Almost Missed Connections

The culinary cries of a neoteric picknicker serendipitously pulled me back into my new playground of gastronomies. And while my language here sounds like a missed connection from the London Review of books, I’ve little doubt my conscience would have allowed for my just stopping and eating, and forgetting Willy’s Fresh Cut Fries, the seemingly selfsame kindred spirit of KW’s own David’s Fresh Cut Fries. Yes, I was smitten passing in the night, seeing its green shack lit up in the dead of winter, and lucky enough the next day to have a reason to visit, thanks to a new mouth to feed.

I quashed any curiosity for the chicken and egg debate: which came first? Dave’s or Willy’s? Did it matter? Does it, still? They’ve both their own kind of charm, and to discover which is more edible is an overwhelming task; one I no longer have the funds for. They’re both stick to your ribs food, and the day’s unnecessary storm gave me good reason to eat anything fried. There are some things I’m more fond of though: namely the nameless dog that circles Willy’s quarters, and that Willy’s is always open even in a winter storm. Heck, its fare is even cheaper than the menu says, and it shares its lot with a car garage, which enthusiastically led my company to believe it was a cover for something a little more dangerous. Pretty fantastic. But it’s not all roses. We were dashed by Newfoundland fries that were nothing but soft bread and gravy. No discernible stuffing, no cheese, no onions or peas. Our deep fried pickles too had us a little curious. Until I bit into my own I had wondered if what my comrade was eating was deep fried zucchini posing as a tasty gherkin. Sure enough, crunchy spears were there sleeping among plainly sliced courgettes.

Humble menu posturing aside, when we ordered our feed we were looking on wholeheartedly. It had all you’d expect from a trailer abstrusely anchored between someone’s yard and a brake and steel autoshop: Burgers, fries- prepared to your liking; poutine- of course; perogies, onion rings. Not to mention democratic inclusions of kabob, shawarmas, and gyros, which led me to believe that these items were Willy’s specialty, even more so when the cook suggested I choose a gyro over my company’s burger. And sure enough, I did, but not before bureaucratically making sure to include everything fried that I could in my order. Willy’s Platter was a meager appetizer that could pass as a good independent spot of grub. Fryer grease perfumed the air, and oil bubbled out sweet nothings while I anticipated tender battered chicken fingers (not processed!), capsule shaped mozzarella sticks stuffed instead with cheddar, deep fried pickles, and low-key zucchini slices yet again.

I was pleasantly surprised by my gyro though. Soft, forgivingly chewy pita wrapped itself around earthy cuts of shaved meat tossed with firm wedges of tomato, and crisp red onion, balanced by generous sprigs of curly parsley. Every bite was a memory of my informal induction into the culinary world all those summers ago when that kid from Hong Kong happily filled my stomach with sandwiches of beef and cilantro shoots. Willy’s may not have absolute gastronomic glory, but like me, you may be able to find a just little love in one of the strangest places.

Oh hai, doggie!

HOURS

No idea

ANY PAYMENT

Tweet

Diamond in the Rough

A weaker, more fragile self likened my kismet move to Cambridge to that of Napoleon’s banishment to Elba. I dreaded the ghost stories told to me by youth in revolt: there’s nothing to do there. It’s a giant flee market- outlets everywhere, no good Chinese food. The great paradox of the place, from what I could understand after multiple run-ins with early twenty-somethings- tattoos and ear plugs and barbells and all- was that if you wanted to understand the kind of city dweller, you should spend some time in a garbage dump. I found no humour, nor sense in the statement. For if you’re one telling me that everyone living in Cambridge is garbage, are you yourself not the same garbage? 

Riddles aside, and leaving any Socratic rhetoric alone, I did my best to tread lightly with my ethnographic accounts. I oozed arrogance and snobbery without even trying, but just by merely asking where to eat, or talking tea with, of all people, young tea enthusiasts. Coffee was another touchy subject. Starbucks was their cup of tea, if only because they got it for free. 

A forced 2 hour conversation left me jaded and unsure. Maybe where I was, for the most part sojourned, really was a sad, sad place, with little night life, and the depraved civilian riddling so many of its spaces, that locals were just turned off of going out and sharing space with them. That’s my biggest qualm with the city’s people so far. But urban politics aside, I was resolute to make my time here as positive as possible. I have a bigger home, nine foot tall showers, HBO, and a restaurant stove my dear mother made a promise of buying all her life. In these past two months, my days, for the most part, have consisted of cooking whatever elaborate meals I could on a stove that doesn’t belong in a suburban kitchen, recording television, reading whatever theory I can get my hands on, and practicing what little kung fu knowledge I have left in the dug out foundations riddling my neighborhood and its million dollar homes. When the scaffolding goes up in one home, I make an effort to move, night by night, on to the next, until everything’s all done. For now though, excavators are still my alarm clocks, and my unfinished kitchen, my own little restaurant.

