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This city needs more Korean restaurants, I’ve always said so. So when I was told by Daryl that Shinla Garden was knocked together in what was once the Lovenest (that favored of Ethiopan food spots) I was a little heartbroken, but consoled by its category of cuisine. Before Shinla Garden, there were only two or three places I could go to offering the kind of fare that wasn’t mixed together with another national cuisine. But now that Shinla’s here, I say the more novelty the merrier. And though Shinla may not be the best Korean canteen on the block, it’s been a long while since I’ve had a hearty bowl of black bean noodles remind me of why I was so glad to be part of a movement in the first place.
No need to be harried, dear eaters, because there is something for everyone at Shinla Garden. The most expensive thing on the menu is a combination plate of 23 dollars, but that’s dinner for two. If you’re eating alone, you’re apt to spend less than 10 and be more than satisfied with a slew of side dishes, a Korean courtesy at any restaurant and always a treat for the novel eater. It’s been so long for myself that I forgot they came with any order, and by the time I was finished deciding on an ambitious bowl of Korean Style Handmade Noodles with Black Bean Sauce and Pork Bone Soup (both 8 dollars), there they were, set in front of me, reminiscent of all the times I’ve had them before, but unique to every place that served them.
So, while I took in the blushing décor of the place- flushed purple walls, a naked tiled floor robed by a single pastel rococo rug and a plasma television showing nothing more than a zoetrope of China’s landscape- I delighted in some new and novel side dishes.
Remiss in one small bowl were four green slices of what I was told was a Korean pancake. Gooey with a flavor of durum reminiscent of the fresh pasta I’m used to eating, it was a rare treat. Its cool temperature made it a chewy delight, keeping it in my mouth as long as I could in order to savor taste and texture. The pickled radish was another treat. Familiar, but with its own unique sweet and sour quality, it was a side I couldn’t get enough of. Sadly, my side of kimchi was all the same, similar to every other place, which made me wonder if everyone else was really making their own.
My noodle entrée came first. Bedded in the bottom of my bowl were what the menu called handmade Korean noodles, though I’ve still half a mind to call shenanigans of something so similar to the noodles I can buy in the store. Layered atop all that was that affable smokey, salty black bean sauce I have come to know and love. Riddled with nutty beans, ground meat, squash, and sweet onions it was a gummy mix with malty undertones that clung to every noodle and left glutinous globules of flavor behind on the bottom of my bowl, and all over my napkin.
My pork bone soup came still boiling in its bowl, its bright spicy citrus odours percolating up to my nostrils whenever any bubble popped. A savoury broth combined with spring onions, fleshy greens, crisp sprouts, and pork that tenderly pulled from each rib make it a light dish, but heavy if its eater is brazen enough to dump in a bowl of rice. Regardless, its portioning, like its entrée before it, was perfect, and though I definitely ordered more than I could finish, I’ve no regrets about trying as much as I could.
There’s nothing particularly au courant about Shinla Garden, but there’s something certainly familiar, and since its prices are enough to spoil customers, why spend more than you have to anywhere else?
Shinla Garden
183 king street east
Kitchener, on, n2g 2k8
Mon-sat 11am-10pm
Sun 12pm-9pm
Any payment
You’d be hard pressed not to find poutine anywhere in this city. You would be hard pressed to find good poutine, though. So when I saw Smoke’s Poutinerie occupy the spot of a restaurant that failed, I wondered if it would be the prodigal poutine son of this city.
Since its inception five years ago, the franchise has garnered a shocking amount of success all over Canada. I couldn’t even sit in the small fast food joint without being pestered by the many mounted reviews by other writers placard in the place. But, as usual, I was skeptical.
If I cared enough, I would have remembered Smoke’s creator’s name. If there was anything worth remembering it was that the creator was from Ontario and a graduate of business from Wilfrid Laurier University. The creator himself worked in brands after graduation, from beer companies to shoes, managing and making things better, but tired, as I read from one review while waiting for my order, of the brand industry “as a whole [being] too self-consciously hip and trend obsessed.”
Apparently, he wasn’t aware of the kid behind the counter shelling out his product, the pinnacle of the definitive hip cook today, wearing a fedora, covered in tattoos, maintaining whatever edgy masculinity he could, all the while fighting against the feminine underpinnings of living working life in a conventionally feminine space. Sorry, dude.
The Poutinerie is nothing more than dubious. I wonder if people are really so foolish to disavow the space in lieu of what its creator said, ignoring the classic rock blaring over the speakers, the potatoes kept out in the dining area in bags decorated in the place’s brand with some scrub wearing coke bottle glasses and hockey hair manifesting the qualities of trendiness and ironic hipster cache that its creator said he hated. There were t-shirts for sale with this man, nostalgic middle America diner shoutings like ‘order up’ said by kids wearing pork pie hats. Are we kidding ourselves? The yuppies coming in to buy one and a half cups of soggy fries slathered in gravy for 8 dollars must have been.
I won’t deny the success of a clever marketing strategy, but I will be outraged at such words assuming I’m so stupid. Is the Poutinerie’s popularity a result of local patriotism? An Ontario native, a Laurier grad? Or is it the hope for a good poutine? The rude, obnoxious bumpings of patrons with not so much of an excuse me spoke of the place’s reputation preceding it. I felt like people ate here not because they knew good food, but because all the cool kids in the big city it started in were eating there first, and consuming brands is way more important. Why people still pay such ostentatious prices for this kind of elevated crap still baffles me. Kudos to Poutinerie for having the gull to put different ingredients on food and maybe exploiting the bad palettes of the nation, but there is nothing at all special about this food. I bought the traditional ‘signature’ gravy with Quebec cheese curds, and even after 13 minutes of keeping a box closed they still didn’t melt. They were dull, dense, sour, and squeaked between my teeth. The gravy was watery, pooled in the bottom of the package as salty gelatinous puddles, and the fries were soggy, soaked, and under fried.
I didn’t stop there. I gave it a second chance before I ran out of money. I tried the nacho grande. A poutine with homemade chili (whatever that meant), a smattering of tomato salsa, some sour cream, a squirt of guacamole in a corner of the box, topped with confusingly crunchy jalapenos. The meat was rubbery, rehydrated and flavourless; the beans sucked whatever moisture out of my mouth, and those damned cheese curds were thrown in to maintain that poutine persona that just doesn’t work.
I’d usually say high calorie food like this is the kind of stuff you cry your sorrows into, and it can be a comforting thing, but not here. Save those tears for your mother’s apron, it probably tastes better anyway.
DEBIT AND CASH ONLY
Smoke's Poutinerie
255 King Street North
Waterloo, ON, N2J 2Y8
T 519 888 7665
Mon-wed 11am-11am
Thu 11am-3am
Fri-Sat 11am-4am
Sun 11am-9pm
The same Sogo Cuisine I ate at all those months ago, or a mere facsimile, riding the coat-tails of Chinese name superstitions? I hope, for Sogo's sake it is. Because when things get big, they very well may get bad, especially when they're placed in the University of Waterloo's plaza.
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