Pub Chat: Episode 63 - La Terrible

Tons of beer talk!

In this episode Craig Thorn and Phil Hinson join us to discuss Unibroue La Terrible. On top of the beer, which we both had different vintages, we talked beer price and availability, comparing Winnipeg to Montreal to Phoenix. This episode is all beer talk.

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Show Notes
00:00 – Intro
00:30 – Unibroue La Terrible
06:15 – Cheers, tasting the beer
11:00 – Prices and availability
13:50 – Standard Lager
14:45 – London breweries
17:35 – The state of craft in Manitoba
25:30 – Beer in Quebec
27:55 – Beer in Phoenix
29:00 – More comparisons
33:30 – Rogue
35:40 – Further comparisons
37:40 – Farmery
39:50 – Other breweries
44:50 – Creating scarcity, rare brews
48:15 – Big hype beers
59:15 – Brewheads and beer apparel
1:08:35 – Wrapping It Up

Winnipeg's New Culinary Trail

Should you eat here, or maybe there?

Trying to help you decide "where to eat," a new initiative from Tourism Winnipeg and Peg City Grub is the Winnipeg Culinary Trails. They put a heavy focus on restaurants serving local eats. The trail itself is a wide array of greasy spoons, high end dining rooms, and ethnic goodies. Other trails will be added as we were told "it's an ongoing project to help people navigate the food scene."

As a big fan of tasty food, naturally I was intrigued. I was lucky enough to be invited on the Winnipeg Trolley Company's trolley (which is awesome) with fellow bloggers to do a quick tour of three of the locations on the Culinary Trail.

We met at the Forks, one of my favourite places in the city, to hop on the trolley, where we all took dozens of Instagram photos and videos by the time we arrived at the first stop, Fusion Grill .

This place is truly a hidden gem in the city. Nestled on Academy, I remember this place being my first initiation into the world of great cuisine. It gets bonus points for being very local. Sadly I don't seem to eat there enough anymore. Making a promise to myself for changing that right now.

With our first stop we were greeted by owner Scot Mctaggart . He explained where he gets the local fish, daily (from Gimli Fish Market ), and that it was actually Fusion Grill's birthday. We were served their most popular lunch dish - pickerel cheeks with pickled fiddlehead aioli and crispy yam frites. The lemonade was actually perfect too, not overly sweet with the perfect amount of tartness.

Scot sold me on the lamb dish for my future visit. I won't even try doing it justice by describing it as he made it sound like the most romantic dish one could order.

Needless to say it was fairly mind blowing. Our next two stops had a major challenge to top this.

As the bloggers filed out of Fusion Grill and back into the trolley it was a perfect day with a few clouds in the blue sky. This is kind of key for the next stop as the experience comes down to one important thing - the view.

The trolley headed back downtown and we disembarked at Prairie 360 . This was my first time setting foot in the restaurant since they opened up. We were taken the long way to our table, so we can enjoy the all of the magnificent view of Winnipeg. It is a damn pretty city.

Executive Chef Alfonso Maury came out to briefly explain the dish we were about to be served, bison prosciutto perogies topped with garlic cream sauce. It was tasty too but not quite as good as Fusion Grill's dish.

We headed back to The Forks for our last stop, Tall Grass Prairie . Arguably the best bakery in town. Just try one of their breads, or their iconic cinnamon bun, and try and disagree with that statement.

Tabitha Langel , one of the owners, talked us through how keeping it local is best for everyone. She also let us try some of their delicious bread and cinnamon buns.

That was the end of the tour for us but their are more places on the Culinary Trail to hit up. My favourite on the list is Peasant Cookery, which I highly recommend the charcuterie and oyster night (Wednesdays).

Check out Tourism Winnipeg's site for the complete list .

Pub Chat: Episode 62 - Chimay

Our yearly Mad Men episode

In this episode we bring back Ryan to discuss Mad Men once again. Like last time we are drinking a trappist beer but this time we are drinking Chimay Blue. Naturally we make predictions and get side tracked discussing other television shows we watch.

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Show Notes
00:00 – Intro
00:50 – Chimay Blue
06:30 – Chimay label changes
10:45 – Rochefort and Westvleteren
11:40 – Looking back at Mad Men predictions
14:25 – Contrasts to Breaking Bad and more observations
18:35 – Thoughts on the last season of Mad Men
22:40 – Questions going forward
26:50 – What do we think of…
41:15 – Community, food in Mad Men and Hannibal
43:45 – Possible predictions
47:30 – The Walking Dead, Fargo and avoiding spoilers
51:10 – Wrapping it up