It’s not a waffle, but it is tasty

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This article was published 01/10/2018 (2764 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A West End ice cream and sandwich shop with an unusual name is giving some Winnipeggers a taste of home.

Not A Waffle opened at 353 Langside St. in July and specializes in “traditional street food” staples like Chinese bubble tea, Vietnamese banh mi sandwiches and Japanese taiyaki ice cream — the latter being an ice cream swirl served in a fish-shaped cone.

“It’s a combination of east Asian cultures,” said Boyuan Ma, who runs the small restaurant with his girlfriend, Echo Shen. “The ice cream, the idea came up a few years ago and it’s very popular in (Japan) right now — so we just borrowed this idea.”

Ma and Shen found their way to Winnipeg and into the local restaurant scene largely by chance. The couple came to Canada from China via Toronto, where they attended university, before moving west to apply for citizenship. 

While Ma’s degrees in business, marketing and accounting help with the back end of the business, he learned to make the snack foods on the menu at a sushi restaurant he worked in. The couple originally wanted to open a sushi restaurant at the Langside location, but the cozy space had limitations. 

“We were trying to make sushi here, but it’s too small,” Ma said.

The street food venture seems to have paid off, however, because the photo-worthy taiyaki cones have been a draw for customers from all over the city. 

Alyanna Ponce and two of her friends travelled from the North End to try the ice cream after noticing the shop online. 

“I found it on Instagram, like most things,” said Ponce, who is from the Philippines. “It’s awesome, I never saw these kinds of things when I first got here and it reminds me more of home.”

Ponce ordered the sakura taiyaki, which is cherry blossom and vanilla soft serve. Ma and Shen make both their sakura and matcha ice cream flavours from scratch using dried flowers and tea. 

Now that the season is changing, the owners plan to stop serving ice cream and focus on hot items like the banh mi and a Japanese hot pot called oden.

“It’s also a traditional street food, especially in winter time,” said Ma. 

As for the restaurant’s name, Not A Waffle, it turns out, is just a statement of fact about the food they sell. 

“My girlfriend she named the restaurant,” Ma said. “Because on Wikipedia, when you search taiyaki it says Japanese fish-shaped waffle, but actually it’s not a waffle… it’s a fish-shaped cone.”