Winnipeg’s locavore restaurant wave

by Alex Robertson Textor on


Manitoba is pretty far north, all things considered. On its southern edge, the province straddles the Minnesota-North Dakota state line; to the north, the province stretches to the 60th parallel, where it borders the territory of Nunavut. Yet despite its northerly geography, Manitoba has enough frost-free days to generate some significant agricultural production. Here’s the locavore math: Local seasonal bounty plus enthusiastic adoption of the current locavore vogue by Winnipeggers equals some excellent restaurants grounded in local foods.

Three restaurants (Mise, The Tallest Poppy, and Horfrost in nearby Portage La Prairie) stand out.

My meal at Mise (842 Corydon Avenue) began with a large salad of heirloom tomatoes with sunflower oil dressing. Next up was sesame-encrusted pickerel from nearby Lake Winnipeg, served delightfully and surprisingly with seaweed salad and unagi sauce. For my third course, I enjoyed a Manitoba pork tenderloin with potatoes and apple chutney. A refreshing lemon mousse finished the meal. Everything was gorgeous. The outdoor setting was sultry, the waitstaff enthusiastic and well-informed, and each dish delicious and provocative in one or another way. Co-owner Sue Gereta circled back to my table several times to check in on my meal, and told me about the restaurant’s ambitious local sourcing protocol, which includes partnering with a small outfit called the Landless Farmers Collective. In addition to being a fabulous place to grab a meal, Mise is quite affordable. A three-course meal of appetizer-sized plates is currently priced at C$35.

It was at the very least a private mini-tragedy that I did not make it to The Tallest Poppy (631 Main Street). The wildly popular locavore restaurant is focused firmly on sourcing its food as locally and seasonally as possible. The menu changes daily. Guests can call for menu information (204-957-1708) or check the restaurant’s Twitter feed, which sometimes lists menu updates.In Portage La Prairie, about an hour west of Winnipeg by car along Highway 1, is the remarkable Horfrost Restaurant (190 River Road). Named after a type of ice crystallization that appears on trees in northern climes during the winter, Horfrost sources much of its bounty from local farms. My road trip companion Melissa and I ate fried pig’s ears, bison spring rolls, and maple fries to start. The pig’s ears were the slightest bit crunchy. The bison spring rolls were rich and intensely flavorful. We followed with a schnitzel. Dessert was homemade ice cream (including locally-picked mint and strawberry) with chocolate sauce. Our talkative waiter told us that the farmer responsible for the ice cream’s strawberries was dining just a few tables away. After-dinner coffee was served with beautifully pressed pucks of sugar (see above).

Though less locavore-minded than the other restaurants profiled here, I’d be remiss if I didn’t note the fabulous Segovia (484 Stradbrook Avenue). Its menu is well-stocked with fabulously rich, delicious tapas. There are traditional Spanish numbers as well as some inventive departures from the mold on the menu.

Check out my entire road trip to Winnipeg series here.

Some media support for my stay in Winnipeg was provided by Tourism Winnipeg and Travel Manitoba. All opinions expressed are my own.

Winnipeg: Folklorama

by Alex Robertson Textor on


In Winnipeg, as in most big Canadian cities, there is an unassimilated immigrant presence at the surface of daily life. Canada has an official policy of multiculturalism, enshrined in the constitution, and cultural displays of difference are actively encouraged by federal and provincial governments. Winnipeg’s diversity is impressive. The city has a significant Francophone minority, several large immigrant communities, including Canada’s largest per capita Filipino population (at over five percent), and a relatively big Aboriginal population. This is just the tip of the iceberg, however. Over 100 languages are spoken by city residents.

Enter Folklorama, an annual August multicultural festival. Since 1970, Folklorama has provided a celebratory space for Winnipeg’s various immigrant groups to showcase their traditional culture, food, and performance. This year 45 different pavilions were set up to host guests and provide a little cultural exposure.

Last year Folklorama saw over 400,000 visitors over the two weeks of its festival. Folklorama has become a major event on Winnipeg’s cultural calendar. Admission to each individual pavilion is just C$6, and children 12 and under enter free of charge. Most pavilions focus on a live performance, but there is also traditional food and drink for purchase, as well as informational booths and boutique areas where various traditional objects can be purchased.

The Folklorama experience is quite moving, and in no small part because the participants are so enthusiastic. I attended three pavilions. At the first, the Chilean pavilion, we ate empanadas and drank wine prior to a performance, which was kicked off by the Canadian and Chilean national anthems. The rollicking Irish pavilion followed, and the evening ended at the Brazilian Pavilion, with its energetic samba and capoeira performance.

I took a Folklorama VIP World Tour on the opening night of this year’s festival. The VIP World Tour provides expedited access to three pavilions an evening, a progressive meal (including beverages), and coach service between pavilions. It costs C$69.95 per person.

