Across the Board Game Café
93 Albert St
204-691-3422
Taking over for long-time occupant, The Fixx, Across the Board Game Café sits in the heart of Old Market Square. Whereas Fixx was a hub for bureaucratic power lunches, Board Café targets a laid back crowd, in for a healthy lunch, or ready to spend the day with some board games. For $5, you get access to their game library for the rest of your stay—and a considerable library it is. By my count, they have over 600 games at your disposal. Not to geekify myself too much, I spent some hours playing Dungeons & Dragons in my pre-university days. This would have been a fun place to spend time with a few glasses of wine and some all-day gaming. Sadly, I grew up and there’s very little time for games—but lots of time for food!
Board Café leans towards a healthier menu, heavier on the vegetables and legumes. The Greenhouse salad comes with mixed greens, wild greens and pickled beets, to give it a beautiful red colour. The light vinaigrette brings the dish to life and the pumpkin seeds add wonderful depth, texture and substance.
The Banh Mi sandwich also comes loaded with vegetables, although pulled pork centers this meal. As a professional, Deep Southbarbecuer, this is definitely not authentic, smoked pulled pork. It tastes moist and tender but lacks flavour and complexity—that’s where the vegetables take over. The layer of cucumber adds a tier of texture to the sandwich, while the vegetables augmented by cilantro add zest and freshness. The sriracha mayo gives moisture to the bun without injecting too much heat. The delicious baguette comes perfectly crispy on the outside and stretchy tender on the inside.
Board Café also offers a number of pizzas, made from thin crust that tastes perfectly crunchy to the bite. The New Delhicious substitutes tomato sauce with curry sauce and covers the pie with cilantro and shredded greens, rather than cheese. To me, the sauce and the cheese make the pizza; if you substitute those, you must make sure the stand-ins have lots of flavour. Unfortunately, the ingredients don’t carry enough flavour to make this pie. The curry sauce tastes a bit bland and the marinated chick peas need the sauce to support them. There aren’t enough banana peppers to add heat to the dish and the sour cream adds little to the package.
As a child, I was forced to eat cilantro as a vegetable, which gave me a bit of cilantro-phobia. When this pizza came to the table, I thought that it was a Chia Pet gone wild! The Astroturf-like surface, highlighted by cilantro, made me recoil in herb horror! Mercifully, cilantro did not make up all the greens. I tried very hard but I could not make out what the shredded greens were. That is a statement itself, since it tells you that the greens had little flavour. Some shredded basil, mint and/or fenugreek would go a long way to enhancing the flavour of this pie.
Across the Board Game Café is an odd mixture, blending two concept that I never considered compatible. I always thought of gamers as rotgut beer swillers, pizza pop noshers and Pringle chompers. By contrast, I expect healthy eaters to jog-away the calories or yoga-off the toxins—not sit around and play board games all day. Regardless, this is a nice fit for the area and I hope the healthy games setting stay for a long time.
***½ /5
This is a free product that I'm happy to bring to you. If you enjoyed reading this, please consider clicking on the accompanying ads. This is the only payment I receive for offering this public service. Thank you as always for reading.
Comments
Post a Comment