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Being a bastardized version of a chef living in a region with other bastardized versions of chefs (I, of course, mean cooks), you come across a lot of perks, and peoples. Kitchener-Waterloo is a small town, with a lot of nodes of culture, overshadowed by academics, technology, RIM, the Perimeter Institute, convoluted fatheads, and some genuinely good folk, with moderately good stories to tell. A kung-fu grandmaster comes to mind. Anyway, my point is that a lot of restaurants are in the possession of self-proclaimed cooks, who, as far as I'm concerned, can hold their own against the rest o'them chefs out there. Quite frankly, the only difference may be that piece of paper and the paycheck. Oh, and the guts it takes to open your own place and hope it doesn't sink three years down the line.
My own family is one such example. They're tough folk. They opened their own joint, and have held their own for a number of generations. And they have the Kohler sinks to prove it. My immediate family on the other hand . . . Well, let's just say, my dad still goes to China once in a while to pay his dues to the 49ers.
Luckily, when you're involved with more than one restaurant, you're involved in a lot of food and eating of it.
Thus, I bring you to yet another serendipitous food tasting occasion.
Being a "Thai" cook, I like to pretend I know what I'm talking about, humbly of course, when it comes to the subtleties of cooking a savory dish of the hamburger of Southeast Asia: pad thai. My cousins- my restaurateur cousins- love pad thai. And it just so happens that there are three Thai restaurants- food holes, I like to call them- within a 5 block radius of their restaurant (Maybe. Geography was never my thing. But they're all close, is what I'm getting at). And we've had the pad thai at all of them. None, however, come close to that of the pad thai dish prepared on occasion by the lovely woman who owns Belmont Village's Village Creperie. At least, that's what my cousin always tells me. Her name is Jean. Or so I'm told. So, long story short: I called his bluff, and he did a favour. A week later, pad thai was cooked on a Thursday for someone kinda special. And here's the crux: pad thai in a creperie? That's bogus. Not exactly. The pad thai at Village Creperie is made once in a blue moon. In fact, legend has it that the last time the owner of Vilage Creperie prepared pad thai by request was four months ago. It's not part of the menu. Well, it is. When it's made. But not really. Because, it's not a crepe. and crepes, I'm positive, are French. And pad thai, I'm positive is Thai.
So, after waiting a solid hour until the creperie closed down for the afternoon, my cousins' employee and I headed down to the Village Creperie. A place so fancy and good looking on the inside that the mere value of the placed dropped as soon as my holmly self walked in.
Ladies seem to like it. The restaurant, that is.
So, while tenderly saying hello, grabbing a seat at the bar and flirting with the already engaged waitress behind the counter, we waited for our noodles. My cousin soon followed suit.
Curiously, I had asked how the pad thai came to be, and was informed that the owner's granddaughter had had pad thai one day and begged her grandmother, no doubt a cook, to remake the same thing. So, with the internet and a little know-how, grandma soon mashed together a whole bunch of recipes and created her own signature pad thai dish. All organic. Which is something Village Creperie prides itself on. So, after paying a cool 11 dollars we were given a fancy crepe box packed with noodles covered by a tempest of peanuts. I would have preferred light snow fall, but the dish wasn't compromised by it. How could it be? It was made for me, after all. At least, that's how I like to remember it.
