Cafe Savour

Café Savour
956 St. Mary’s Rd
Tel: (204) 254-4681
Email: cafesavour@shaw.ca
http://www.cafesavour.com/


April, 2011

Dinner served Thursday – Saturday from 5:30 pm, last seating at 8:00 pm

RESERVATIONS REQUIRED

With the most limited menu in Winnipeg, Lulu’s only offered four mains and daily special. If you want your menu to be a tome, and you want to take your time scouring through a hundred selections, Lulu’s definitely wasn’t for you—but if you want down to earth good food, Lulu’s was the place. They didn’t offer much but what they offered was out of this world. It’s not a bad credo to only serve a small selection, but make what you serve the best. Then Lulu’s closed her doors and I was afraid that owners Louise Briskie de Beer and Faiz de Beer finally called it a career and retired.

I later found out the Louise (Lulu) and Faiz took a sabbatical to travel and bring new ideas back to the menu. Their travels brought influences from across the world, including New Orleans, where I found some of the greatest foods on the face of this earth. Returning to Winnipeg, they revamped the menu and changed the name of the restaurant. Welcome to Café Savour.

The décor changed little; the walls still glow lime green and the occasional mounted photograph adorns the sparse setting. A small refrigerated case shows off the desserts and beverage selections. Savour offers an adequate selection of wines and a fair assortment of local microbrewed beers, including the Half Pints and the Fort Garry lines. No one would call the ambiance elegant, and some may even call it obnoxious—but we’re not here for the view, we’re here for the food.

The new menu offers a $35 prix-fix selection of soup or salad, an appetiser, a main and a dessert to finish. Salad choices include garden, Greek or Caesar and you have no choice on the soup—the daily special is what you get. Chef Lulu offers five appetisers and four mains, plus a special from which to choose. Dessert also comes from a selection of four options.

All meals start with the Amuse Bouche, literally translated to mean “amusing the mouth,” although the understood usage is pre-appetiser. In actuality, the amuse bouche is the bread starter, which comes with thin slices of pumpkin oatmeal and whole wheat bread, soft, fresh and delicious. The dip is a simple olive oil and balsamic combination with bits of red onion—simple but delicious.

The simple garden salad comes with lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes, with a tangy, creamy dressing on the side. The greens taste fresh from the garden, which isn’t surprising, but the tomato chunks also taste like they came from your garden, which is surprising since it’s Winnipeg in spring.

Today’s soup special is pea soup with ham. Pea makes the primary taste in most pea soups but here, the pea acts like a canvass to hold the smattering of other ingredients. I can’t begin to make out all the ingredients in this complex soup but I definitely discern the sweetness of pumpkin. The smokiness of the ham shreds round out this soup to be the greatest pea soup I ever tasted.

The quiche appetiser comes with two mini quiches; today’s specials include a spinach with cheddar quiche, and an asparagus quiche. Both come wrapped in a crispy phyllo, baked to perfection. My only complaint here is that the quiches are a little too small and I can’t get enough of the taste in the tiny cups of quiche. The South African combo appetiser offers three tidbits:
• Dhaltjie: a pea flour fritter with Indian spices
• Tuna Frikkadel: fish masala flavoured patty
• Beef Samosa Roll: Cape Malay flavour with green peas
The Dhaltjie is a delicately fried fritter that has some lovely flavours through the spices. The frikkadel looks like a little scallop that houses a pleasant punch of tuna. The light breading adds a subtle crispness to this wonderful morsel. The tiny samosa roll looks like a miniature Chinese spring roll and has a wonderfully earthy flavour, wrapped in crunchy, fried pastry. Both the quiche and the South African selections come dressed with a deliciously sweet tamarind sauce. The sauce is quite powerful so a small dip will do—a big dollop would drown out the delicate tastes of the appetisers.

For mains, the denningvleis is a slow roasted lamb shank flavoured with tamarind and cranberries. The wonderfully moist lamb falls off the bone with the slightest poke of the fork, and melts into the perfect blending of sweet and earthy spices. The perfectly cooked basmati rice adds an al dente texture that brings this dish to atmospheric heights. The vegetable side includes simply steamed zucchini slices and cauliflower florets. Although I rarely rave about simple sides, there’s something to these vegetables that set them apart from the usual.

One of my all time favourite foods is genuine, New Orleans jambalaya. You rarely find authentic (or good) Cajun/Creole north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Whenever a Northerner claims to serve a Creole dish, it often means simply adding a pre-mixed Louisiana spice or dashes of Tabasco sauce. If it’s spicy, it’s Creole. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Chef Lulu doesn’t purport to reproduce Louisiana jambalaya; she’s puts a local twist to it. Her Jambalaya Manitoba Style features double-smoked kielbasa, rather than andouille sausage, and pickerel cheeks instead of crawfish. Andouille sausage is absolutely one of my favourite sausages, the kielbasa acts as a nice substitute. As well, one of my favourite overall foods is crawfish; pickerel cheeks is a nice stand-in, but it can never replace the pungently pleasant crawfish tails. However, the task here is not to compare Lulu’s jambalaya with Crescent City jambalaya, and as its own entity, this jambalaya is a wonderful, Northern rendition of the Southern staple. The pickerel cheeks sit atop the rice dish, separating itself from the powerful rice, where their delicate tastes could be overwhelmed. The kielbasa is buried deep in the rice, diffusing its smokiness to the rest of the ingredients. The rice itself has an unmistaken Louisiana taste, exemplifying Chef Lulu’s ability to reproduce authentic Creole rice. Magnificent.

Finally, I was not born with a sweet tongue and consequently, I rarely indulge in dessert. My motto is, “if I have room for dessert, I’d rather have another appetiser.” When the cheesecake dessert comes, I can hardly resist this moist and rich finisher.

None of the courses come with an absurd amount of food, which is what you often see in pre-fab, North American restaurants. Even though each course comes with what appears to be a diminutive serving size, by the time I traverse all the courses, I sit satiated. The small serving sizes deceptively turn into a considerable amount of food. The efficient and professional service ensures that you have just enough time between courses when the next serving arrives. Owner Faiz will remember you forever after your visit, so expect to be greeted personally when you return. And return you will, as Café Savour quite simply serves some of the best food in Winnipeg.

***** /5

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