Architecture is another thing that has occupied my time, as well as the odd teashop, the multiple libraries, and all of the city’s beautiful rivers. There certainly are spaces worth trafficking, which makes me question what the young have told me for so long. Either that, or my years dreading this place have awoken an old appreciation of urban study. Serendipitous, no doubt. And when I feel a little more adventurous, I campaign Joey to come and explore with me. We’ve been to quite a few dives, and so far, liked them all. It seems on most of our outings we’ve converged fluidly with an older crew. Are we getting old? Or is the city just cliché? Polite adults peppered with a majority of bored young people who are too lazy to go out and make their city a playground? My flaneur behavior makes me think it might be the latter. There are, after all, three different downtowns, all charming in their own right. If they’re not cosmopolitan enough, they certainly will be in the near future; but I’m sure the youth will complain it’ll be too expensive to live by that point. Alas, the grass IS always greener. But, I’ve found the grass here to be just as green as my old home. I’ve found an apiarist, a Viet-Thai grocery store, and what I consider to be probably the most impressive coffee shop in the Region. Is that a big claim? Good, because I stand by it. 

***

I’ve been slowly making my way around every café in town, looking for a local bag of beans if only to avoid the devastating shelf life that ruins any chance of a really great cup. And certainly, giving the city’s youth the benefit of the doubt, I expected to find absolutely nothing, just drip. Around here, the barista has been muscled out by laziness and big box stores that could deliver the same simply because no one was trying, or so I thought. 

Monigram Coffee Roaster’s location caught my eye. The building’s outer urban charm, and simple bold font design stamped onto its outer wall lured my cynical attention. It echoed the coffee cosmopolitanism I associated with so many third wave coffee joints. It was obviously the last place I went to look for a bag. And I expected nothing else. Something along the lines of beans brought in, but better than a grocery store; at least there might be  some contact with the mad scientist roasters around Ontario. I was caught off guard by my own defeatism though, because when I went in and asked if they had any bags, the shop's patron pointed to a shelf behind me next to a roaster. I was relieved to know I had finally found a place with fresh beans, but floored more by the knowledge. 

I didn’t really care about the roaster; in fact, when I see any in coffee shops, I never fully trust the places using in house roasting as a selling point. Why would Monigram Coffee Roaster’s be any different? So what swayed me? To the point, my questions of connoisseurship were answered with finesse. There were multiple kinds of beans, each with their own profile; they were shelved, dated the day of their roasting, and thrown away every ten days. Nothing around here is fresher. 

Monigram offers guests the coveted pour over, and the NEVER seen Siphon Coffee maker- the most regal of Japanese coffee invention. In the summer, I was told, they even offered the 24 hour cold coffee drip. All third wave theatrics not even done in Kitchener-Waterloo, pour overs aside. Monigram Coffee Roasters is as surreal as coffee can get. I’d say it’s cornering the market, but in the city of Cambridge, more specifically, downtown Galt, it’s playing a game all its own, and it doesn’t care that it cares a million times more than every other coffee shop. It cares about coffee, not the pretense of coffee for the sake of going to a café. This isn't coffee for the sake of the Enlightenment. It is an epitaph for the gastronomic greatness that can someday riddle this city though; perhaps a dooming one for the cynical youths that claim there is nowhere good to go. I reckon if I still lived where I used to, I’d make the trip out to Monigram before I would the places in my old back yard. If only I knew sooner. But luckily, I don’t have to. I bet my cool coffee friends feel pretty foolish, and if you don’t head to Monigram, you should too.











HOURS
Opening 7:30 weekdays, 8:00 weekends
Closing 6pm Sunday, 8:00 pm Mon – Wed., 10 pm Thurs. – Sat.

ANY PAYMENT

Tweet

The Authenticity Polemic

I woke to something very irksome on the culinary web today, which I suppose would serves me right for waking up if only to read and not watch cartoons like the manchildren of mumblecore.  

The fait accompli of said mush was focusing on one man’s journey to find authentic food and then recreate it. Though I’ve no qualms with any sort of recreation, I do, as you all know, have a huge problem with the dangerous snake pit of authenticity. Authenticity is like perfection. It’s a ridiculous, controlling concept. It’s a charmed circle. It might work with one painting that sticks around for a long while, and is the source of copy and profit. Adam’s rib too might be authentic, but a dish certainly can’t be. Or so I like to claim, because it comes and goes. That magic argument, using a little reverse Nietzsche, is made into manure.  But here’s my bigger problem with anything authentic in the food world: authentic food imposes imperialistic ideologies on the less fortunate; it Others cooks, and encourages modes of power. For one White privileged male to spend his time in other parts of an ‘exotic’ world only to come back to the West ‘looking’ for the real thing is a delusional theatric consumers love buying into, specifically because it buys into the Western ideal of the individual, which in and of itself is destructive, because while we cannot find any kind of autonomy from anything authentic because it is a mere fantasy, we continually shell out cash and look for it. Also, it’s lumped under the genre of travel writing, so it’s strictly for entertainment. At least until you decide to impress your friends with a recipe at dinner. And that’s only the political economy of it. I’m not depending on it for making my argument. 

