My Blog = My Life: brunch

The Round-up:

• Food - 3 out of 5
• Decor - 3.5 out of 5
• Service - 3 out of 5
• Overall - 9.5 out of 15

________________________________________________

Several months ago a food-loving group was created on Facebook. Its name was the "Cathedral Village Needs a Cheap Breakfast Place", or something like that. It seems that the Village just hadn't been the same since the Quality Tea Room shut down several years back.

I quickly joined the group, as did several hundred other Regina folks (What did we ever do before Facebook groups became the new face of activism, by the way?).
The Facebook fan page continued to grow, many of its members calling for a cheap plate of hash browns and bacon... like now.

Well, some wishes do come true.

The Mercury Cafe and Grill opened its doors in April. The place seemed to spring up overnight on the corner of 13th and Robinson streets in a spot that has housed numerous other restaurants.

The Mercury is a diner, no doubt about that. From the bright red vinyl booths to the formica and chrome tables, stepping into The Mercury is like stepping back 50 or 60 years in time. The Mercury is also under the same ownership as Regina's well-loved Novia Cafe, another all-out diner. This is a good thing -- who better to start a new diner than the folks who run one of the city's oldest and best?

I've been to The Mercury twice now, once for breakfast and once for supper. It's hard to find the right word to describe both experiences. It wasn't fantastic, but it wasn't horrible either. Perhaps satisfactory is the right word.

Weekend breakfast bustles and hustles in The Mercury. If you're not there by 11 on a Sunday, you're going to wait in line for awhile. Granted, The Mercury could easily jam a few more tables into the dining room in order to shave some time off the waiting game.

Your choices for breakfast are classic standbys: bacon and eggs; hash browns; pancakes; an omelette. You get the picture. Now, is it cheap? That depends on your definition of cheap. Most items run around the $8-9 mark, plus the cost of coffee and/or juice. I've had cheaper, but I've also had more expensive.

Service can be a little disorganized, but hopefully the servers work that out amongst themselves as the restaurant irons out the operating wrinkles. We had to wait 30 minutes for any food to hit the table at breakfast, almost enough to push us to the breaking point, but not quite. Fortunately, our waitress took good care of us in the meantime.

Now let's talk about supper for a moment. Once again, there are few surprises on the evening menu. Nachos; chicken wings; chicken fingers; burgers; clubhouse sandwiches; and grilled cheese are a few of the choices.

We ordered up a plate of nachos to get things started. With a $10 price tag, we pictured a nice platter of cheesy chips and veggies. We couldn't have been more wrong. A dinner plate with a puny pile of nachos on it was what we got. Even worse: the scarce bits of cheese on the chips were overcooked and rubbery. Epic fail, my friends. Epic fail.

Next up: the burgers. Now this is where the action is at. Tender homemade beef patties are smooshed between fresh buns with all the fixins. I went for the Mushroom Swiss. Big Willie had The Mercury Burger (two patties with fried onions, mushrooms, shaved ham, Swiss and cheddar cheese). All burgers come with a side. We went for the french fries and they were done to perfection.

Big Poppa (my dad) went for the open-faced Hot Turkey Sandwich... which came with hot chicken, oddly enough. But he got past that.

All in all, The Mercury offers up decent food in a comfortable room. The motto seems to be: come as you are, eat what you will. Now if they'd only fine-tune the nachos and up the portion size for most of the breakfast menu, we might have a sure-fire winner on our hands.

(no website)

Fans of cheap breakfast have a new reason to celebrate.

The Mercury Cafe and Grill opened on 13th Avenue the other day. This is diner-food, through and through. And so far, business looks brisk.

Address: 2936 13th Avenue.
Phone: 522-4423

Review coming soon....

The Round-up:

• Food - 3 out of 5
• Service - 3 out of 5
• Decor - 3.5 out of 5
• Total - 9.5 out of 15

4180 Albert Street, Regina, SK.
306-757-BREW (2739)

___________________________________________________________

You know you're always and forever a Prairie Boy when the thought of digging into a bowl of crispy coleslaw makes your mouth water.

The other night me and The Mom decided to go out for a weeknight supper -- we just didn't know where. As we drove south down Albert Street we stumbled upon Brewsters Brewpub and Restaurant. "Hey, I haven't been to Brewsters in ages," I said. Neither had The Mom.

So Brewsters it was.

Started in 1989 by Regina's Lanigan family, Brewsters has blossomed into a chain of thirteen restaurants in Regina, Edmonton, and Calgary -- with a fourteenth coming soon.

Now, the purpose of this blog is not normally to explore chain restaurants far and wide. That being said, I don't know of any other Regina-based restaurant that has done as good of a job at expanding its presence as Brewsters has. So, a little credit is due.

One of the interesting things about the chain is that each of the Regina locations is slightly different. The north-end location, next to the Galaxy movie theatre, is mainly a big pub with a compact dining room. Down in the south end, Brewsters truly feels like a dining room with dim lighting, plenty of seating, and several cozy sections. Then the east-end location feels like a slightly rundown blast from the past, although I haven't been in awhile and that might have changed.

Brewsters also has nightly food and drink specials. Some of them, like Thursday night's Riblicious special, are just too good to pass up.

Riblicious comes with a sizeable plate of ribs prepared three different ways and a side bowl of coleslaw. Ahh, coleslaw, you had me the moment I read your sweet name on the menu.

