Marcello’s
204-415-6783
Fax: 204-415-6783
September, 2013
I don’t normally review chain restaurants but I love the
concept behind Marcello’s. Buffet often
acts as a kinder synonymous expression for gluttony. Worse, people pile their plates high because
their eyes are larger than their stomachs.
Then they find they can’t (or don’t want) to eat it all and the wastage
is shameful. As well, given Winnipeg ’s
reputation for frugality, you often hear of people packing it in because it’s
all you can eat. I have an uncle who
starves his family until 3 pm , then
they head out to the buffet and gorge themselves for the entire day’s
feeding. This is not exactly the
prescription for good living—and living in a country where a quarter of the
population is obese, buffets are not always the best options for dining.
Enter Marcello’s where you pay for your buffet based on the
weight of your food. Taking another jab
at Winnipeggers, the first complaint comes with having to pay for the weight of
your container. Granted, these
heavy-duty containers weight a lot more than the typical Styrofoam containers
you commonly see but someone worked it out that the container costs you one
dollar. Think of it this way, because
this buffet is self-serve with no table attendants, you save on tipping the
staff. There’s a jar by the cashier but
you definitely will not be sticking 20% into there. Ok, so you take money away from the labour
and give it to the international corporation, which is not my idea of good
economics, but that’s a different rant.
Back to the buffet, Marcello’s offers a dizzying amount of
food, spread over a several tables. If
you want, they also offer pre-made sandwiches, made to order sandwiches, and
pizza. In my wildest dreams, I cannot
try everything they present in a single sitting. I take a tiny portion of my favs into the
container and it still seems to be full before I’m through the buffet.
To prevent this from becoming a dissertation, I will just
give a short description on each of the items.
Starting with the salads, every one of their options features green and
fresh-looking vegetables. I’m
hard-pressed to find anything stale, wilted or yellow here. The couscous salad looks green and
inviting. I love couscous and if it’s
done right, it tastes absolutely divine.
When it’s done poorly, it can be awful to take; unfortunately, it isn’t
done well here and ends up tasting too herbaceous and too green. The texture tastes very coarse, like taking
40-grit sandpaper over your tongue. The
seafood salad tastes a lot smoother without over-indulging in the mayo. There’s nice flavour and some texture through
the pollock. Yes, it’s pollock, but
they’re not trying to hide it by masking it as imitation crab. Honestly, I like the taste of pollock, so
long as someone isn’t trying to pawn it as something it’s not.
I like to have something light as a conduit for juices,
sauces and whatever goodness that oozes out of flavourful dishes. The vegetable fried rice looks fluffy and
moist but there’s not much flavour here.
This is definitely ideal as a conduit and not as a main. Get your rice early and pile your meats on
top of it.
The curried chicken looks marvellous but all it has is
looks. I guess I’m too used to authentic
Indian curry that has so much flavour, slurping up the sauce is even better
than chewing on the meat. The sauce here
has almost no curry taste and the meat is no better to chew. The thick slab of chicken breast is so
overcooked that the meat tastes like sticking dry crackers into your
mouth. A good sauce can sometimes
overcome the dryness because the meat becomes the conduit, but this entire
attempt is a mess.
The Debrezeni sausage would taste equally dry if not for the
high fat content of the meat. Hungarian
sausages are renown for big flavour, supported by lots of spices and explosive
flavour—but not here.
The shepherd’s pie has a lot of meat and good flavour but it
could use a bit more potato. Again, the
potato should act as a conduit to the nice pie meat and flavourful sauce.
The meatballs don’t have a lot of flavour but they’re cooked
well, moist and swim in a nice, sweetish sauce.
The penne pasta has a sweet tomato sauce, a little too sweet for my
liking but I’m sure there’s a market for it.
The penne pasta with four cheeses doesn’t taste as sweet and it comes
with the bonus of cheese. Melted cheese
makes most pasta dishes taste better.
Some of the dishes are hit and some are miss, but there’s
enough variety here to satisfy most everyone.
I suggest small amounts of large variety; if you pile on with only a few
selections, you’re out of luck if you encounter something you don’t like. You have to get out of the buffet mentality
where you casually leave mounds of food on the table because you don’t like it.
Even in the middle of the weekday lunch hour, the people
file in and out quickly and you’re not pressed to find a table. The line to pay looks as long as the Great
Wall of China but the efficient cashiers get you out quickly. If you have an hour for lunch, you have
plenty of time to get in and out, and back to work before your colleagues give
you the late-from-lunch evil eye.
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