DESTINATION: WINNIPEG

One week in Winnipeg. Daughter and sister-in-law as companions. Summer in Canada. IT WAS AWESOME!

My brother had time in the evenings and weekend to elevate my food and coffee tastes.

These photos do not do justice to the trip, but like most things in my life, it is a little spotty reflection of the reality.  They do enrich my memories and capture a little  of the reality.

First things first, I love my brother and sister-in-law. I love their house. I love the places they live near. I love eating with them, and walking with them. So here are a few highlights of Winnipeg.

1. Coffee. Where I live in the suburbs, I can't even get my hands on the 3rd wave coffee my brother swears by. If you read my blog, you know when I buy a coffee, I am squarely in the 2nd wave coffee world (Starbucks), but when I am downtown, I try and drink differently. Montreal 3rd wave coffee shops are easy to find on line. I often feel bad for the waste since my favourite beverage (iced latte) goes in the garbage because it's plastic number 6. Not to worry. In Winnipeg, these are recyclable! I was introduced to Osborne Village's Little Sister, a regular haunt of my brother's and Make Coffee on Corydon which doubles as inspiration for architecture and design. Happily, I found that I don't need sugar with my coffee if I ask for fat milk! Delicious, and less embarrassing to my brother!

2.  Food. I have to start with the best food. In a word, Enoteca. On a friday night, with a last minute reservation at the bar, our charming server vainly attempted to get a vegetarian to share with a carnivore. In the end, I broke my moral code to taste some of the finest food I have had the pleasure to eat, and it was literally the best meal that I have ever been treated to. Thank you, bro! Strange to name a tapas resto for an italian wine bar, but, if I understand correctly, the original idea evolved into the restaurant I saw this August, and I love it!

Roast cauliflower, cave aged gruyere, panade (french savoury bread pudding), almond, citrus (freeze dried - looks and feels like a cheez-y), caper and brown butter

 Nagano pork belly, smoked parsnip, romesco (Catalonian combo of almonds and roasted red pepper) sauce, sherry, Iberian Salumi (salami), squid ink, cress

Roast crimini mushrooms, truffled aioli, thyme, sherry dressing, flat bread, mache, crisp chick peas

Creme brûlée  and lemon mousse with pistachio 

More affordably, our go-to place was Stella's Bakery. You can try out different venues which may suit your mood at different times. I tried the homemade quinoa burger on Osborne, and had the vegetarian sandwich beside the WAG on Portage, and ordered the insane-ist cinnamon bun with cream cheese icing for our last breakfast at the Sherbrooke location. I should not have been able to finish it, but I did, and did not eat lunch, nor need supper! It was as good as it looked. All meals were great, generous, and very decently priced. I wish I lived closer!

Stella's Cafe on Osborne's Quinoa Burger with amazing hash browns and spicy coleslaw.

Ridiculously big "four buttermilk pancakes". Delicious and plenty to share!

The Forks market was home to amazing food. The perogies were outrageous. Bindy's potato lentil roti was fat and gorgeous.

The Fort Whyte Farm had Buffalo Stone Cafe. It was clearly making conscious decisions to make good food with local flair, and I enjoyed making hard choices with the menu.

Unusual heavily rose flavored lemonade. Perfect cold on a hot day.

Trout fillets and arugula at Buffalo Stone Cafe.

Vera Pizzeria- Not just an ordinary cheese pizza (it has fior di latte and parmesan), and a glass of chianti. My brother with VIP service. Great last supper!

Everywhere there was food.  The Museum of Human Rights. The Assiniboine Zoo. A week is not enough time!

Then there was home. The fattest quesadillas ever. See my daughter's creation on a blog entry called My Foodie Daughter. My brother's spectacular culinary flip. My sis-in-law's awesome culinary skills. A crazy technology called an induction range.

My brother's attempt to flip his overstuffed quesadilla. I didn't believe he could do it. You can see the concentration in his face that he is about to defy that opinion!

First attempt, but no losses!

Success. Brother 1 Sister 0. One perfect quesadilla.

The last great food memory was the Bridge Drive-In. There is no drive-in, but you stand outside in lines,  and, once you have your ice cream, there is a pedestrian bridge over water to walk over and eat on! It reminded me of Regina's Milky Way. I had a sundae with Saskatoonberry topping! That was a first! My daughter went for a classic vanilla cone with sprinkles.

My only bad food recollection was at Boon Burger Cafe. This was a disappointment. The interior was fun, and I am grateful for a good vegetarian selection, but the Boon Burger was impossible to eat, and unremarkable. The fries were disappointing, and who can't make french fries taste good! My most embarrassing mother moment was giving my daughter a hard time for not eating her Boon Dog. I thought she couldn't get past the wrapper being a tortilla, which probably is a mistake, but after a few bites, I tasted it, thinking I would prove a point, and it was the worst veggie dog I have ever had! I would describe it as follows: If you tried to make a veggie weiner taste like the water left over in the plastic of a weiner wrapper. It was terrible! Sorry Boon Cafe, but I'll eat at Stella's next time!

3. Activities

Boardwalks at Fort Whyte Farm with buffalo, gophers, burrowing owls and a genuine pioneer sod house

Walking the boardwalk at Fort Whyte Farm.

Lots of dragonflies and mosquitos!

Sod house at Fort Whyte Farm.

After watching the burrowing owls and prairie dogs, a little reflection  and a water break with an amazing Aunt!

The Forks - Walk along the Red River and Assiniboine Rivers

Canadian Museum Of Human Rights - An incredible architectural wonder with vertiginous views on multiple levels, this interactive museum is a testament to the human being's potential for good and evil. This is the first national museum built outside of the National Capital Region i.e. Ottawa. My 9 year old daughter, who can only stay in an art gallery or ornate church for a few minutes, spent several hours looking at the exhibits. As a native-born Canadian, I found it most interesting to read the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom. This museum is a must visit if you are in Winnipeg.

Children's museum is a museum with lots of hands on activities. My individual favourite was the water table, but the collective favourite was the demonstration of how a milk farm circulated milk in the form of yarn balls that flew around in tubes and peppered you if you stood in the right place , which resulted in a lot of giggles!

Children's museum at the Forks

Optically vivid slide

Harrison Ford like image

Assiniboine Park Zoo- A recreated Churchhill and 7 polar bears were the highlight of the zoo, but it included a pride of lions, a caravan of camels, a herd of bisons, an ambush of tigers, a mob of kangaroos, and a flutter of butterflies. We had lots of fun looking for the named animals.

Lyric Lawn in Assiniboine Park - We watched Finding Nemo as park of Scotiabanks Movie in the Park in the Lyric theatre outdoors, doused in Deet with a big bag of creamy caramel Kernels popcorn. It was perfect!

Fort Garry Hotel - The most remarkable hotel silhouette in Winnipeg, this Chateau style hotel built in 1906 was a Grand Trunk Pacific Hotel, so I had to admire its lobby. It's easy to locate from the Forks market, as it was naturally close by the Union station visible from the Forks area.

St. Norbert Saturday Farmer's Market