Common cause: Good food, low prices

BORIS MINKEVICH/ WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Enlarge Image

Julia's owner Joanna Pacwa with a selection from her delicious menu.

These restaurants have little in common. Just the fact that both are east of the Red River (where the restaurant pickings are lean), and both offer a few savoury ethnic foods at bargain prices. You'd have a hard time spending much more than $10 in either of them.

Julia's is a quaint, cottage-like place with lots of latticed windows and cheerful yellow walls trimmed in royal blue -- a surprising little oasis of cosiness in this dreary stretch of Nairn Avenue. Much of the menu is devoted to sandwiches, burgers and such, none of which I tried. What I'd come for was the limited list of Ukrainian/Polish specialties. And please, don't write to question my spelling -- perogies and kubassa is how they appear on the menu.

I can't do an exact comparison -- I seem to remember Alycia's perogies as bigger and plumper, but on the other hand Julia's has a larger-than-usual choice of fillings. You can have them boiled only if the kitchen isn't too busy, and never deep fried, which is OK by me. The standard serving here is pan-fried, and they are nicely done, with onions, good little crisps of bacon and sour cream (you can have them for breakfast, too).

They come on their own or as part of a platter, i.e., combined with decent cabbage rolls -- filled mostly with rice and in a sweet and sour rather than the more usual tomato sauce -- and/or with either meat balls in brown gravy, which were good, or with Polish style kubassa, which was terrific. Included as well are a tiny portion of quite a nice cole slaw, rye garlic toast and a choice of tomato juice or soup of the day -- a hearty, full-flavoured rice and ham soup on my visit. For an extra $2.50 you can substitute the always available tangy and equally delicious borscht.

I liked the standard cheddar-potato perogies, and I also liked the Polish pyzy, which are filled with nicely seasoned meat. The perogies are also available (albeit not all of them all the time) filled with sauerkraut and mushrooms, cottage cheese, or even with fruit, which are served for dessert.

Unless you specify, your order of fruit perogies will be two filled with peaches and two with blueberries, plus a bowl of ice cream. If it's permitted skip the ones with peaches, which tasted as though they'd come undoctored, straight from the can. The blueberry filling was good though and although I can't account for it, the dough for the peach perogies was tougher than it was with the blueberries.

However, I hadn't come just for perogies, but for two other locally rare items as well. The rolada -- a braised beef slice rolled with bacon, dill pickle and onion -- was tasty enough but slightly stringy, and the potato dumplings with it didn't taste much of potato. But I did like the bigos, a.k.a. hunter's sauerkraut stew -- I couldn't find any meat in the kraut, but it was marvellously mellow, and there were chunks of that excellent kubassa on the side..

The coffee was pretty good, and the service friendly. Licensed. Open 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday to Saturday.

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Julian, Jesse, Sonia, and Suzette Lemus of Cafe Mercadito Latino. (BORIS MINKEVICH/ WINNIPEG FREE PRESS )

English isn't the first language here, but it won't matter because the couple who run this place are so warm and welcoming. He's from Guatemala and waits on the tables, she's from El Salvador and does the cooking, and the coffee's from Colombia, and it's excellent.

They are the new owners of Mercadito Latino, and at first glance little seems changed. Entry is still through the grocery store where the shelves are stacked with Latin American products, and the cafe in the rear is as tiny as ever. The ambiance, though, seems brighter than it was, with a few more artifacts on the wall, and colourful place mats on the solid tables. But the most noticeable change is on the wall board menu, where the selection is significantly smaller than it had been under the previous owners. The good news, though, is that anything you choose will be delicious.

Here too most items come individually or as part of a combo. Best of the lot are the delectable pupasas -- addictive soft corn flour pillows filled with cheese and served with little containers of slightly pickled cabbage, a rather bland red sauce and sour cream. Velvety chicken tamales steamed in some kind of leaf were a close second, but everything -- empanadas, quesadillas, burritos, tacos -- all tasted fresh and flavourful. This is mainly Salvadoran, not Tex-Mex food, and nothing I had was spicy enough to raise a bead of sweat, but for those who need more heat there are five different sauce bottles on each table.

No desserts, and you can't have a Corona (no licence), but there is that excellent Colombian coffee. A knowledge of Spanish helps, but she speaks more English than he does, and if you're stuck you might venture to the kitchen to ask for help. In any case they are both so nice and accommodating, you won't mind the occasional snag in the service. Open Tuesday to Saturday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

marion.warhaft@freepress.mb.ca

To see the location of these restaurants as well as others reviewed in the Winnipeg Free Press, please see the map below.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 25, 2011 D3