During the 50 non-festival weeks of the year, Folklorama operates workshops, lectures, and other forums to educate Winnipeggers about their city’s many different cultures. This year’s two-week Folklorama ends this Saturday, but it’s not too early to start thinking about next year’s Folklorama festival.

Check out other dispatches on my road trip to Winnipeg here.

Some media support for my stay in Winnipeg was provided by Tourism Winnipeg and Travel Manitoba. All opinions expressed are my own.

(Image: Flickr/noricum)

Why Winnipeg should be on your radar

by Alex Robertson Textor on


When I first visited Winnipeg, in 2005, I did so on the advice of an art world acquaintance in New York who spent a lot of professional time in Canada. I asked him which Canadian city he deemed to be coolest. After a perfunctory nod to Montreal, he zeroed in on Winnipeg. He cited the city’s high culture, its dynamic contemporary creative figures, its prairie sunsets, and its very undiscovered status as reasons to visit.

When I got to Winnipeg I found a city teeming with good cultural, architectural, and culinary stuff. I also found a city that seemed to know itself. There are countless cities in North America obsessed with their relationship to New York or Los Angeles. Winnipeg is not one of these. If Winnipeg has an inferiority complex, it is tempered by the recognition that quality of life is high and opportunities feel boundless here.

There is quite simply something very special about Winnipeg. It’s a bit of a Grand Old Dame, with a genteel spirit at play across charming residential and commercial neighborhoods. It’s not always the prettiest city. The city’s downtown lacks a unified scale, and a clutch of Brutalist buildings make a dramatic claim on the urban landscape. (The latter always strike me as desperately beautiful, though anecdotal evidence suggests that I’m in the minority in this respect.) There are parks and monuments and unexpected corners. There is also The Forks, an enormous multipurpose entertainment area, which organizes a lot of leisure time in the city.Winnipeg’s strong creative scene is partially attributable to its deep winter freeze, which has fostered a creative atmosphere. The city has a deep artistic tradition that has produced a bevy of contemporary filmmakers and artists. Ponder the work of local filmmakers Guy Maddin and Noam Gonick and you gain some real insight into Winnipeg, a city bound to its many idiosyncrasies, the harsh climate, and its varied ethnic diversity.

There’s also the question of the city’s population in relation to the surrounding territory. There are 1.2 million people in Manitoba; around 650,000 of them live in Winnipeg. Winnipeg is the only metropolis of note for a great distance. The prairie is just outside the city, and it is vast. Winnipeg draws the country refugees in magnetically.

Winnipeg has a number of major projects underway; the most notable of these, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, is scheduled to be finished in 2012. The museum is is a very ambitious and very heady undertaking. In architectural terms alone, it will be a tour de force. There is already talk in Winnipeg about a future Bilbao Effect.

By the end of my second visit to Winnipeg last week I’d discovered more delightful Manitoban quirks: the phenomenon of the wedding social; the local appetite for Slurpees, even in the dead of winter; the fact that, in early August, I saw leaves that had already turned color; the genuine friendliness of completely random people.

Over the next few days, I’ll post reports on Winnipeg’s Folklorama cultural festival, Winnipeg’s museum scene, the city’s locavore wave, The Forks, and some other dimensions of this exciting city.

See my entire road trip to Winnipeg series here.

Some media support for my stay in Winnipeg was provided by Tourism Winnipeg and Travel Manitoba. All opinions expressed are my own.

Top ten traits of an excellent hostel

by Catherine Bodry on

I’ve spent nights in hostels that were probably just fronts for drug operations, and hostels that I wish I could live in. What makes a hostel good is fairly basic: cleanliness is the biggest issue, followed by orderliness and friendliness.

But a few traits separate the good from the excellent when it comes to hostels. Here’s what I’ve determined are the factors:

1. Good ventilation: It is so gross to open the door into a dorm and be hit with a wall of humid halitosis. It doesn’t matter how clean the room is; you just can’t cleanse the air of a dozen people sweating and breathing. A window (with a screen to keep the bugs out) and a fan work wonders.

2. Towels: Even threadbare ones are a nice break from the damp, mildewey clumps that backpackers are loathe to pull out of their packs and “dry off” with.

3. Separate male and female dorms: Boys are smelly. Girls can’t hang out in their underpants with boys around. And I appreciate being able to change in my room, rather than carry all my clothes down the hall to the bathroom, try to change without getting my feet or the bottoms of my pants wet, and then carry my jammies back (waking everyone else up in the process as I go in and out of the door).

4. Drinking rules: Don’t get me wrong – I like to party as much as the next 19- (or 33-) year-old. However, lax rules tend to lead to noisy late-night sessions, with giggly guests lounging around the common areas. At the least, drinking rules encourage folks to get out of the hostel and experience wherever they’re at. Even if it’s just the local pub.5. A big kitchen and a staff that cleans it daily: Unfortunately, you just can’t count on every guest to do their own dishes. And you definitely can’t count on them to wipe the counters and sweep the floors. A kitchen that gets a scrub down once or twice a day is a wonderful thing to behold.

