What’s Up: Snow restaurant, comedy, Heated Rivalry watch party, CKUW Fundrive, Love is Blank/Yours Truly

The Den

• 1351 MB-200, St. Adolphe
• Friday to March 7
• Reservations $272 per person available online

Fine dining fans will find cold comfort at The Den, a seasonal restaurant carved from 500,000-pounds of snow.

Clint Masse — owner of A Maze in Corn and creator of world’s largest snow maze — has been building the massive snow restaurant each winter since 2023 in collaboration with chef Luc Jean of Wow! Catering.

Tickets include a four-course meal, signature cocktail and gratuity, as well as admission to the nearby snow maze and tubing slide.

There’s seating for 80 people in the Den’s cave-like dining rooms, which feature snowy artwork, sculptures and carved ice furniture. The space is unheated and the ambient temperature sits around -5 C. Diners are advised to layer up and dress for the outdoors.

Reservations are available at 7 p.m. nightly Thursdays through Saturdays.

— Eva Wasney

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Snowed In Comedy Tour

• Gas Station Arts Centre, 445 River Ave.
• Friday, 7 p.m.
• Tickets $56 available online

Back for its 17th year, the Snowed In Comedy Tour will bring veteran Canadian comics Dan Quinn, Paul Myrehaug, Pete Zedlacher and Erica Sigurdson to the Gas Station Arts Centre on Friday as part of a staggering 70-city cross-country jaunt.

Tour founder Quinn has opened for Rob Schneider and Russell Peters, headlined Best of Fest at the Moncton Comedy Festival, and starred in comedy specials on Chek TV and the Comedy Network. In 1999, he was crowned the winner of the Canadian Competition at Just for Laughs.

Myrehaug has appeared on CBC’s The Debaters, Just for Laughs and Comedy Now on CTV and, in 2007, was the winner of the Comedy Network’s $25,000 Great Canadian Laugh Off.

Zedlacher is a six-time nominee for the Canadian Comedy Award for Best Male Stand-up and winner of SiriusXM’s Top Comic, and is an eight-time performer at Just For Laughs.

Sigurdson has logged more than 70 appearances on The Debaters and is a Winnipeg Comedy Festival favourite.

Can’t make it to a live show? No problem. Snowed In Comedy Tour is now a TV series on Chek TV. Part comedy special, part travelogue, all nine episodes are also available to stream on YouTube.

Limited tickets to the Winnipeg show remain.

— Jen Zoratti

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Heated Rivalry watch party and bingo

• Little Brown Jug, 336 William Ave.
• Saturday, 5 p.m.
• Free

Hockey and beer — it’s a classic combo here in the Great White North.

And while the Winter Olympics means there’s no Hockey Night in Canada to be watched on Saturday, Little Brown Jug has your steamy Valentine’s Day hockey fix covered in the form of the red-hot Crave series Heated Rivalry.

Starting at 5 p.m., the Exchange District brewery will be screening all six episodes of the breakout gay hockey romance series, based on two of the novels in the Game Changer series of books by Halifax-born Rachel Reid.

And get your starting lineup (and your dabber) ready for a different kind of rivalry, but one that’s equally heated — bingo.

While Ilya Rozanov and Shane Hollander battle it out in the rink (and pursue, ahem, other activities off the ice), guests can sip on Little Brown Jug’s selection of craft beer (or opt for a cocktail or non-alcoholic beverage) while enjoying some snacks. In addition to the brewery’s core pours, LBJ has some seasonal and small-batch brews on tap, including a vanilla nut brown ale, a cold brew coffee stout and a Belgian IPA.

Admission to binge Heated Rivalry at Little Brown Jug is free — given the popularity of the show, you’d best get there early.

— Ben Sigurdson

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CKUW Fundrive

• Until Feb. 20

It’s been a tricky year for CKUW 95.9 FM, which faces budgetary challenges that have compelled it to cut funding to Stylus, Winnipeg’s flagship indie music publication. The magazine is still in limbo.

But once a year, the campus radio station, based out of the University of Winnipeg, passes the hat. On a regular year, they raise about 20 per cent of their budget through Fundrive.

Historically, that’s supported not just Stylus but some of Winnipeg’s most eclectic radio programming: Meta World Stoopaloop Show (Wednesdays, 2-4 p.m.), which collages different media into a two-hour weekly soundscape; Rez Vibe Connections (Fridays, 5-7 p.m.), which takes song requests from inmates; and more traditional news and political content, including Democracy Now! (Monday-Friday, 9-10 a.m.).

Hosts encourage listeners to call in to 204-774-6877 or go online at fundrive.ckuw.ca to donate — and donors can take home incentives, depending on the level of their pledge.

— Conrad Sweatman

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Winnipeg Improv Fest presents Love is Blank/Yours Truly

• Gas Station Arts Centre, 445 River Ave.
• Saturday, 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.
• Tickets $22 (early show) and $13.55 (late) available online

Live, love and hopefully laugh, all for under $40 at this bargain Valentine’s Day night out.

Current events may make you feel as if the world is burning — and perhaps it is — but for a few hours this weekend you can sit in the dark, hold hands if you wish and laugh at people whose romantic decisions are worse than yours.

Surely nothing says bonding like a little shared schadenfreude — or maybe that’s just us?

Love, and a sense of irony, is in the air at this double-header featuring Love Is Blank, an improvised spin on Netflix’s Love Is Blind, followed by Yours Truly, inspired by the sweet optimism of love letters.

Take a break from perpetual doomscrolling, leave the warm embrace of your sofa and find out if laughter really is the best medicine.

— AV Kitching