Beer Bros' bustling brewpub hosts a five-course wild game dinner on May 18. Wildlife writer/photographer Duane Radford will join diners as research for an article on the joys of pairing food with beer . . . a tough job but somebody has to do it.
Tickets are $55 plus taxes and tip. Dinner gets underway at 7 p.m.
Kudos to Beer Bros for yet another unique concept.
With the official start of summer, comes the official start of soaking up the sun on restaurant patios.
Here are a few of my recommendations in Regina:
Cafe Orange: At the moment, Orange is doing coffee and sweets, but they tell me that a full menu is coming soon. Hopefully by Canada Day. In just two years, this place has gone from a coffee house/kitchenware store; to an all-out coffee house; and now a restaurant. The latest transformation looks to be the best. And the deck out front on Robinson Street (by the 13th Ave. Safeway) is so new you can still smell the sweet scent of new wood. (306) 779-0779 (no website)
Sweet Bakery and Coffee House: An ever-expanding list of baked goods, combined with comfortable surrounds in a heritage building (and a very nice, if small, patio outside) are turning this new Broad Street place near College Avenue into a favourite of many. Recommend an Americano with a Lemon Tart, if you're at a loss. (306) 352-9338 (no website)
La Bodega: the treetop patio at this Cathedral Village favourite is . . . tops, no pun intended. Sip a few drinks or have lunch high above the Albert Street traffic. You won't even notice the cars going by. www.labodegaregina.com / (306) 546-3660
Fireside Bistro: while opinions on Fireside often vary, their patio on the corner of Smith Street and 15th Avenue is second to none. Definitely worth a drink or two and an appetizer on a hot day. (306) 761-2305 (no website)
Beer Bros.: Watch the people go by on downtown's pedestrianized portion of Scarth Street. Beer Bros newly refinished patio is small but full of sunshine. Stop by and sample an exotic beer whose name you can't even pronounce (and that's before you start drinking). www.beerbros.ca / (306) 586-2337
Atlantis: This downtown coffee spot isn't licensed for liquor, but that doesn't keep the crowds away. Open from the early morning until late, and offers free wireless. Oh, and the artwork on the walls is all by local artists. www.atlantiscoffee.com / (306) 565-2213
More to come! Please follow the blog for updates to this list, and new reviews.
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Who is the most interesting person you've ever met?
By far the most interesting person I've ever met is a friend of my ex-boyfriend's. We travelled to the town where he grew up, and Dave's house was a requisite stop. Of course his name wasn't Dave, but it will be for this story.
Dave lived way out in the middle of nowhere, in a dump of a house placed in the midst of fields and trees and woods and ponds and streams. His kitchen bore an incredibly exquisite pattern of blue-and-white linoleum, almost like Persian art, from the 70s. I told him that I wanted to take his linoleum. Though worn in spots, it was glorious.
When we arrived we were greeted by a fierce, barking, stiff-legged Chow dog who glared at us like he would like to take off our heads. Dave's friend Mike, who seemed to be perpetually there, showed off a nasty purple-and-red wound he'd received to the thigh from this dog. We walked a long circle around his chain.
The dog was only the firstfruits of the menagerie. All over Dave's house, all over his yard, chained or cooped or caged or roaming free, were an astonishing number of animals. Groups of semi-feral bunnies hopped and scattered as we approached, disturbing their grazing on the lawn. Another dog and two or three cats permitted us to pet them. Baby quails huddled under a heat lamp in their sawdust-bedded cage. Tom turkeys and guinea hens stalked the grounds. A peacock perched high up in a tree. A long snake curled sleepily in its cage. Overwhelmed, I gave up trying to count the species or number of the hoard. It was like Isaiah’s vision of the peaceable kingdom.
Dave himself was quite the character. Short and grey-bearded, with an almost perfectly round, swelling belly and long, hanging arms, he bore an uncanny resemblance to a gnome. In fact, he cheerfully informed us, that was his nickname. He wandered around shirtless, in only an aging pair of gray sweat-shorts and sneakers. He was undoubtedly the hairiest person I have ever seen. Great rugs of hair covered his shoulders, chest, and arms, blending in with the long gray beard that covered his face and the top of his chest. The beard crept over and obscured most of his face, like untrimmed ivy. He even had a tuft of hair sprouting from the end of his nose. None of this bothered Dave. He was one of the most laid-back characters I have ever encountered.
