Kitchen with a social conscience

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This article was published 17/08/2015 (3732 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Another new restaurant/lounge has opened in downtown Winnipeg, this time on Portage Avenue.

The 100-seat The Planit Restaurant and Lounge opened on the weekend at 285 Portage Ave. (on the north side of the street a few doors west of Smith Street).

 

The Planit arrives just a few months after The Merchant Kitchen, which features Latin and Asian street food, opened on the main floor of the nearby new Alt Hotel on Donald Street.

The Merchant Kitchen is the first of two restaurants planned for the new 311 Portage Ave./Centrepoint development. A 7,000-square-foot Browns Socialhouse restaurant and bar is also expected to open this fall on the ground floor of the development’s new office tower, which faces Portage Avenue.

The Planit’s thirty-something owners — Ashley Meilleur and Sandra Soares — describe their new venture as the city’s first “openly gay” restaurant and lounge.

“We’re very much involved in the gay community, so we have gender-neutral bathrooms and those types of things,” Meilleur explained in a recent interview

Their venue will also be open until 4 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and will feature local entertainment, including musicians, DJs and poets in the lounge on evenings and weekends.

Because they’re big believers in sustainability, the menu will feature as many locally-produced products and ingredients as possible — things such as beef, elk, pickerel, cheeses and beers.

They also plan to make their own breads and spreads, to feature three chef’s-choice items each day, and to change the menu every three months to keep things fresh.

Meilleur said the atmosphere in the restaurant and lounge will be casual-contemporary.

“You can come in in jeans and a T-shirt. But the level of the food is equivalent to a fine-dining experience,” she said. “Your plate is going to be beautiful to look at… and we’ll use the highest-quality ingredients we can find in Manitoba.”

They also plan to display the work of about a dozen local artists — rent- and commission-free — on the walls to show support for the local arts community and to create some cross-marketing.

“Those 12 or 13 artists have already talked about us so much that people who never would have heard about us now have,” Meilleur said.

Although the restaurant/lounge will be closed Sundays because they plan to rent it out for private parties and events that can be catered by the restaurant or by a separate catering business Meilleur owns, called Deliciously Done — a Catering Company.

On Sundays, beginning this winter, they also plan to operate a three-month culinary training program for homeless people trying to transition from the streets back into the workforce.

Meilleur is the founder of the Lending Hand, a local organization dedicated to helping the city’s homeless people. She said the Lending Hand will arrange for free clothing, haircuts and shaves for the trainees, as well as help them prepare a resumé once they’ve completed their training.

“One of the biggest problems I find in working with these individuals is that… even if they want to get off the streets, they have no experience to get a job,” she said. “That’s where we’ll come in. We’ll give them training and on-the-job experience so they can put that on their resumé.”

In some cases, they may also be hired by The Planit, she added.

Meilleur said she’s aware a number of other restaurants have come and gone from the location, including the original Mirlycourtois, Lindy’s on Portage, Manhatten Bistro, and most recently, La Bamba Café & Lounge.

She and Soares believe their new venture is unique enough and diversified enough to survive for the long term.

She noted with the catering business, the Sunday events, and the training program — which they hope to obtain funding for — they won’t be relying solely on the revenue from the restaurant and lounge.

“I also think that where the others might have lacked is in the evenings, because it’s hard to get people to come downtown,” she said. “So bringing entertainment in… is going to give us that opportunity to get people in the door. I think having an air-tight marketing strategy and being very community-focused, like we are, will also help a lot.”

Soares and Meilleur chose the location because they both love the downtown.

“I love the people — they come in all different shapes and sizes and forms and I love talking to them an hearing their stories,” Meilleur said. “I’ve always been about that so I knew this would be the perfect location for The Planit.”

Stefano Grande, executive director of the Downtown Winnipeg Business Improvement Zone, said if a downtown restaurant has the right concept, the right menu, and understands its market, it should do well.

“And I like the fact they’ve identified clearly who their market is,” he added.

Grande said he’s also likes the fact Meilleur and Soares have a social conscience, and their new venture reflects that.

“These different business models that kind of have this social cause to them — we’re seeing more and more of that. I think that’s a good sign, a very positive sign.”

He noted the goal is to try to get more people to come downtown and stay late, “and great restaurants will do that.”

 

Know of any newsworthy or interesting trends or developments in the local office, retail, or industrial real estate sectors? Let real estate reporter Murray McNeill know at the e-mail address below, or at 697-7254.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca