NO LONGER IN BUSINESS - Dandelion Eatery

NO LONGER IN BUSINESS

Dandelion Eatery
230 Osborne Street (at Confusion Corner)
Tel: (204) 453-6266
Email: customerservice@organzamarket.com
http://www.organzamarket.com/deli/

March, 2010

Organza is Manitoba’s first grocery store dedicated entirely to natural and organic foods. The Dandelion Eatery sits at the entryway to Organza and purports to hold the same naturalistic values as the supermarket. The menu offers a number of salads and a couple of sandwiches. For mains, Dandelion serves a selection of pastas. There isn’t a lot of selection but what’s available looks enticing.

The huge “Pastabake” comes with tri-coloured noodles in a two-cheese tomato sauce; we added the optional meat ragu. The perfectly-cooked, al dente fusilli noodles embrace the flavourful sauce and the delicious cheese drapes over the entire mound. Although zesty, tasty and tangy, I find the entire dish a little hollow and short on depth. What makes a pasta dish rich and robust is, quite frankly, fat. Whether the fat comes from cream, meat or fish, it gives substance and fullness to the sauce. Dandelion propounds the virtues of healthy eating; consequently, it reins the amount of fat in its dishes. Although the food may be healthier for me, when I dine out, I often want un-reined taste. While the cheese adds a layer of grease to the top of the pasta, a little more fat to the constitution of the sauce would boost the flavours considerably. I hoped the meat ragu would add this dimension, but alas, I barely notice the presence of the meat.

By contrast, the stroganoff-style organic beef boasts a mushroom, cream sauce as a base, thus endowing this selection with much deeper flavours and heart. The beef tastes tender and blends beautifully into the sauce. A hint of dill adds the perfect highlight to this delicious melange. Dandelion’s beef stroganoff comes in naked oats “risotto.” Traditional Italian risotto gathers its flavour from deep absorption of various liquids into the basmati rice. Not (too) unlike the authentic risotto, the oats in this creation carry the complex flavours of the sauce and the course texture of the oats adds an extra facet to the risotto—yielding an wonderfully different experience. This is a well thought out and successful dish.

To go with your meal, Dandelion offers a variety of wines and beers; all of the beverages are carefully selected to provide an array of contrasts or complements to your dining experience. You won’t find any Labatt Lite or Mission Hill here. What you do find is an ample selection of interesting wines and handcrafted microbrews. Congratulations to Dandelion for not selling out to Corporate Canada.

The only complaint I have against Dandelion is the physical location of the eatery. The quality of the food tells me that the restaurant is much more than a mere side-business to the grocery store, but the location of the eatery makes you feel like an aside. A friendly server brings your counter-ordered meals to you but full service and a partition from the store would give more of a restaurant feeling and less of a deli feeling.


***½ /5


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