6 Non-metal, non-creaky beds: Not everyone has the bladder capacity of a camel. Which means that not everyone is going to sleep through the night without creeping down the ladder to relieve themselves. And you’re gonna have folks who had a late night, or people who have an early flight to catch. It helps when the beds are a nice, quiet natural wood. And they don’t have plastic sheets on them, either.

7. Local knowledge and the ability to book tours: Three words: One-stop shopping.

8. Nightly activities: Canadiana Backpacker’s Inn in Toronto has at least one weekly activity a night, whether it’s karaoke Monday at a local bar, game night, or a Friday tour of a brewery. Some of the activities, like karaoke, are free, which encourages everyone to participate. It’s a great way to get out of the hostel and meet some other travelers.

9. A nightly/weekly limit: It’s been my experience that hostels without a stay limit attract folks who aren’t necessarily travelers, but rather are people in transition, trying to relocate to the city. That’s not exactly a bad thing, but it’s a different vibe than the regular traveler scene. And in one unnamed Alaska hostel, it meant a bunch of 50-year-old unemployed criminals men, selling cocaine and stealing cash from guests. True story.

10. A decent breakfast: It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, but I’ll take a bagel and cream cheese over Wonderbread toast and jam any day. Decent coffee, brewed slightly strong, is a thousand times better than instant coffee. Put out a donation jar; I’ll gladly throw in a buck or two to feel full and awake for a couple of hours. HI Austin receives day-olds from a local bakery, which means that hostel guests can help themselves to almost-fresh doughnuts, french breads, and whatever else the baker made that day.

[Photo credit: Flickr user Barnacles Hostels]

Which country loves to work? See who doesn’t take vacation time

by Tom Johansmeyer on

A friend of mine asked me a few days ago when I last went on vacation – a real one. I struggled to remember the last time I went on a trip and didn’t write or, before that, keep up with what was going on at the office. After stopping and focusing, I remembered a four-day trip I took to Orlando back in late 2005. Even there, I’m not sure that I didn’t work, I just don’t remember spending time behind the laptop. Before that, my last vacation was probably four days in San Diego in 2002 (again, I don’t remember working but probably did) or the two weeks I took off when being reassigned from South Korea to Georgia in 1998.

Apparently, I’m not alone. Lots of people don’t take vacations, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos study. Ask any employee in the world if he uses his vacation time, and a there’s a 33 percent chance the answer will be a resounding “no.”

In a survey of 12,500 people from 24 countries, the French, unsurprisingly, are most likely to take advantage of the vacation days they are given, with 89 percent using all they are given. Argentina comes in next at 80 percent, followed by Hungary (78 percent) and Britain (77 percent). Think about it: in the top four, up to 25 percent of a country’s employees don’t blow through their vacation days.

Now, consider how grim the situation is at the other end of the spectrum. The workaholics in Japan are least likely to use all the vacation time they are given, with only 33 percent using it up. South Africa is next up from the bottom at 47 percent, followed by South Korea (53 percent). The United States is next, with a mere 57 percent of employees using up all their vacation time. That’s akin to leaving money on the table, when you think about it, since vacation time really is a part of your compensation.

Interestingly, income level makes little difference in whether one uses all available vacation time. It isn’t just hard-core investment bankers, work-addicted consultants and client-committed attorneys. According to Ipsos, two-thirds of high- and low-income workers took all available vacation time. Age makes some difference, with workers over 50 more likely to take all their vacation days. Unsurprisingly, business owners and senior executives are least likely to consume all their time.

So, why are the world’s workers so insanely dedicated to their jobs? Reuters says:

“There are lots of reasons why people don’t use up vacation days but most often it’s because they feel obligated to their work and put it over other more important things, including their own health and welfare,” said John Wright, senior vice president of global market and opinion research firm Ipsos.

Below, you can see the full results of the survey:

  1. France: 89 percent
  2. Argentina: 80 percent
  3. Hungary: 78 percent
  4. Britain: 77 percent
  5. Spain: 77 percent
  6. Saudi Arabia: 76 percent
  7. Germany: 75 percent
  8. Belgium: 74 percent
  9. Turkey: 74 percent
  10. Indonesia: 70 percent
  11. Mexico: 67 percent
  12. Russia: 67 percent
  13. Italy: 66 percent
  14. Poland: 66 percent
  15. China: 65 percent
  16. Sweden: 63 percent
  17. Brazil: 59 percent
  18. India: 59 percent
  19. Canada: 58 percent
  20. United States: 57 percent
  21. South Korea: 53 percent
  22. Australia: 47 percent
  23. South Africa: 47 percent
  24. Japan: 33 percent

[photo by archie4oz via Flickr]