Now brace yourself, the best part is yet to come. The afore-mentioned Riblicious special comes to a grand tally of... just... $11. Sweet jeebus, why haven't I been dining at Brewsters more often?

I can't sign off without mentioning Brewsters extensive list of handcrafted ales and lagers. From the medium-bodied light golden Original Lager to the more adventurous Farmer's Tan White Ale, there's plenty to choose from. And it seems to me that the list has grown a lot in the last couple of years. Next time I visit I'm going to take a stab at a glass of Blue Monk Barley Wine. At 9.9 per cent alcohol, this heavy hitter might just serve as a meal.

My only suggestion to Brewsters on the beer front is to come up with one that truly honours its hometown. How about some Pile O' Bones Pilsner? Or maybe a cold frothy mug of Queen City Wheat Ale? Such a tribute would only be fitting, after all.

www.brewsters.ca

The Round-up:

• Food - 4.5 out of 5
• Service - 3.5 out of 5
• Decor - 4 out of 5
• Total - 12 out of 15

2228 Albert St., Regina, SK.
Phone: 306-546-3660 _______________
There are plenty of reasons why La Bodega is one of Regina's best restaurants.

OK, I guess you want me to name them. So here goes:

1.) La Bodega took an old, forgotten, decrepit house in the Cathedral neighbourhood and turned it into a hip, vibrant, intimate restaurant. That's not just luck, it's good planning. Previous owners of the building launched a bakery in the same spot and it was a massive flop within a year.

2.) So why has La Bodega succeeded? I think there are three key ingredients: a smart menu, a great location, and a design that allows La Bodega to be a restaurant, lounge, and/or concert venue depending on the time of day and the day of the week. They say you can't be all things to all people, but somehow La Bodega has always managed to attract the cool kids and the business lunch crowd and middle-aged couples just looking for a nice meal. That's no easy feat.

3.) Food -- of course, La Bodega would be nothing without the food. When La Bodega opened almost 10 years ago, no one in Regina had ever heard of tapas. Executive chef and owner Adam Sperling brought a creative, exciting menu to the Queen City and presented it in a way that was fresh and interesting to diners. Most people fell in love with the place after just one visit. And even now, the chefs continue to change and improve upon their menu, revealing new versions of it several times per year, keeping old favourites and introducing new ventures. And if a menu item doesn't work, La Bodega gets rid of it.
4.) Unless you're at Smitty's or an unapologetic hole-in-the-wall, a restaurant's decor is almost as important as what's on the plate (I said almost). La Bodega has always got the decor part right by using a mix of sophisticated yet rustic furnishings. The plain and sometimes mismatched wooden tables and chairs are jazzed up by much-more daring artwork and colours on the walls. The music -- never radio and certainly not Top 40 -- captures the worldly nature of the place without coming off as fake or, worse, New-Agey. In short, La Bodega's gypsy chic style is the Cathedral neighbourhood in a nutshell. It fits into its surroundings naturally. What more could you ask for?
5.) OK, this last reason is half-serious and half a joke. But when La Bodega first opened, they sold alcohol at ridiculously cheap prices. The food was never undervalued, but the drinks sure were. And people loved it. So they stayed for another. And another. And hey, can we see that menu again? We're hungry now. Over the years, it seems the prices of booze have crept upward, but you can still get a decent glass of wine for $5-6 per glass.
So, what's the downside? La Bodega's biggest weakness is its weekend brunch. The menu is nowhere near as tasty as what's on offer for weekday lunch or suppertime. And the prices for an Eggs Benny border on the obscene. To me, the best breakfasts in the world are cheap and dirty. Get in, drink your weight in coffee, and get out $8 later.
Otherwise La Bodega, you rock.
http://www.labodegaregina.ca/

The Round-up:

• Food - 3.5 out of 5
• Service - 2.5 out of 5
• Atmosphere - 2 out of 5
• Overall - 8 out of 15

It's time to take ourselves to a new part of town on the blog: North Albert Street.

True, North Albert isn't exactly a dining mecca. But there are a few bright spots among the autobody shops and gas stations. Chappy's Restaurant and Lounge is one of them.

Tucked into a strip mall across the street from the Northgate Mall, Chappy's is an unassuming kind of place. It's located so far off the street that you'd hardly notice it -- most people probably don't at all.

My focus today is on Chappy's brunch only, as that's the only meal I've eaten there.

Big Willie, the Advertising Exec, and myself stopped in on a recent Sunday for some grub. I use the term "grub" deliberately because that's what Chappy's serves: good, honest, homecooking with no shortage of butter n' bacon fat.

The Advertising Exec had been trying to get us to Chappy's for weeks, claiming it to be one of Regina's best greasy spoons. In that respect, I think he's right.

You don't go to Chappy's because it's chic, or decorated oh-so-cutely. You go because it's cheap and the brunch hits the spot.

For about $10, you will be treated to delicious buttery hashbrowns; crispy bacon (and plenty of it); scrambled eggs; breakfast sausage; lasagna; a bit of fruit; a couple of desserts; and some juice. And Chappy's Sunday brunch is a buffet, so fill your plate a couple of times (at least). We certainly did.

Service can be slightly off the mark, but since it's a help-yourself kind of joint that doesn't really matter.

Do something different and head up to North Albert one weekend for some grub. And don't forget your appetite.