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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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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