MISS MOOX: Downtown

The last few weeks of glorious summer have brought a couple of new eateries to our fair city's centre, in addition to sunburns and melting ice-cream cones.
First, the old house on 2100-block Hamilton Street that was home to Neo Japonica for more than a decade has reopened. Welcome to Taste of Tuscany. The new owners took out the shrubs in front of the building and added a paved seating area for outdoor eats.
Second up, Beer Bros. pub in the Old City Hall Mall on Scarth Street has opened its long-promised deli next door to the pub. The deli is open Monday-Saturday from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. I'm looking forward to a visit very soon.
Third of all, it has been an embarrassingly long time since I posted anything to this blog. Apologies for that. Fortunately, the blog is quite forgiving.

The Round-up:

• Food - 3.5 out of 5
• Service - 3.5 out of 5
• Decor - 4 out of 5
• Overall - 11 out of 15

Let's start with the good: Tangerine is a tastefully decorated bistro that has added a healthy dose of personality to the strip of shops on 14th Avenue between Lorne and Cornwall streets. The restaurant seems to be doing a very good business over the lunch hour. Ladies who lunch, business folks, and university kids are all common sights.
Service is very fast - as it should be at a bistro that depends on the lunch hour to survive. My meals have arrived within minutes of ordering during both of my lunchtime visits. Considering that ordering is done cafeteria-style, that is up at the counter, there is no reason for service to be slow.
The menu, written in chalk on a large wall next to the deli case, has a good mixture of proteins, grains and greens, and it changes often. Tangerine also brews coffee and serves up homemade biscuits and sweets. All of this lends an urbane feel to the place - Tangerine would fit right in to New York's Lower East Side or Vancouver's West End. But it's all ours and we should be proud to have it.
As for the not-so-good: Tangerine needs to work on portions and prices. The other day I ordered the $11 Greens and Proteins: a six- or seven-ounce piece of salmon atop a bed of greens with a light dressing. The dish's modest size left me feeling hungry, and that I'd paid too much. Consider that Siam Thai restaurant downtown offers an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet for $9; or that La Bodega serves a mean sandwich with fries for about $12.
As for the salad, I have a strong suspicion that the lettuce mixture I ate was store-bought. This is a bit of a shame in the middle of summer when fresh local produce is everywhere.
Finally, Tangerine could play more heavily on the "food bar" theme that it uses as part of its name. At the moment, the restaurant is open until 7 p.m. on weeknights. But give the place a liquor licence, dim the lights, put on some groovy music, and you could have a very cool evening hangout. Of course, this may come as Tangerine matures. Owner/chef Aimee Schulhauser is wise to take a "walk before you run" approach to the place.
The verdict: give Tangerine a try for your next business lunch, or if you happen to be hanging around downtown on a gorgeous summer day.

On Wednesday, I expressed some disappointment that the former Cafe Orange (now going by the name Orange Izakaya) reopened a month ago but hadn't served any food yet.

Lucky me, Orange rolled out its lunch menu today. It looks like a mix of fairly traditional Japanese and Korean dishes (mainly Korean). This is somewhat interesting because izakaya means "pub" in Japanese. Typically an izakaya serves small plates of Japanese food. Some compare it to Spanish tapas (in terms of size, not flavour).

That being said, I look forward to tasting what the new Orange has to offer.

Word has it that a full dinner menu will be up and running next week.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the fantastic makeover given to Cafe Orange on Robinson Street, near the 13th Avenue Safeway.

The place has been all dolled up and looks like it's ready to roll. The problem? They're only serving coffee and some rather lackluster desserts at the moment.

When I stopped in on June 25 to order a coffee (which was very good, I might add), the woman working the till told me that food service would be a reality by Canada Day, or perhaps a day or so later.

I went by Cafe Orange again earlier today (July 7, for the record) just to see what the situation was. Once more, I was told that food service is coming soon. Hopefully by Friday . . . maybe Monday.

This strikes me as more than a little strange. Customers have been looking forward to the new Cafe Orange for months. A little suspense can be a good thing. But keep people waiting for too long and they'll eventually lose interest.

Cafe Orange, it's time to fire up the ovens, take off the training wheels, and become a full-fledged restaurant. You reopened a month ago. You have the potential to be one of the city's best restaurants.

Now please serve us some food so that we can judge for ourselves.

It's here!

Regina's newest downtown restaurant opened quietly this week on the corner of Lorne Street and 14th Avenue.

Chef Aimee Schulhauser will offer fresh eats and a menu that changes frequently to keep up with what's in season. The current menu on the Tangerine website looks very tempting: http://www.tangerineregina.ca/

Watch out for a grand opening some time in July.