Same diner, new village

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/10/2016 (3286 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Last week, the Village Diner opened at its third — and final — location at 510 Sargent Ave.

The eatery leased space at the Osborne Village Inn until November 2015 for three years before temporarily running out of the Nicolett Inn for a year. Chef Leighton Fontaine said that the new location is ideal for a number of reasons.

“I’ve always loved the West End, I like the vibe of the area,” Fontaine said. “I find it represents Winnipeg as a whole quite well. There’s a lot of diversity of community and culture in this area.”

Fontaine said that in moving around the city a few times, he’s seen how something like a business has the power to connect people from different areas. Within the first five days of opening, he’s seen plenty of customers returning from the Osborne location, as well as residents from the area.

“Even more than I thought or hoped,” Fontaine said. “People from the community too, they’ve been very supportive here.”

The menu will offer most of the restaurant’s favourites, such as beet latkes and omelettes, as well as a variety of new items such as homemade cabbage rolls, bison wontons and a vegan breakfast.

“I’m a terrible baker,” Fontaine said when asked about desserts. “They’re very simple diner desserts. We have sweet perogies we deep fry and a bananas foster as well… simple but with really good, quality ingredients.”

As always, the restaurant will continue to serve homemade ketchup and jams as well as tortillas made from scratch. Fontaine said it’s an ambitious menu for the size of kitchen he has, but he has the help of staff who have followed him from the Osborne location.

He said despite the area’s reputation for crime, it’s no more dangerous than other Winnipeg neighbourhoods.

“At nighttime, there are prostitutes, there are all types of people that walk around but I think that everyone deserves the same type of respect, we’re all human beings, right?

“You think of these areas as being a little bit rougher but you’re here during the day and it’s just families, women walking their children to the laundromat… Winnipeg is a blue-collar working-class city, we’ll always be that. And because Winnipeg used to be five or six different cities, it’s a lot easier to have these regional kind of sections, and I think a diner like this can help to bridge those parts of Winnipeg, bridge those communities.”

Osborne, he notes, used to be considered a more dangerous neighbourhood several years ago. Similarly he hopes that the West End will become a safer and more developed area.

“And not just shifting poverty around,” he said, noting the work the Spence Neighbourhood Association does.

“We don’t want to gentrify the neighbourhood… but work towards making the city a little better.”