Clay Oven Restaurant
240-1600, Kenaston Common
204-888-2529
http://www.clayovenrestaurant.ca/default1.asp
clayovenkenaston@mts.net
July, 2009
As Winnipeg’s tastes continue to diversify, ethnic restaurants prolifically sprawl in all areas of the city. Almost every block now has a sushi restaurant and it’s about time that Southern Asian cuisine joins the scene. The Clay Oven brings Indian food to the Kenaston interchange. Already bursting with ubiquitous chains, this area desperately needs some good un-commercialised offerings—Indian hits the spot nicely.
Indian food, above all else, provides some of the best aromas on the face of this earth. One of the toughest challenges facing humanity involves sitting in an Indian restaurant and waiting hopelessly for your meal to arrive. While watching and smelling the dishes go by, we pass time by digging into Oven’s wine offerings, which complement the food perfectly. A nice selection of Rieslings and sauvignon blancs augments the appetite (like we need it). These wines also cut through the heat and richness of the food, when it eventually arrives! Naan can sometimes help the time pass but our naan doesn’t come until the mains arrive.
The garlic nanna comes thick and hearty, but you have a hard time finding garlic flavour. Great garlic naan explodes in your mouth as the barely-cooked chunks of garlic ensure that you have questionable breath for the next two days! This naan has a nice, toasty taste but beyond that, it’s got little more than regular bread.
The Oven’s main dishes range from delicious to disappointing. The butter chicken tastes rich and deep, through its wealth of spices in its opulent sauce. The dish was a little heavy on tomato, which slightly dominated the flavours, but otherwise, this well-made butter chicken brings a smile to your face.
Both of our prawn selections—the prawn curry and the prawn Malabar—swim in grease. While no one would go to an Indian restaurant in search of lite foods, too much fat ruins the dish. With a ½ inch layer of fat sitting on top of both prawn selections, every mouthful leaves you sluggishly bogged down. Largely, most of Oven’s offers holds too much grease but the prawn items are almost inedible. The coconut flavour in the curry dish and the tomato flavour in the Malabar drown in the oiliness of the fat.
I normally do not order goat in either East or West Indian restaurants; the goat dishes always come teeming with bones and lacking on meat; this holds true with the Oven’s Karahi goat. The Masala sauce provides a nice blend to the basmati rice I can barely suck out a morsel of meat from the bony goat.
For vegetable lovers, we tried the palak paneer, channa masala and the vegetable Manchurian. The palak paneer (creamed spinach with fried cheese) normally has a rich, green taste from the pungent spinach plant. However, the Oven’s runny palak paneer easily doubles as a soup. The cream gives the dish a richness but sadly, the spinach flavour is nowhere to be found. By contrast, the channa masala (chick peas in garlic sauce) has a great zest oomph in its spiciness—don’t skip this dish. Finally, the vegetarian Manchurian is an attempt at fusion, combining Chinese flavoured dough (think sweet and sour chicken balls) with an Indian sauce. Great fusion brings out the best of mixed flavours but unfortunately, this schizophrenic dish tries to unite incompatible flavours. This dish just doesn’t work.
If you’re a chilli-head like me, you enjoy an occasional dish that kicks your butt silly, as a stream of smoke wafts from your ears. We ordered our chicken vindaloo medium-hot but we asked for our lamb vindaloo cooked “hotter that you’ve ever made it before—and when you think that it’s so ridiculously hot that no one could possibly eat this, make it even hotter!” When servers hear this kind of request, I expect them to understand without doubt how we want our food. Sadly, both dishes come tasting the same: mild. We also asked our server if the kitchen could add chicken to the vegetarian korma. Without hesitation, the answer was “no.” I find it odd that an Indian restaurant cannot make simple alterations to their selections by changing the spiciness level or adding meat. These revelations evoke a disturbing inference: none of the dishes are prepared on demand. The food comes pre-made, warmed on order, and the “chefs” are not permitted to make any changes to the original recipes. If I want pre-made, frozen vats food waiting for reheating, I will go to a chain—when I eat at a local restaurant, I expect dinners prepared and cooked on premises.
I object to restaurants that don’t offer unlimited refills on soft drinks, especially without warning. Many people complain about wine mark-up, which comes in around 100%. Soft drinks cost pennies a glass; charging $2 per refill, the mark-up can go as high as 10 000%. Is it really necessary to charge for each top up? Bad move.
While the Clay Oven has some good offerings, the bad ones stand apparent. There are simply too many good Indian restaurants to settle for mass, reheated food.
** /5
This is a free product that I'm happy to bring to you. If you enjoyed reading this, please consider clicking on the accompanying ads. This is the only payment I receive for offering this public service. Thank you as always for reading.