Now where do I begin? The dish was anything but generic. The flavours were there, a little more sweet than I would have liked, but not stereotyped by the combination of ketchup and peanut butter that accompanies pad thais in my neck of the woods. Some say, that in Thailand, they don't even know what peanut butter is! But that aside, flavours of the meal were overpowered by its tanginess. Appreciated at first, but tiresome halfway through the noodles, becoming reminiscent of something that tasted almost artificial and instant. But that may have been its only setback. Noodles were substantial, and with every bite, there was something else in the catch, whether a piece of chicken, tofu, bean sprouts, or snow pees. The only flaw may have been that it depended too much on its sour sweet characteristic, something which is good in small doses. But every dish has its own kind of flavour. That said, I can never be too harsh about someone's choice to make something a specific way. After all, all pad thais shouldn't taste the same, it defeats the fun between feuding restaurants, fights outback with cleavers, and spying on fellow cooks in their trash. If you didn't have some kind of technique or choice of flavour, trying to make or eat the better pad thai would be like watching a kung fu movie where everyone knows kung fu, but nobody ever fights. Not that kung fu is a cultural phonomena in Thailand, or France. Just imagine I said what I did, but with crepes. Or pad thai. And give the Village Creperie a try. You never know, you may go when there's a blue moon, and a whole lot of noodles in the kitchen.
Village Creperie
703 Belmont Avenue W
Kitchener, Ontario
519.576.5796
http://www.villagecreperie.ca/
Weezee: Don't cut yourself.
New Guy: Don't worry. I use these at all my jobs. And without the hand-guard.
Weezee: I swear- you cut yourself and I'm ripping your balls off. I don't want to clean someone's blood off that damned meat slicer again.
New Guy: I'll clean it, don't worry.
Weezee: No, because you'll have to rush to the hospital and I'll be stuck here doing the job. Eye's on the blade, stop doing it with one hand, drinking tea like it ain't no thing but a chicken wing.
New Guy: I'll clean it. I can handle it. I cut myself all the time. It's okay. Look't my hands, they're full of little cuts.
Weezee: That's exactly why I don't trust you with that thing. Mummy shouldn't even let you near it with an attitude like that.
New Guy: Whatever, it's fine. I'm not afrad to cut myself.
Weezee: That's not my point. Point is, as a cook you shouldn't even want to cut yourself for the sake of the people you cook for. I haven't cut myself once at this job.
New Guy: Pshh.
Weezee: What is it with you kids? You guys go to cooking school and have no social responsibility? It's mind boggling! A kitchen isn't a fucking proving ground. Stop watching the "F-Word" and throw your shitty pride to the dogs. Your hero culture/pirate/Bourdain bullshit doesn't jive here. I don't care about your mangled hands. That doesn't say good cook to me; that says negligable moron I don't want cooking my food. Your hands are the only marketable tools you have and you wanna chop them off!? Geez.
New Guy: Okay okay.
Weezee: I mean it, be careful.
. . .
Mummy and Uncle: OOIII!! What you do!
New Guy: I did it when I was cleaning the blade- no big deal!
Weezee: What happened?
Uncle: He cut himself.
Weezee: . . .
You're never using that thing again!
Oiii NA!
I love ice cream. About as much as I love the diabetic coma I will inevitably slip into after inheriting diabetes from my maternal grandfather (and diabetes is no laughing matter). So, when I laid eyes on the the erected edifice of a structure that combined the aesthetic strength of something very 'greek-sculpture' (marble), with something I could be strung out on for days (icecream), I had to give it a chance - if only once. Because, haha, my wallet isn't that big. And I more or less assumed that with a name like Marble Slab Creamery, this place was no doubt some kind of ice cream franchise. That said, I feel like my town of residence is rather uncultured in its choice of dessert spot. But that's debatable. For those of us here (in the mid-size city of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada) culture for us is franchise, suburban sprawl, and brand names. At least for the next ten years until we run out of space. I heard the location of this joint WAS actually supposed to be a residence for a university. But anyway, it would either be a Dairy Queen, or Baskin Robbins as alternatives. Two all-American ice creameries. I know. There is a gelato place. But that doesn't meet Western ice cream standards.
