A world of good

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/02/2016 (3839 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Travel to Latin America or southeast Asia, and you can’t help but fall in love with the street food. Mexico’s cinder-block taco stands and Vietnam’s plastic-table sidewalk pop-ups serve some of the planet’s most delectable grub, bursting with flavours that seem brighter, deeper and more complex than anything you can find in restaurants.

This street food forms much of the inspiration for the Merchant Kitchen, an ambitious downtown venture for restaurateur Bobby Mottola, best known for Pizzeria Gusto on Academy Road. Securing space on the main floor of the stylish Alt Hotel, Mottola set about to create an attractive, 180-seat space near the hotel lobby and opened it late last spring.

Visually, it’s a stunner, unlike anything else in Winnipeg. The design is both an esthetic and functional marvel. Tables made out of distressed wood are backed by upholstery in warm tones of red, beige and brown. An exposed brick wall is adorned with a ceiling-high mural of a rooster.

A central, rectangular bar is enshrouded by a hood-like structure with wide-screen TVs strategically placed on the interior. This allows patrons on bar stools to watch hockey while most of the clientele seated at tables are not tempted by the distraction. There are also tables placed in front of floor-to-ceiling windows on Donald Street, a move that in itself amounts to a statement on a stretch of downtown Winnipeg where few businesses orient themselves toward the pedestrian streetscape.

The Merchant Kitchen was originally run by chef Eric Lee, who departed the operation in December. It’s now the domain of Sam Broesky, who worked at Gusto before she moved downtown to help open Merchant as a sous chef.

The menu is bursting with dishes inspired by everyday food in Mexico, Vietnam, Thailand and China, along with a healthy dollop of the sort of modern Korean influences popularized by New York City’s Momofuku restaurant empire.

This isn’t so much Latin-Asian fusion as it is an attempt to recreate a shareable greatest hits collection, which is a heck of a fun idea.

The execution, unfortunately, is decidedly mixed.

The winners here include a tangy, well-balanced tortilla soup that’s more flavourful than the timid sopa de lima that gets doled out to spice-averse gringo tourists in the Yucatan. Nagoya wings are a sweet and crunchy guilty pleasure, showing off the kitchen’s ability to ace fried chicken. An improbable-sounding chile-chocolate cake with a soy dressing turns out to be a salty-umami work of genius.

And Thai fried rice, which sounds dull on paper, turns out to be a smoky, crunchy and irresistible plate of comfort food, flecked with Thai basil leaves and studded with Gulf of Mexico white shrimp, which are sweeter and less environmentally problematic than their appalling farmed Asian counterparts.

Those shrimp are also deep-fried and presented, less successfully, on a platter with cold kimchi, a dollop of slaw and an afterthought sprinkle of fried vermicelli as part of a roll-your-own dish of lettuce wraps, which would have been more fun to assemble amid a group of slightly intoxicated people.

This is no slight. The idea behind this place is both drink and eat, particularly in evenings, when the room can remain open until 1 a.m.

There’s a short list of well-constructed cocktails (try the Capel pisco, mellowed slightly by sauvignon blanc), a decent offering of tequila and a selection of wines that includes affordable, quirky offerings such as a vinho verde and a zestos malvar, which work well with strong flavours, at least to my food-attuned palate.

There are other acceptable bar snacks at Merchant.

Tasty if unremarkable grilled tuna tacos and roasted pork tacos disappear in a couple of quick bites, a standard Cuban sandwich (yes, with the mustard and the pickles) would pair well with an after-work beer and a big bowl of king crab legs, culled from a frozen crustacean because the far-tastier flesh from a freshly killed one would set you back $30 per leg, make for a calculated indulgence at $45. They do not, however, need to be smothered in their salty, bisque-like sauce.

On the downside, there are too many subpar dishes. A nondescript Vietnamese salad does not deserve the moniker. A more flavourful papaya salad curiously uses the ripe fruit, defeating the point of a dish that demands the crunch of green papaya. Seared green beans are incompletely coated in spices and salt and taste more of gas range. Slices of pound cake “churros” fall apart and make you wish the kitchen, clearly adept at deep-frying, would just produce real doughnuts.

Even worse, the “roasted pork belly” in a $15 banh mi appears to be stuffed with overcooked, chewy pork loin. When the real Vietnamese-sandwich deal is $3 on Sargent Avenue, this is not cool. And on a slow night, duck rolls arrived chewy and ice cold, apparently chilled too long in the fridge.

The Merchant Kitchen appears to be at its best when it’s busy — and it’s packed on nights when the Winnipeg Jets play at the nearby MTS Centre.

Bottom line: This is an easy place to have fun, even if the food is inconsistent… and it may soon improve. Broesky is planning to overhaul the menu, and it should be ready in April. In the meantime, enjoy the beautiful room.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca