Hargrave Street Market (True North Square)
242 Hargrave St
Winnipeg, MB
204-808-1400
Instagram: mottolagrocery
August, 2020
New and freshly opened, Mottola looks modern, sleek and inviting, with the allure of beautiful food all around. Plenty of friendly staff mingle about, willing to help you with any question you have. Even though the outlet calls itself a grocery store, it’s more of a boutique than a traditional grocery store that we know. They offer a limited selection of vegetables and select fruits, but an impressive meat counter featuring high end cuts. If you want to splurge, you can take home a wagyu ribeye for a mere $200. The atmosphere feels closer to La Grotta at Piazza de Nardi than Safeway.
For foods to go, they offer substantial sandwiches off in one of the many niches, a bakery section with some seductive breads calling your name, and an island counter in the middle with a few pastas and desserts.
From the counter, all the pastas sell by the ounce so you can sample as little or as much as you want. The spicy vermicelli looks like Pad Thai, glistening and beautifully alluring. As the server scoops it into my container, he emphasises that the mint improves the composition of the entire dish. As far as I can tell, there are only two morsels in my serving, and only a few for the entire bowl from the counter. If mint is crucial to the dish, there should be a lot more on here.
After the first taste, the server is absolutely correct, the mint adds a huge dimension to the taste. The underlying taste has an Asian flare, bolstered by sesame oil and sesame seeds. Slivers of carrots give it texture and peppers finish it off with beautiful colour. Despite its name, it only has an edge of heat so if you fear heat, don’t be hesitant to try this offering.
I almost took one of the sandwiches—I even picked it up and put it in my basket but put it back. Yes, I know; that’s bad practice. I’m not supposed to touch something and put it back in the COVID era. You-touch-it, you-bought-it is the only way to ensure I do not pass the virus if it lives on my hands. I’m despicable and a social disaster. The reason I put it back? Take a look at this salad!
The salad itself comes just-off-the-plant fresh, with everything crisp as a chip. I’m not a huge fan of olives but the olives in here give such a subtle taste, even the most avid olive denier should be good with it. The sprigs of dill add wonderful depth, carried over in the dressing, which tastes slightly sweet and dilly.
Sliced baby potatoes line the bottom of the bowl. Normally, I'm not a huge fan of potatoes. I find them dull and packed with flavourless, unnecessary starch. Even though the potato itself doesn’t have a lot of taste, the marinade that sits in the potato makes it one of the best spuds I ever tasted. Have a look at how green the flesh looks!
If all salads would be made like this, I’d have salads every meal! In the same cooler, let’s look back at the sandwiches, which look equally appetising. At $11 to $13 a sandwich, a lot of people will shy away from the price tag. Winnipeg is cheap and many people will look at a sandwich and think of the $5 price tag that comes from Sobey’s. As I said earlier, this isn’t your typical mega-grocery store. If you ate a sandwich at a restaurant, you’d pay over $12, and sometimes push $20. You’re paying for good food here and good food isn’t cheap. Think of it as an outing, rather than a grocery.
If you’re on a budget, you can easily make your own sandwiches. Start at the meat counter which gives you a large selection of scrumptious-looking cuts.
With dozens to choose from, we sampled a slice of Genoa salami with a wedge of garden tomato and a cut of bread from the bakery. The bread has one of the crunchiest crusts I ever tasted, wonderfully enveloping a soft interior.
This is literally one of the simplest sandwiches you can put together, but it tastes incredible.
This is exactly the kind of store that downtown
needs, and the kind of store that Winnipeg needs a lot more of. Mottola reminds me of being in France, where
you can stop at a place like this on almost every street corner. On the way home, drop in, grab some fresh
food, and pop home for a delicious dinner.
Huge welcome to Mottola—great to have you and I look forward to coming
back often.
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