Home cookin’

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 26/07/2020 (2076 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In a normal year, thousands of Manitobans make quick jaunts down to North Dakota for day trips and weekend excursions. Undoubtedly, many look forward to eating at places that only exist in the U.S. or simply don’t have a presence in Winnipeg.

Unfortunately, if you’re craving a certain American chain, you’re in tough during “These Times.” With COVID-19 spiralling out of control in the U.S. and the border closed to non-essential travel until at least late August — and likely longer — you can’t just clip down I-29 to Grand Forks or Fargo for your fix.

Have hope, however. While you might not be able to visit your favourite Yankee food franchises, Winnipeg has a bevy of local joints — open for business again and needing your support after being forced to shutter earlier this year — that can sate your desires to dine at restaurants currently unreachable.

Craving Buffalo Wild Wings? Try Little Bones.

A popular U.S. spot for wing eating, beer drinking and sports watching is Buffalo Wild Wings. The chain of 1,200 sports bars serves up plump bone-in and boneless chicken with a few dozen sauces — including their famous Asian Zing and Parmesan garlic — and dry rubs.

While Transcona’s Little Bones Wings doesn’t boast as many locations — just one, on Regent Avenue West, in addition to a food truck — the number of flavours they have puts “B-Dubs” to shame. Little Bones has 75 rubs and sauces available, served up on traditional or boneless wings, and chicken tenders, too.

While Little Bones COO Dave MacKay gives Buffalo Wild Wings its due, calling it “the granddaddy of all wingeries” — and the location in Grand Forks is a must-stop of his when he’s Stateside — he also made a bold claim.

“The original isn’t always the best,” he said. “We think that we’ve actually perfected the wing experience even beyond Buffalo Wild Wings. They were the first, but not necessarily the best.”

His rationalization for such a statement is threefold. One: Little Bones’ chicken is simply tastier and their flavours are more creative.

Two: Little Bones uses Manitoban chicken from Granny’s and other local ingredients.

Three: Little Bones’ “smaller, cosier dive vibe” makes the wings taste better.

“Buffalo Wild Wings is more about their 4,000 TVs and the din of the crowd,” MacKay said. “Wings sort of take a back seat to the game and that’s not what you want, obviously.”

When it comes to beer, Little Bones has struck a partnership with Torque Brewing. Their food truck serves from Torque’s parking lot, and customers can eat their wings in the taproom. They also pour Trans Canada Brewing’s beer at the restaurant. Teaming up with other ’Peg brands takes the “support local” concept to a new level, MacKay said.

Little Bones’ main floor is still dedicated to takeout. However, customers can take their food upstairs to the Royal George Hotel bar and eat there, or on the patio.

For those wanting something similar to Asian Zing, MacKay points to the popular Sweet Chili Teriyaki.

For a parmesan garlic fix, MacKay recommends the Creamy Garlic — which comes with fresh parm on top — or the Sweet Creamy Garlic, which adds honey garlic into the mix.

For true chili-heads who like BWW’s Blazin’ challenge, Little Bones has a “Death” wing that clocks in at 6 million Scoville units. This reporter wrote about it at length in a feature on the city’s hottest wings last October.

Regardless of their flavour choices or whether they prefer flats or drums (they did a poll and it’s a 50/50 split, by the way), MacKay is grateful for those who took out or ordered in from Little Bones when the dining room was closed.

“Without that kind of support we wouldn’t be speaking at the moment. It has been absolutely incredible and we could not be more appreciative,” he said.

When it comes to sports, MacKay is expecting Little Bones to get pretty busy when the Winnipeg Jets and 23 other NHL teams hit the ice for the summer playoffs beginning in August.

“Folks will have more reason to gather — even at home to watch something they’ve been starved of for months now — and the fact that it’s local sports is even better,” he said. “But we will also see a return to people gathering at the bar upstairs.”

He also expects more DoorDash orders from people who don’t want to risk missing a second of the action.

Craving Texas Roadhouse? Try Big Guy’s Ranch & Saloon.

You don’t have to travel too far down the road to get to a roadhouse.

The nearest Texas Roadhouse — the casual Lone Star State-inspired steakhouse chain known for its huge menu of sumptuous starters, sandwiches, and of course, steaks — is in Grand Forks, about a two-and-a-half hour drive away.

Regardless of where you live in the city, it’s a much shorter drive to Big Guy’s Ranch & Saloon, where you’ll find similar fare (and flair, with licence plates adorning the walls, punchy neon signs throughout, and plenty of saloon-style furniture.)

“We like the roadhouse style, we like the casual dining, we like the fun part of it,” said owner Bruce Gouriluk. “Our slogan is ‘cooking up some fun,’ right?”

