 11:30 a.m. – 10:00 p.m.

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The Egg Roll King

There was a fire in my belly and the only way to put it out was to douse all those clean eating experiences I had these past weeks with something a little more familiar and pacifying. As far as I was concerned, I had too much energy, and I was a long way off my centre of eating the way I hedonistically love to. I needed something that didn't make me a pushy, health conscious eater. I had to stop this before my poor palette tasted nothing but whey protein and supplement drinks. I needed The Itis. That's right, my dining comrades. We've all experienced it. The cure-all for a stressful day, for a very hungry stomach. Those high calorie meals that lead us to a general feeling of lethargy and well-being. But a good ‘bad for you’ meal.

We all have our own little kinds of sanctuaries in the big bad (I say 'bad' here in the 'cool' bad way) gastropolis of Kitchener-Waterloo, the places wherein we like to divulge our own calorie smashing urges: fast food joints, pubs, buffets, you name it.

For this Bon Vivant of bad, there’s only one kind of place I dare venture. A Place where authenticity is a cryptic word for a more glorified, gourmandizing past. Places where phonetic mis-spellings on a menu still enchant even the most familiar eaters and any thoughts had about the fashion of fusion food are thrown to the wind, because when it comes down to it, in this kind of place everything is bastardized even if a little, but still damn delicious. You all know it too. For some of you (and me), it’s a place you humbly admit is a guilty pleasure. So familiar and inviting it seems that this particular place has been around since time was time, and only the most gastronomically dogmatic try to suppress it. But our Western urges for salty, sweet and savoury keep calling us back. What exactly am I talking about? The Chinese-Canadian eatery, of course.

	Cool shake, bro!

Egg Roll King Restaurant seems a fitting name for a place that dare try to include all walks of Chinese food for Canadiana. Even going so far as to offer up food that is terribly un-Chinese, like French fries, or poutine. Now, I could make this a game of Six Degrees and specifically say that Egg Roll King labels itself as a Chinese and Vietnamese restaurant, but that poutine was created in Quebec and that those who originally occupied Quebec were from France and that the French, for a time, occupied Vietnam, influencing its culinary tradition, bringing us greats like Vietnamese coffee, and that therefore poutine, by some act of post-colonial Providence could be considered Vietnamese, but I don’t want to grasp at straws. I just want to praise a place that I consider to be an echelon of democratic eating. Where Canadian food, Chinese food, American food and Vietnamese food all come together not in some elaborate act of fusion cooking, but to live and be eaten side by side in complete culinary harmony. And you may wonder, dear readers, “Why would anyone do that?” Well, my only explanation, which came to me while watching the some odd 20 junior high school students that charged in as soon as the clock struck 3 and started ordering spring rolls and French fries, was that, as history often teaches us, a King gives the people what the people want. For years I myself had wondered the same, thinking the items so unfitting of the style of food offered at these kinds of restaurants must have been jokes, or covers for some other kinds of operations, but it was in that moment that I realized that Egg Roll King just does good business, and apparently has the best and most inexpensive egg rolls in town. Unfortunately, I wasn’t astute enough to try one. For an instant, I hoped that maybe, just maybe, one of those kids would ask for the shark fin soup- something I would have loved to have tried myself, if not for the price. And, yes, I’m probably romanticizing the dish in a place plastered with yellow and lime green walls, plastic grape vines along the ceiling, Buddhist shrines and other ornate trinkets; not to mention plasma televisions tuned into MTV and Teen Mom 2 marathons, but said soup is a rare commodity in these parts. And yes, I could go to a “fancy” restaurant and maybe order it, but that it is side by side on a menu with things like chicken wings and Moo Goo Guy Pan did my heart good, because Egg Roll King offered something for every foodie, student and all-around-eater. It offered me a strawberry shake (that’s right), and a heaping plate of Cantonese rainbow pork corralled in a field of fried rice. Perhaps an unconventional combination, but no less satisfying. Now, I didn’t see how it was prepared, but it had the sweet mellow flavor of fresh strawberries that one assumes will overpower the tongue with an indescribable kind of sweetness when biting into them; but it didn’t. If any sweetness seemed too overbearing, it was immediately subdued by the cool grittiness of the shake’s blended ice. And if there was anything artificial about it, I couldn’t tell.

	One of many manifestations of The Itis.

My rainbow pork, one of the chef’s specialties, was presented to me with the vivacity of a man whose upbeat spirit showed that he believed in his own food. He gasped along playfully with me as I dazzled in the rich, blooming red of the sweet and sour sauce that covered copious amounts of chewy pork, fried in an egg batter and stir-fried with vegetables whose juices deluged as soon as I bit into them and tamed the sweet, somewhat spicy flavor of my pork. What more can I say for such familiar, yet un-appreciated and satisfying flavours? If I didn’t know it was The Itis in me, I’d have thought I was in heaven.

Egg Roll King
85 courtland ave. east
Kitchener, ON N2G 2T6

Monday: 11am - 11pm
Tuesday: 11am - 11pm
Wednesday: 11am - 11pm
Thursday: 11am - 11pm
Friday: 11am - 12pm
Saturday: 11am - 12pm
Sunday: CLOSE

Payment: cash credit, debit.

Bill: Rainbow Pork: 9.95
Side of fried rice: 1.95
Strawberry smoothie: 4.00
Total: 17.97

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Growing a Green Tongue

Now, I might be beating a dead horse, or growing some kind of green tongue, but I've spent these last couple weeks wandering about vegan and vegetarian food. I used to be vegetarian. It was admirable. But then I realized trying to be vegetarian in an Italian household was problematic for my family's gastronomic identity. There's meat in almost everything. Except, maybe, bread. I held out for as long as I could. A good two years, but then a friend of mine introduced me to Korean Barbecue, and it was all downhill from there. But I think I have enough perspective now to communicate to all of you faithful readers that vegetarian and vegan food can be good food. It doesn't have to be pretentious, expensive, contemptibly portioned or bizarrely flavoured. This week, I could only hope that Kitchener-Waterloo offered up some redeeming spots for vegan and vegetarian food, and if not, then at least at an amiable price.

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).

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.

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.

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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