The Konga Cafe

Last Sunday Patrick and I decided to Saskaspoon for lunch. We shook the iPod and were pleasantly surprised to get Jake's, a lunch place downtown neither one of us had been to in a long, long time. But, being a lunch place downtown, it was closed on Sundays, as they serve primarily business people, and businesses tend to be closed on on Sundays.

Sigh.

We shook the iPod and got...The Konga Cafe!


(Aside: The Konga Cafe is not new to us. It's down the street from my house, for goodness' sake. To the gods of the Internet, I implore you: SEND US SOMEPLACE NEW. This is, like, the fourth time in a row we've been sent to place we've literally been to in the past few months. But I'm not complaining. After all, we could have gotten a MacDonald's. Or a Seven-Eleven. Dammit. Now I've cursed us. Guess where we'll be going next?)

The food at the Konga Cafe is good. Actually, it's better than good. It's tasty, the portions are ample, the ingredients are simple and very nicely spiced. Plus it has a nice ambiance -- it has a Caribbean sort of vibe, but unlike lots of "place-themed" restaurants, this one doesn't feel fake. It's a sort of messy, sort of homey kind of place, with lots of stuffed monkeys, flags, and paper flowers for decor. The place mats are just red, green, and yellow printer paper. It's the only place I'm able to tolerate reggae music.

It's owned, I think, by a couple from the Caribbean, so they knew what they're talking about. Their hours are "12ish - 10ish", for example, and each meal starts with a free johnnycake, which is a deep-fried ball of dough. (I have often wanted to have an International Fried Dough festival, because every culture has a deep-fried dough something-or-other. It could be great. You could have paramedics on call for the heart attacks that would be the logical outcome of such a festival.)

Patrick and I each got the "special", figuring that since we'd eaten pretty much everything else on the menu, we might as well get the dish that might not be there next time.  The special was a breaded, deep-fried chicken breast with a curried, savoury mushroom gravy and a bowl of creamy red-bean and chicken soup. It was awesome. And we were so full by the end of our lovely meal, considering we'd just consumed basically one whole chicken each.

At one point the chef (one half of the ownercouple, I think) came towards our table and she was all dancey-- like she danced out of the kitchen, danced over to us, asked if we'd enjoyed the meal, and then danced away.

And that's it. The Konga Cafe did not disappoint, but this Saskaspooning trip wasn't full of crazy stories or strange adventures. I guess that's just the way it is with your neighbourhood restaurant -- sometimes you just want to go in, get your free johnnycakes, dance a bit with your chef, and leave a good tip. Sometimes that's all you need.

Aroma!

Two weeks ago it was Saturday, and Patrick and I were going to the movies. He had pre-purchased tickets so we could see the 10pm showing of Bridesmaids at the Galaxy in downtown Saskatoon. But before we went to the movies, we had to get supper.

It was 8pm, which meant we only had a couple of hours to eat.  Could we Saskaspoon?
Could we? There were so many what ifs. 

What if we get a restaurant way across town? What if we end up in a slow-food restaurant? What if we get a place where the servers are sullen teenagers who are in the middle of Personal Dramas and forget to place our orders and we starve? What if we get the Seven-Eleven? I was excited about the movie. I didn't want my evening ruined because I'd had to cobble together a meal of old hotdogs and dried out "potato wedges".

Still. We love adventure almost as much as we love movies. So we dove right in and shook that little ole iPod and got....."Aroma!"

The good thing about Aroma is that it is downtown, in the Radisson Hotel, actually only a block away from the movie theatre. The bad thing about Aroma is that we had literally been there about two weeks before. I think it was been the last time we'd been out to eat, actually. And we'd consciously picked it last time -- I believe because of its proximity to the movie theatre.

Sigh.

We went anyway.

I was pretty happy, because I'd been craving pizza all day, and this place does pretty good wood-oven pizzas. So there was that.

I ate a pizza much like this one.

Here is an aside:
I am always amazed at hotel bars and restaurants. They are always full. And, I think, full of travelers. Other than the free breakfast, who is eating at their hotel? I get it when you are in a small town and the only choice for eating is the restaurant attached to the front lobby. I get it -- it's the only game in town. But when you're a tourist, or a business traveler with an expense account, and there is an entire city out there with really good restaurants, why do you eat in the same building where you sleep? I don't care if Aroma is a well-reviewed, well-loved restaurant in Saskatoon. Unless you are a holidaying agoraphobe, please go outside and explore the rest that our town has to offer.

Okay. Rant over. Moving on.

So Patrick and I got mojitos, and I ordered myself a peach and pecan salad with a ham-and-pineapple pizza. Patrick ordered a goat cheese pastry thing with crackers and short ribs.

While we drank and waited for food, we watched as the host told a table next to us that he was "often compared to Steve Buscemi" and we thought how that was not something you should tell someone. Not unless Steve Buscemi is his brother, or you have a fetish for Steve Buscemi, should you ever tell a man that this is his closest celebrity look-alike.

We watched as an out-of-town family tried to find a gourmet pizza that was the closest approximation to the pizza they ordered in their home town. In the end they went with plain cheese.

We watched as the chef, whose kitchen is open to the entire room at large, tossed dishes, swung knives, and slammed pots, pans, and pizzas onto flat surfaces with what appeared to me to be a disdainful-yet-passionate strength. I imagined her speaking with an Eastern European accent; I got the feeling she'd apprenticed with Great Chefs and had ended up in Saskatoon cooking at the Radisson Hotel Bar and had spent the past four years wondering just what the hell happened to her life.

Our food arrived just in time. I enjoyed my pizza, though my salad was a bit heavy on the dressing, and the peaches were dried, which I hadn't been expecting. Patrick liked his goat cheese thing (so did I -- I snuck some bites) but he wasn't too impressed with his shortribs. "They're kind of just blah," he told the server, and I snuck a look at our intense chef and hoped she couldn't hear.

In the end we made it to the movies on time, mojitos and meltey cheese in our bellies. And our nice waiter waived the short ribs from our bill! So that's why you eat at hotel restaurants--they'll do anything to please their customers. Otherwise we might not book our business trips there again!