We don’t always think ahead, P and I. Sometimes we get distracted and then find ourselves scrambling for somewhere to eat, quickly before such things as plays that begin in a couple of hours. This is the situation we found ourselves in last week and since there isn’t much for restaurants close to home we ventured into the city…. Endeavoured to be seated at several places before we landed at The Beachcomber at the Forks.
The Beachcomber seems to bustle in the summertime since they have a lovely patio in a beautiful part of the city. People gather there and The Beachcomber draws patrons from the folks who hang, wander, sun, and shop around the area. In the winter time though, the area is far less bustling and the empty seats at The Beachcomber reflected the lack of people outdoors. It was a Saturday night; we had about an hour and a half before we needed to leave to make our play. I was hungry and consequently a little grumpy. A lack of food always does that to me.
We let our waiter know that we wanted to be out by 8 o’clock and he suggested that we have salad or appetizers as they don’t take as long to prepare. Oddly, at home my steak only takes a few minutes; I wasn’t sure why I would take much longer here. But I needed food, I question less when I’m hungry since I can get a little ornery and I’m very aware of that personality trait and we decided to stick with what seemed to be easy and timely.
We ordered a full sized Greek Salad to share, Salt and Pepper Wings, Dry Ribs and Lobster Stacks.
The salad came out first, it was beautiful but the taste, hungry as I was, was lacking. I would have liked a bottle or at the very least a splash of vinegar to throw on it as it seemed to have a dressing made with olive oil and herbs but little to no zing from any vinegar and though I can appreciate that it’s winter here in Winnipeg, the tomatoes were cut into huge wedges and were the consistency and taste of what I imagine baseballs would be if I bit into them. Not a great first plate!
We then got our Lobster Stacks, “Lobster claw meat stacked over garlic and white bean bruschetta on a parmesan baguette” as listed on their menu. Again this dish looked very beautiful with good sized chunks of lobster meat but it was short on taste and the bread, which we expected would have some crunch was in fact quite soggy. This dish would have benefited from some crunch and a splash of lemon or sprinkling of lemon seasoning.
Lastly we received our wings and dry ribs. There was definitely a theme here. The wings and ribs looked beautiful and were very nice and crispy, and I’m not a fan of too much salt but the seasoning was coarse salt and pepper and there was definitely a shortage of it when we bit into them. Unfortunately adding to it wasn’t really a good option since the seasoning really does need to be added as soon as the bites are taken from the fryer in order for it to stick and so these were also lacking some flavour.
All in all, hungry as we were the dinner was a little disappointing, given that the dishes weren’t on the cheap side it was even more disappointing. We don’t ever mind paying a good dollar for food that is prepared and seasoned well but this price for these dishes was a little steep for what we got. Will we be running back there? No, but we may stop in for a drink and a seat in the summer on their beautiful patio. I would suggest this is a nice summer place, for patio seating, as long as your expectations of the food are fairly low.
I’m sorry that I didn’t stop to take pictures of the beautiful food and I’ll be more conscious of that next time. But when I’m starving and we’re in a rush, pulling out my phone to take pictures isn’t always at the forefront of my mind. Next time I’ll try to take a breath before I dig in.
