Wok ‘n Roll
6 – 836 McLeod Ave
204-668-2334
You can’t
walk two blocks in Winnipeg Winnipeg
Whether you
eat in the restaurant or takeout, there’s one good thing about having an
enormous menu and lots of stir fry:
you’re guaranteed that the food is made to order. Unless you dive into the buffets, most
Chinese is made after you place your order.
Now for the bad, let’s talk MSG.
Our society
has condemned MSG recently as the great evil food additive. That’s too bad. MSG is not the big bugbear that many people
make it out to be. If you’re on a
sodium-reduced diet, yes, you should cut down on MSG (monoSODIUM glutamate)—but
if you’re ok to eat salt (SODIUM chloride), you have no reason to avoid
MSG. Like salt, MSG enhances the
flavours of foods and gives them an added dimension.
Wok ‘n Roll
has no shyness about using MSG in their dishes; it’s quite prominent in
everything we taste. You know the
thirsty sensation you get from eating too much salt? You get that from MSG as well.
Let’s start
with the chicken spring rolls which have plenty of MSG and too much salt. Although well-made, crispy and not overly
greasy, I can’t get away from the saltiness.
If you want an appetiser, try the egg rolls instead, which have much
better balance in the flavouring and much more stuffing. The wrapper tastes nicely fried and crispy,
while the vegetables inside remain crunchy and fresh.
Wok ‘n Roll
(let me digress and complain about the name for a second. This is possible the cheesiest play on the
word “wok” I’ve ever seen) – it’s a fun pun to use on a cooking show but as a
restaurant, it’s over the top.
Sorry, back
to the menu: the Sweet and Sour Chicken
Balls come with the typical fluorescent pink sauce. In many Chinese restaurants, you find lots of
dough and very little chicken in their chicken balls. The balls here have a big chunk of chicken
with a nicely fried, thin coating of batter.
Wok ‘n Roll uses white meat, which overcooks very easily and becomes
dry. It’s quite dry here so you need
plenty of the fluorescent sauce to compensate.
The Spicy
Beef with Vegetables (Szechwan ) has a nice spicy sauce that’s powered by chilli flakes,
which is typical of spicy Chinese. The
barely cooked beef tastes moist and the nicely fried vegetables retain their
crispiness.
Wok ‘n Roll
recommended the Mixed Vegetables as a substitute for gailan, which isn’t always
available. Gailan is an authentic
Chinese vegetable that people often call Chinese broccoli. They have some similarity, but it’s always
been a stretch for me. Thus, I’m more
than a little disappointed to have a plate of mixed vegetables comprised of
(Western) broccoli, cauliflower, celery and carrots instead of gailan. Regardless, these vegetables too are fried
well and retain their freshness and their crunch.
Egg Foo
Young is essentially a fried egg dish. A
good egg foo young comes soft and in small slabs. It’s easy to beat up foo young so you’re left
with scrambled eggs and it’s also easy to overcook foo young so you have
rubber. Wok ‘n Roll’s version tastes
nice and soft, but a little too intact.
Instead of slabs, you end up with a rolled up omelette. It’s still tasty though.
The Spicy
Pork (Szechwan style) tastes equally delicious,
even though it’s cooked to death. The
light coating of batter adds depth to the pork and the chillies ramp up the
power. It’s great flavour and somehow, I
can get over the cooked-to-dry-and-hard pork.
As with
many Chinese restaurants, Wok ‘n Roll does some things very well but comes up
short in some places. Some better timing
to avoid overcooking would make this a very good place to eat. I’m not sure how many people eat here
though. While the restaurant has a large
dining room, the amount of food zipping out the door tells me that most of their
business comes from takeout or delivery.
*** /5
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