At the start of summer, I made a list of restaurants I hoped to get out to, this time of year when it’s less fraught to do so, because patios. We knocked off a few in the earlier weeks of summer, notably:
- Loloan Lobby Bar (more on it later)
- Babylon Wine Sisters Wine Bar, that we went to not long after Jean’s accident, enjoying their charcuterie board and always interesting wine flights in the alleyway patio.
- The Olive Board, which we fairly spontaneously biked to one day when the “bad air warning” from the forest fires cleared out earlier than expected, leaving behind a lovely day. We quite enjoyed the Bon Appétit charcuterie board and the wine flights on their sidewalk patio.
But we recently had quite a sequence of dining out, thanks to some cooperative weather and a few days off.
First up was S&V Uptown. We were originally supposed to go there with friends, but they got unexpected visitors. (Well, the visitors were expected, just not on this earlier arrival date.) I changed our reservation to be for two people only, and moved it to a Wednesday night. That date initially had a pretty rainy forecast, but that improved, so we were able to ride our bikes there, and eat on the patio.
Said patio is located in an alleyway, but it’s still kind of a nice setup (considering this is uptown Waterloo). The only issue at S&V’s exact spot—because a number of restaurants use this alley for their patios—is the constant drone of one window air conditioner in particular, that maybe needs maintenance or something.
We had restaurant owner Jill Sadler as our server, and went with selections of fried smelts (hadn’t had smelts in a long time!), seared foie gras (guess who), roasted heirloom beets with goat cheese to start, then duck breast and wild mushroom ravioli as entrees. And ended with a couple of the desserts du jour. All the food was very nicely prepared, beautifully plated, and quite tasty. One of Jean’s canoe friends (whom I also know, mainly from snowshoeing) happened by during our meal, so we also had a little chat with him, which was fun.
While we had no complaints about any part of the meal, we did ponder its value proposition, as it was kind of pricey. We didn’t do ourselves any favours on that front. though, given the extra appetizer, each having a dessert (instead of sharing), adding a no-alcohol cocktail, and even including a couple interesting dessert wines to our usual glass of wine with the meal.
Mid-month we took a few days off work, but didn’t travel, at least not overnight. However, we did do our typical day trip to the Beamsville area, but on a Monday, thus having somewhat less traffic and fewer other tourists to deal with.
We stopped in at Vieni Estates first. Jean recalled that we had been there years before. I had forgotten about that, but I did blog about it at the time, and reading that over, somewhat remembered it. It has changed! Of course, they no longer let you try “as many wines as you like”. Instead they have set flights that you can select from—reds, whites, mixed, that sort of thing. We took some time mulling over the options, and went with the sparkling flight, as that’s the type of wine they’re best known for, and their estate wines.
Apart from a somewhat brisk wind, it was a good weather day: no rain, mostly sun, not excessively hot or humid. So we opted to do the tasting outdoors. Their patio is not particularly inspiring; it just faces the parking lot. Upside of that: not much distraction from the wine tasting.
Overall, we were indeed more taken with their sparkling wines. The tasting set included a dry Champagne style wine; a slightly fruitier rose sparkling; a moderately off-dry moscato; and a red sparkling. At first we didn’t like the red sparkling at all, but after tasting around and coming back to it, we decided it was pretty interesting after all. So we got a bottle of that, and two of the moscato, which is not a typical sparkling style in these parts, and the sparkling rose.
Our next stop was at Good Earth Food and Wine. Given the Monday-ness, we expected it to be not that busy, but it was full! And since we were early for our reservation, they weren’t able to seat us right away. No mind; we just wandered their lovely grounds for a bit, and they texted us when a table became available.
Unlike Vieni, Good Earth has a beautiful patio in a garden setting. And the food, as we’d found on previous visits, was just wonderful. This year they also offered wine flights instead of just glasses, so that let us try a few of their offerings in a time-efficient way.
We still had a few Good Earth wine bottles at home, though (despite what you might think, we don’t get through bottles that quickly, given our commitment to moderate drinking on “normal” days), so we just bought a couple bottles of the favourite we had run out of, Betty’s Blend (a white).
Our last stop was at Westcott Winery, which I had read about somewhere, recently. (Toronto Star, maybe?) They make only a limited amount of wine, and so offer a set selection of four for tasting: a sparkling, two whites, and a red. I noted for future reference that they also have an outdoor restaurant, with a tarp covering.
All the wines were quite decent, but as they aren’t the cheapest (though not super expensive, either), we just got one bottle of my preferred one, the Pinot Noir.
At this point I was quite struck by how drunk I felt, despite having had the equivalent of about three glasses of wine, over a number of hours, with food. More than my usual, sure, but didn’t really seem that excessive? Anyway! But I was not driving, and Jean was particularly moderate at our last tasting (we left a good amount of the above generous pours), so no matter. The effect was mostly worn off by the time I got home, and I did not feel at all headachy or tired the next day. Odd.
Last day of our mini-vacation, we biked over to meet some friends at Loloan Lobby Bar. They had not been there since 2019. We, of course, had been there considerably more often, as it’s probably our favourite local restaurant. Again, we lucked out with weather, and were able to sit on their patio table, on Princess Street, which the city blocks off to car traffic in the summer. It was a lovely meal all around, great service, fantastic and creative food, and just a delight to catch up with friends that we hadn’t seen in about a year!
But no photos.
Final stop of our feeding frenzy was the Saturday following, when we went to The Odd Duck. This is a new restaurant located in downtown Kitchener. We had heard about it from a couple other friends that we stopped to talk to while on a bike ride one day (as our route took us by their house). The Odd Duck has a real “social conscience” vibe, in part expressed by a focus on local food, and also by being a “living wage” restaurant where you do not tip.
This outing wasn’t planned too far ahead, but when Saturday had a good forecast, and the Odd Duck reported that their patio was open, we decided to go try it out.
Patio-wise, they don’t have great space to work with: It’s just set up on a sidewalk of a street that is not blocked off to traffic. But they do what they can with canvas and plants and such.
The menu consists of “sharing plates”; they recommend about two per person, so we ordered four. They then bring them out two at a time to make a meal sequence. We did find items quite fresh and creative and tasty. They change their menu frequently, but what we had was gnocchi and corn; squid with tomato; roasted turnip and mushroom; and seared duck breast.
The bartender wasn’t in (so cocktails were not possible, which didn’t bother us) and their sommelier was on vacation, so we could get wine, just not a lot of wine tips! We decided to share a glass of sparkling to start, and ended up liking that so much we bought a bottle (Odd Duck has a bottle shop). Then we shared a glass of red (not remembering what).
For dessert, Jean tried their cheese offering, while I had the chocolate cake and ice cream, with a bit of port (also shared).
On the way out, we ran into another set of friends, who were also trying The Odd Duck for the first time. We have not compared notes yet, but I will be seeing one of them in a couple weeks.
And I have a few more restaurants on the list before the days turn cool and the viruses get to multiplying again: The Charcuterie Bar (also new), good old Sole, JL Bistro (it’s been a while!), Buon Gusto…
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