Posts Tagged ‘restaurant’
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I’ve had the opportunity to go out for lunch with one of my imaginary friends, Mike several times over the past couple of years. Yesterday was just such an occasion and we went, once again, to Carlos’ Cantina on St. Paul Street in St. Catharines. We’ve been there thrice, now and Amy and I went there once together.
It is a typical-for-downtown-St.-Catharines-sized restaurant. There are perhaps 15 tables. Today was the first time I’d ever sat in the back area (there were five of us and things were busier than I’ve ever seen them). The place doesn’t look like much from the outside, being a fairly modest storefront with a really ugly but memorable sombrero on the sign out front. The kitchen takes up the entire right hand side of the front room and as far as I can tell, there are only two people who work there. Carlos is the chef and there is also a woman who waits tables and busses (she is perhaps his wife or girlfriend. Maybe business partner. I couldn’t say). The colour scheme is all reds, yellows and oranges and the chairs are serviceable, though I wouldn’t say comfortable.
The times I’ve been there, I have had the chicken chimichanga and the burrito and that’s about it. Each meal starts with house-made tortilla chips and three kinds of salsa. The one with the metal spoon in it is the hot one, so be aware. The chimichanga is a big fried package of shredded chicken in a tasty sauce along with a whole bunch of cheese. The burrito is basically the same thing but baked with cheese on top instead of being fried (note: a lot of Mexican food falls into the category of ‘meat and cheese wrapped in a tortilla and baked/fried with cheese’ so this is not a highly specific description of what I had). Each is served with a side of spicy rice, beans and salad. The portions are about right for a lunch. I would perhaps go here and then get dessert someplace if I were out for dinner. The prices are very competitive with other restaurants downtown. The chimichanga was about $12 and I think the burrito is comparable.
They don’t have any fountain beverages at all. Any pop or juice comes from a can or a bottle (they have the small, glass Coke bottles which may or may not be made with real sugar) and they have a pretty fair selection of beer, as far as I can tell. I usually get either a Coke or an iced tea (Coke in this case which is why I’m still up at 1:05, writing this post instead of sleeping. Caffeine is becoming a serious problem for me).
There was an upholstered office chair in area where we were sitting (which apparently used to have couches and a Nintendo but is now just tables) and a very small girl was pushing it around in circles while her mother and grandmother ate. She was very quiet about it, which I appreciated.
rests his head on a pillow made of concrete
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Today was our co-op student’s last day in the office but since he left at 11:30, my boss took him and the rest of us out for lunch yesterday. We went to Real Sushi (or Real Shusi, if you’d prefer the name on the back of the waitstaff’s t-shirts).
Amy and I have been going to Real Sushi about once every couple of months for a few years. We do long-weekend supervision of the dormitories at the school where she teaches and our program is made up of students from overseas who haven’t anywhere else to go during breaks. We have them over Canadian Thanksgiving, American Thanksgiving (a holdover holiday from the time when the school had a much higher US contingent than it has now), inter-semester break weekend, Family Day (mid-February), Easter and Victoria Day. We typically go out for dinner or lunch once per weekend and Real Sushi is our most commonly repeated restaurant.
It’s a fairly small place on Carlisle Street in St. Catharines. One of the entrances is off St. Paul Street and is via the lobby of the extremely sketchy Leonard Hotel (primarily low-income housing but it looks like a really seedy flop-house). There are perhaps 20 tables with seating for around 75 in what looks like it may once have been an Indian or Middle-Eastern restaurant. The decor is not very upscale (though they did replace the crushed velour upholstery on the bench seats at some point in the last year or so which was a very wise move). Currently lunch is $11.99 and dinner $14.99 for all-you-can-eat.
The menu is very varied (a phrase that looks much better than it sounds) and has much more than just raw fish. I was sceptical the first time we went as my prior experience with sushi was limited to a bit of salmon and some octopus in my grade five unit on Japan (a unit that included the creation of kimonos from surplus boot fabric in several surprising colours of green and orange). A couple of the students with us had eaten sushi many times before (apparently Japanese food is very popular in Korea) and so one of them ordered for the table and we were spared the awkwardness of 10 minutes of “so um… what is this, exactly?”
At Real Sushi the best idea is to order small amounts of food at regular intervals if you’ve got time for a couple hours of eating. The waitstaff are very friendly but are not particularly good at remembering orders though they be written down. As an example, about a minute after we sat down yesterday, somebody came and dropped off a plate of salmon rolls. Our drinks order had not yet been taken.
I recommend the General Tao Chicken, teriyaki chicken, chicken skewers and, if you can manage it, the plates of noodles, all from the “Kitchen” side of the menu. In all the times I’ve been there, I have been successful once in trying to order the plate of soba noodles. All of the noodle dishes are available as either a plate or soup and I keep getting soup despite asking for not-soup. I’m not entirely sure how to rectify this. The soup is good (though not as good as that at Noodle House) but it is not what I asked for. On the “Sushi” side of the menu, the salmon and red snapper nigiri (slices of raw fish on rice) are really tasty and the tuna nigiri is a good one to try if you’ve never had sushi before because it doesn’t taste at all fishy. They prepare the rice with some kind of vinegar, apparently. It is sticky and slightly sweet (I think there is also sugar in the preparation at some point). The sashimi (large lumps of raw fish) is good, too. It is only available on the supper menu. I am not a big fan of most rolls (seaweed is not really for me) but the Real Sushi rolls are really good. They are (going from memory here) salmon, mango, mayo (pretty sure on this and yes it does sound odd) and a couple other things rolled up and then deep-fried.
Yesterday one of my co-workers ordered deep-fried squid tentacles. I have tried calamari before and found it acceptable but it’s a bit like eating rubbery onion rings. These are very clearly tentacles that have been wrenched from a squid and thrown into boiling oil. The suckers are still quite clearly present. I was very hesitant to insert one of these into my mouth (because man do they ever look weird) but it turned out to be very tasty albeit very tricky to bite through. I think my chopstick technique is getting stronger every time I’m there.
This is another downtown St. Catharines find. Niagara has some of the best restaurants anywhere. Admittedly it’s no New York City but it’s also cheaper and 20 minutes’ drive instead of 8+ hours.
Whenever we talk about going to Noodle House (288 St. Paul Street, map is here) we say it like Dean Vernon in the Mars University episode of Futurama says Robot House.
noodle hooooooooooouse
I am a creature of habit when it comes to some restaurants. I find something that I really like and stick to it. Apparently, I fear change. I have exercised this at Noodle House almost without exception. I typically order the ‘choose your own’ noodle soup. It’s very similar to Vietnamese Pho, if you’ve had that, but there are more options. One can choose from several types of broth (chicken, vegetarian and hot and sour spring to mind), several types of noodles (udon are my personal favourite but they also do rice noodles, angel hair noodles and a couple others) and then toppings, for lack of a better term. They have options like shrimp balls, shredded chicken, dumplings, and the secret, hidden mixed vegetable option (it didn’t make the menu, was mentioned the first couple times I was there and now I just know to ask for it). The servings are generous (to say the least). The soup I get is $7.95 for a smallish mixing bowl. The menu suggest pairing this with fried dough ring things (I cannot recall their right name). I’d suggest skipping it as they are kind of flavourless even when dunked in the broth.
They also have a number of curries and rice dishes. My coworkers like the Masaman (spelling uncertain) curry which is a mild, red curry with chicken and a lump of rice. It’s $9-10 as are most of the main courses. Last time I was there (Friday), I ordered the Thai green curry with rice noodles and chicken (most of the dishes have options available). It was a gigantic bowl of curry soup. It was temperature hot (burnt my tongue and ate very, very slowly) and also super spicy. I couldn’t finish it all in one sitting so I had it packed up and ate the rest on Monday. I’m pretty sure it’s responsible for whatever is going wrong with my sinuses today. Powerful stuff to say the least.
Amy and I have gone there for supper a couple of times. They’ve started offering 15% off most evenings to try to drum up some business. I prefer their stuff (nasal cavity-assaulting curries aside) to Salah Thai which is right around the corner but for straight Thai food (ie. not soup), I prefer Spicy Thai on Church St.
The 20′s/30′s crew at Beamsville has made a habit of going out for dinner after service on Sunday nights. Usually some of us take it in turns to host everybody else but about one week of the month we go out to a local restaurant. This week we went to The Butcher and Banker on Ontario Street. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…