My real problem? My real real problem is this: asinine tripe like this, from a White privileged centre, going out and looking for the authentic and then trying to conquer it, or policing it in a multicultural space couldn’t be more imperial and destructive, especially when you try to own the people doing it to survive through the act of judging the product they prepare as true to the abstract ‘genuine article.’ I hope people know this kind of shit is why museums and zoos exist. So France and Britain could just fight each other like babies and one-up each other by conquering lands and displaying anthropological war trophies. That said, know this: when you go into an ethnic restaurant, or read about a guy who’s going into an ethnic restaurant to see if they made the ‘real thing’, you are entertaining your novel whims, but also Othering those poor ethnic cooks, and rendering them invisible if they can’t do it. This is a huge paradox, aside from a huge slap in the face to the poor folk running their restaurant. Is the Thai cook not making Thai food? Did they not come from their native country and decide to cook their food to make a living here? So how can you argue authenticity when they made it in their land originally, albeit a little variably. That’s why authenticity’s a hoax, man. That’s why it’s so easy to control a submissive party by accepting them or shaming them; unfortunately, if they’re approval seeking, they’ll suffer for it. Unfortunately, if we’re approval seeking, looking for cultural capital to elevate ourselves through consumption, they will suffer, because we’ll judge them on ‘taste,’ not taste. What do these kinds of White shenanigans say for the Thai family I spent two tender years working for? Are they not authentic because something doesn’t taste the same? (A customer once complained the pad thai wasn’t like the pad thai in Thailand- little did he know, pad thai is a Western creation, taken in by Thailand- no peanut butter, no ketchup) Or is their food authentic because they are a specific ethnicity? What does that say for the Chinaman who can cook great, fantastic laab? That’s Othering, man. Ignoring the struggle of a person and disqualifying them if what they offer doesn’t benefit us. 

And if you’re all, ‘Hey, man, no, I mean ingredients are what make some dish authentic.’ Please. Take that shit up with the ghost of Barthes. I shamed an economics professor for trying to tell me Chinese food in China is better than Chinese food here made by Chinese immigrants, in front of a whole Chinese class, so I’ve no bone about doing the same to you. Save that authenticity garbage for 17 year olds reading Thoreau for the first time and somehow, for whatever dumb fuck reason, associating nature with what is real and true and genuine and autonomous. Please. Thoreau didn’t care about wilderness; that’s not why he left. He hated the political climate and wanted to get away from it and try and make his own, only to fail and come back. So, just as an aside, can we stop trying to associate the environment with human autonomy and spirit too? While we’re bringing up the subject. I mean, that’s like me leaving Waterloo’s people for Cambridge’s because, they’re more ‘real.’ Ha. It’s like going to the market to buy Canadian bananas. That’s bananas! It’s like going to China to learn real kung-fu, when everyone knows Mao totally mutilated kung-fu. He destroyed Shaolin, he burned down temples. Now you gotta go to Taiwan, or Japan and find secret masters. Do I sound ridiculous? That’s because I’m being ridiculous. It’s ridiculous! If someone’s good at kung fu, they’re good at kung fu. If they can teach you to defend yourself, then you can defend yourself. Nothing’s more right. And so I make the same claim for taste. 

Seek food not because it’s authentic, because that doesn’t mean it’s literally better! You can allude yourself in thinking that yes, but just seek for tasting good. Period. And there’s the other variability, and even I’m disqualifying myself. Everyone’s palate IS different. Food writing’s just flashy rhetoric, sprinkled with a little bit of credibility. Anyone can eat and say something tastes good or bad. But how well can they convince you? Get out there and eat. Or don’t, but please don’t support any notions of authenticity so some patronizing White butthead can lord his tongue over poor immigrant workers depending on free family labour and illegal workers. Life’s hard enough as it is without categorizing cooks into authentic, not authentic. Can we all PLEASE stop eating the Other? Can we just strike ‘authenticity’ from the lexicon? Call me a communist, but at least I don’t have to listen to another fathead tell me he’s better than me because he had ‘authentic’ poo soup. At least then, I won’t have to see another old Thai woman cry in a corner, knife in hand. 

-w

Tweet