The restaurant Gouriluk describes as having a “southern attitude” has been a St. Vital staple since 1993 and the menu has all the roadhouse requirements: zesty appetizers, big and beefy homemade burgers, and certified Angus sirloins, rib-eyes, and back ribs.

As an aside, one thing you won’t find at Big Guy’s is a floor covered in peanut shells. The restaurant used to serve baskets of popcorn, but has stopped since COVID-19 out of sanitary concerns.

You don’t need popcorn, anyway. You won’t leave Big Guy’s hungry given the hearty fare on offer. “It’s not Little Guy’s!” Gouriluk always says.

In addition to the classics, Big Guy’s offers Tex-Mex menu items, from chicken and beef enchiladas smothered with sauce and cheese to fajitas that come to the table sizzling on skillets.

Gouriluk also recommends the house specialty, the hot sauce and blackening spice-marinated Louisiana chicken wings. “They’re a spicy treat,” he said, “different than anywhere else in the city. They’re not your regular buffalo wing kind of thing.”

It’s the personal touch that makes Big Guy’s down-home cooking special, Gouriluk explained.

“There’s some nuances… we’re like way that mama makes it, with a handful of this and a handful of that, not exactly two cups of this and two tablespoons of that, right,” he said.

“I always say there’s love in it,” he continued. “We make it with love. It’s a little different than the manufactured, ‘on-a-conveyor-belt’ style of cooking.”

Craving Cinnabon? Try Tall Grass Prairie.

If you’ve ever been in a big American mall and passed by the food court, you’ve likely been enticed by the aroma of the freshly baked cinnamon rolls Cinnabon has become famous for, and have perhaps diverted to their kiosk for one of the sweet, sticky treats.

Keeping the aroma lingering is an intentional strategy by the bakery chain, by the way. To keep the scent in the air, they bake rolls every half-hour, keep their ovens near the front of the store so the smell escapes when they’re opened, and warm up sheets of cinnamon and brown sugar.

While the closest Cinnabon is in Fargo, you can find world-class rolls much closer, at Westminster Avenue’s Tall Grass Prairie Bread Co.

Actually, Tall Grass Prairie calls them cinnamon buns — not cinnamon rolls — but regardless of what you call them, they’re the Wolseley signature item. Between the Westminster headquarters and their location in The Forks Market, they turn out approximately 750 per day.

Tall Grass Prairie co-founder Lyle Barkman admits he’s never tried Cinnabon, hence didn’t have an opinion on their offerings. He did say, however, a big part of what makes his cinnamon buns special is the flour itself.

Tall Grass Prairie mills their own whole grains and the cinnamon buns are between 40 and 50 per cent whole wheat. Barkman said the taste of whole wheat is what’s missing from the other cinnamon buns he samples when he travels around Canada.

“It’s funny, you wouldn’t think that flour would add a flavour,” he said. “It does… something’s just different about that. With our whole wheat, the whole grain goes in the top of the mill, and whole flour comes out the bottom. We take nothing away.”

Another selling point is that they’re fresh-baked every day, Barkman said.

“When you come in and you can smell them and they’re still warm, that does something also.”

When Tall Grass Prairie opened 30 years ago this September, they didn’t intend on cinnamon buns becoming their flagship item. On opening day, however, they were “absolutely pillaged” out of the cinnamon buns he himself baked. The rest is history.

Even closing their bakery to the public in late March due to COVID-19 and switching to delivery and pick-up only, “the C-buns were still flying out the door in huge volumes” after customers discovered they were on Tall Grass Prairie’s limited phone-in and online menu.

“It was amazing. I think people wanted to have something that they remembered that was sweet and that was fun,” he laughed. (The Wolseley and Forks locations are both open to the public again.)

After being told of Cinnabon’s strategies to entice people with the smell, Barkman chuckled and said Tall Grass Prairie does something similar to get a cinnamon-y smell wafting over Wolseley. A powerful fan, installed a few years ago to cool down the space in the summer, “just pulls the smell of bread and C-buns all out over the neighbourhood,” he explained.

“I don’t know how far you can smell it, but I’ve heard rumours of up to a block,” he said.

One last thing: while Cinnabon’s rolls are slathered with cream cheese icing, Tall Grass Prairie buns go unadorned. Barkman said eschewing icing prevents the buns from being too over-the-top decadent.

“I know (icing) is popular, but I think we probably draw the line at a certain amount of sweetness,” Barkman said. “Our clientele, while they consume a lot of cinnamon buns, they are pretty health conscious… when I take one home and eat it, icing never even crosses my mind. When you get into it, the glaze should do its work.”