16
locations across Winnipeg
204-237-8305
http://www.salisburyhouse.ca/index.html
Mains start
with garlic toast, slathered in butter.
I know many people love to soak their bread in butter but I don’t know
anyone who wants their butter cold and coagulated. Sadly, I must declare this toast a success,
as I’ve had much worse toast at other Sals locations, including one incident
where they tried to hide the burnt side by turning it over. What a terrible debacle. The food is completely inedible and yet, they
try to hide it from you, to fool you into eating it. Folks, we’re talking about two pieces of
bread that likely costs them a penny each.
This is an offensive, abject disgrace.
Sals serves
breakfasts all day, including the usual breakfast options. The Hearty Breakfasts are hardly hearty as
the wee strips of bacon are lost on the dish.
I never thought that there’s more than one size to bacon, but I guess
there is. The hard and rubbery omelettes
contain plenty of eggs, probably more than you want to eat.
The side of
coleslaw has fresh and crispy vegetables, but the complete lack of dressing
leaves the slaw bone dry. The side of
chilli provides a better option. The
rich sauce has lots of meat, although little less salt would improve the dish.
The fish
& fries comes with two of the smallest pieces of cod that I’ve ever
seen. The batter tastes light and crispy
but the fish itself tastes leather-firm from being overcooked. The best thing about this dish is the tartar
sauce.
Known for their
burgers, Salisbury House coined the term “nip” to denote a hamburger. The Mr. Big Nip comes with raw onions, a
slice of processed cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato and Sals Sauce. Sals promises fresh ingredients and indeed
the vegetables come garden fresh. The
lettuce tastes crisp; the onions taste clean; and the tomato slices are
firm. Unfortunately, these aren’t
home-grown tomatoes and they are mostly tasteless. The wafer thin beef patty is dry and also
tasteless. The Mr. Big Nip is big in
vegetables but small in meat. As well,
the slice of processed cheese is so thin that I had to search dedicatedly to
find it. I’m still not quite sure it was
ever there. I don’t think the burger has
any condiments. Although the Nip
purports to have Sals Sauce, I can’t taste anything but a dry meat on a dry
bun. For some reason, the regular Nip
patty has a lot more substance than the Mr. Big Nip.
We all know
what zombies are, right? If a zombie
bites you, you get infected and you yourself become a zombie? What happens if a zombie bites a cow? Does the cow become a cow-zombie? And what would the cow-zombie look like? I imagine it to have grey flesh, much like
the ground meat that makes up this Nip.
There’s absolutely no searing, resulting in no caramelising (and thus
the greyness), Although there’s no
browning, this patty still sees plenty of heat, so much that it comes
completely dry and liver-tasting. To
make matters worse, there’s no seasoning whatsoever, contributing to the blandness
of the meat. Yuck. Instead of raw onions, this Nip comes with
fried onions, adding some grease (and much needed moisture) to this sandwich.
Mercifully,
it’s not all terrible. The mushroom soup
has some depth and richness. The
plentiful chunks of mushrooms ensure that every bite has lots of
substance.
Last time I
dined at Sals, the poutine tasted absolutely awful—tasteless, cold and
crusty. They must have read my tirade
since today’s poutine comes much improved.
The home-cut fries taste soft and limp but they’re ok for sopping up the
gravy. The gravy lacks flavour and has
too much salt but at least there’s plenty of it. The cheese curds make the dish and there’s
enough of it to keep you satisfied.
The next
time you step into a Salisbury House, take a close look at their laminated menu
and its plentiful photographs. What you
see is exactly what you get—and what you see isn’t very good. The meals from the menus all look dry and plastic! Honestly, the photos look terrible and what
you get isn’t any better. Sals has been
an institution in Winnipeg
Looking
around the dining room, I see that I am the youngest person with a burger-toss
radius. Most of the patrons in here outdate
me by decades, and I’m no spring-chicken, being in my forties. Now I understand that no one comes here for
the food; they come here because it’s an institution. Everyone knows each other and Sals is the
geriatric version of kids at 7-11. People
socialise and jibber-jabber, casually passing the time. They’re not here for the food—they’re here
for the company. Judging by the
customers, this restaurant chain should be out of business in the next ten
years.
½ /5
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