So, dear reader, let me set the mood. It's a cool Victoria day weekend night; approximately 13 degrees. Feels like 10. Dusk has fallen. I just finished dragging bags of fertilizer for my immigrant grandmother (because my place of employment was closed), and my serotonin levels are lower than - no, I won't go there. So I find a ride, a good friend, and head on down to the Marble Slab Creamery and think of how Punky Brewster this whole situation ought to be. But I overlooked some small details. On a day when the majority of food spots are closed (Monday, Victoria Day Weekend), and something's new and exciting, for an uncultured mid-size city, things are bound to get out of hand. How so? So (so!) out of hand that there's a line up past the door. The place is packed like a Tokyo subway, and guys with dates are wondering why some guy is snapping shots of them with their dates. Sorry fellas, you misunderstand. You, or your dates, aren't that interesting. It was the prices on the board I'm interested in; and all the candy in jars. And the odd 2 and a half year old looking for her own .75 cent toppings in her nose.
The place was pretty spacious; and I wondered if they even had seats in the first place. Maybe. Maybe not. Seems like it'd be a good investment for when the place is dead. But who am I to talk, I don't own an ice cream parlor, I just eat at them. Regardless, we were all dazzled, I'm sure, by the pastel coloured walls, the overblown ice cream photos on walls, and the 55 dollar cakes in the freezer along the back.
And since I brought up the prices, let's talk about those. There's a probably some universal law out there that states good ice cream has to be expensive. Unfortunately, today, ice cream is so popularized that nothing really seems to beat out the competition. I wouldn't be surprised if it all came from the same supplier. If you try hard enough, or if you're as much a fathead about food as I am, you'll go out of your way to discover similarities and uniqueness in flavour. But when it boils down to it, there really is none. there's nothing there. Except for a name. A name you pay a bundle for. Like 4.95 for a single scoop of exotic sounding ice cream. Like amaretto. You know? That boozy liquor Italians love to bake with. Well it's back. In ice cream form. Chicks dig it. The price, I mean. I'm talking about the price. Not the flavour. Yes, it seems you're nobody until somebody sees you buy at some high-end ice cream place.
The Marble Slab has the works: banana splits, waffle bowls, homemade brownies, toppings, all for the wallet burning prices of 7 dollars, 6 dollars . . . 55 dollars. Some would say you get what you pay for. I would say I pay for ice cream that, sure, is delicious, but ain't too special. I think all the funds went to the spread set up for when then put your order together. Essentially, this is how it works:
you order a scoop, or two, or whatever; you get a free topping, and any additional topping for .75 cents. Then, the corporation worries about how many pennies you're pinching from them and has their poor, probably under payed employees weigh it on a scale. Yeah. I saw it. Afterward, that frozen ball is set on a, you guessed it, marble slab, and spread out. Finally, your chosen topping is placed in the center and both ice cream and topping are creamed together.
. . .
Oooooh. I get it. Criss Angel would love this place! It's so full of smoke and mirrors. By mashing my toppings with my icecream, instead of placing them on top like other parlours, my paying a high prize is somehow legitimized, and I assume I'm getting better tasting ice cream! Of course! And don't forget the marketing spread. We always feel better eating from cups with a swell graphic. It's simple business folks. You eat from something good and beautiful, you are beautiful. There's no sunk cost there.
My order did look beautiful. Amaretto and blueberry, in a waffle bowl, in a plastic bowl. God bless. I feel sorry for my friend, who just mashed strawberries and Oreo sans waffle bowl. Too bad. She ended up paying 7 bucks. Me, only 6 (5.60 to be exact). Wait a minute. Who won?
But I'm being way too harsh. The place wasn't bad. Not at all. However, like any new franchise, it's just enjoying its hype for as long as it can. Franchises are strange things. They tend to get business right away and plateau. A restaurant, non-franchises, tends to start out slow, either working its way up, becoming a popular gem, or failing miserably. But that's enough restaurant theory.
If you can, try the Marble Slab out, wherever you are. I'm sure you'll find it in your neck of the woods. It's good. If you have to wait 35 minutes for an order though, you might want to try the 31 Flavours down the street.
The Marble Slab Creamery158 University Avenue West
Waterloo, ON N2L 3E9
(519) 884-1900
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