240-1600, Kenaston Common
204-888-2529
http://www.clayovenrestaurant.ca/default1.asp
clayovenkenaston@mts.net
July, 2009
As Winnipeg’s tastes continue to diversify, ethnic restaurants prolifically sprawl in all areas of the city. Almost every block now has a sushi restaurant and it’s about time that Southern Asian cuisine joins the scene. The Clay Oven brings Indian food to the Kenaston interchange. Already bursting with ubiquitous chains, this area desperately needs some good un-commercialised offerings—Indian hits the spot nicely.
Indian food, above all else, provides some of the best aromas on the face of this earth. One of the toughest challenges facing humanity involves sitting in an Indian restaurant and waiting hopelessly for your meal to arrive. While watching and smelling the dishes go by, we pass time by digging into Oven’s wine offerings, which complement the food perfectly. A nice selection of Rieslings and sauvignon blancs augments the appetite (like we need it). These wines also cut through the heat and richness of the food, when it eventually arrives! Naan can sometimes help the time pass but our naan doesn’t come until the mains arrive.
The garlic nanna comes thick and hearty, but you have a hard time finding garlic flavour. Great garlic naan explodes in your mouth as the barely-cooked chunks of garlic ensure that you have questionable breath for the next two days! This naan has a nice, toasty taste but beyond that, it’s got little more than regular bread.
The Oven’s main dishes range from delicious to disappointing. The butter chicken tastes rich and deep, through its wealth of spices in its opulent sauce. The dish was a little heavy on tomato, which slightly dominated the flavours, but otherwise, this well-made butter chicken brings a smile to your face.
Both of our prawn selections—the prawn curry and the prawn Malabar—swim in grease. While no one would go to an Indian restaurant in search of lite foods, too much fat ruins the dish. With a ½ inch layer of fat sitting on top of both prawn selections, every mouthful leaves you sluggishly bogged down. Largely, most of Oven’s offers holds too much grease but the prawn items are almost inedible. The coconut flavour in the curry dish and the tomato flavour in the Malabar drown in the oiliness of the fat.
I normally do not order goat in either East or West Indian restaurants; the goat dishes always come teeming with bones and lacking on meat; this holds true with the Oven’s Karahi goat. The Masala sauce provides a nice blend to the basmati rice I can barely suck out a morsel of meat from the bony goat.
For vegetable lovers, we tried the palak paneer, channa masala and the vegetable Manchurian. The palak paneer (creamed spinach with fried cheese) normally has a rich, green taste from the pungent spinach plant. However, the Oven’s runny palak paneer easily doubles as a soup. The cream gives the dish a richness but sadly, the spinach flavour is nowhere to be found. By contrast, the channa masala (chick peas in garlic sauce) has a great zest oomph in its spiciness—don’t skip this dish. Finally, the vegetarian Manchurian is an attempt at fusion, combining Chinese flavoured dough (think sweet and sour chicken balls) with an Indian sauce. Great fusion brings out the best of mixed flavours but unfortunately, this schizophrenic dish tries to unite incompatible flavours. This dish just doesn’t work.
If you’re a chilli-head like me, you enjoy an occasional dish that kicks your butt silly, as a stream of smoke wafts from your ears. We ordered our chicken vindaloo medium-hot but we asked for our lamb vindaloo cooked “hotter that you’ve ever made it before—and when you think that it’s so ridiculously hot that no one could possibly eat this, make it even hotter!” When servers hear this kind of request, I expect them to understand without doubt how we want our food. Sadly, both dishes come tasting the same: mild. We also asked our server if the kitchen could add chicken to the vegetarian korma. Without hesitation, the answer was “no.” I find it odd that an Indian restaurant cannot make simple alterations to their selections by changing the spiciness level or adding meat. These revelations evoke a disturbing inference: none of the dishes are prepared on demand. The food comes pre-made, warmed on order, and the “chefs” are not permitted to make any changes to the original recipes. If I want pre-made, frozen vats food waiting for reheating, I will go to a chain—when I eat at a local restaurant, I expect dinners prepared and cooked on premises.
I object to restaurants that don’t offer unlimited refills on soft drinks, especially without warning. Many people complain about wine mark-up, which comes in around 100%. Soft drinks cost pennies a glass; charging $2 per refill, the mark-up can go as high as 10 000%. Is it really necessary to charge for each top up? Bad move.
While the Clay Oven has some good offerings, the bad ones stand apparent. There are simply too many good Indian restaurants to settle for mass, reheated food.
** /5
This is a free product that I'm happy to bring to you. If you enjoyed reading this, please consider clicking on the accompanying ads. This is the only payment I receive for offering this public service. Thank you as always for reading.
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