Dave hospitably welcomed us and offered us beer. Beer, marijuana, and home-made corncob tobacco pipes seemed to be the main occupations of the house. Dave and his friend Mike drank can after can of Budweiser and deposited the empties into a bulging garbage bag in the kitchen. Dave showed us his system of smoking: he rotated through about four or five handmade corncob pipes, smoking one and then laying it on the end of the line, then smoking the one at the other end of the line. In this way he always had a cool pipe to start with.
In a lone conversation with Dave when he took me upstairs to show me something, he earnestly extolled the virtues of marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms. “It’s natural,” he explained. “Plants. Perfectly natural. They’re good for you.”
Despite Dave’s eccentricities, or perhaps entwined with them, he was obviously an intelligent person. He had or once had, I’m not sure which, a good job in the city involving computer engineering or programming. He was something of a lay inventor, describing to us his latest creation. He was generous, open-hearted, warm, accepting, and supremely laid-back, even when referring to his ex-wife, who’d left him for another man. His lone daughter, who with her boyfriend operated a tattoo parlour and who demonstrated their art all over her person, obviously adored him. One couldn’t help but like Dave, once one got over the astonishment of his surroundings, his physical person, and some of his habits. He was truly one of kindest and most intriguing people I’ve ever met.
Entering and leaving Dave’s place felt almost like those stories where children accidentally stumble into a strange, alternate magical world, experience adventures, and come back to the real world. It was a time, space and reality warp, this crazy kingdom populated by dozens of animals and eccentric people, and ruled over by a gentle, hairy gnome who drank beer, smoked pot and homemade corncob pipes.
So that was Dave. Who is the most interesting person you’ve ever met?
Happy 4th!!!
Hope you are enjoying time with family, friends, fried chicken, sweet tea and cold beer.
Late one evening right after work. Stopped by the grocery store for a bit of shopping. Hurriedly cruised through the aisles grabbing what I needed and didn't and approached the "express" register. Plucked a little plastic divider from the side, plonked it down on the conveyer belt to separate from the neat stash of the guy in front of me, and began loading up my selection. Which was, exactly: a bottle of Australian wine (red); two boxes of whole-grain crispbreads; a box of Brie; two pomegranates; some chestnuts; a bag of seeded red grapes; and red pepper hummus, party-size. The guy in front of me glanced at my stash; and visibly out of the corner of my eye I could see him looking at it, sizing it up, assessing it and me. Which is fine: I do it too. Nothing talks like your selection in the grocery store. Try it sometime. You'll be amazed at what you can learn about your fellow shoppers from what is loaded in their carts and stacked onto their cash register belts.
Finally he broke the silence. "You've got great appetizers," he said.
"Thanks," I said. What else would you say?
"No, I mean it," he said. "Compared to me, I mean." He pointed apologetically. "Beer and ice cream." He was right. Besides that, a papaya and two unidentified red fruits in a bag.
"I know a lot of guys who would think that your snacks were better than mine," I said. He laughed. A few minutes later, rather embarrassedly: "I didn't mean to be noticing your food." But of course he did. "That's all right," I said. "I think you can learn a lot about people by what they buy." He agreed, and thus ended a rather surreal but funny encounter. Human beings are so endearingly odd. I love it when you unexpectedly get a glimpse of the inner world of one when their social barriers drop.
And I'll always remember that I've got great appetizers.
Admittedly, I could care less about the Superbowl. Or about professional football in general. But I did go to a kickass Superbowl party that my friends throw every year on Sullivan's Island...they put a tent outside their house with stadium seating, a large movie screen for the game, an Airstream hotdog vendor (yes, I ate more than one), an open bar serving Pittsburg brewed beer, Tony the peanut guy from all the Citadel/USC games...well done friends, well done! Anyhoo, this is for the winner of the Superbowl...
Designer Tobi Fairley
Designer Kenneth Brown
via decorpad
???
via decorpad
Elle Decor
Designer Jamie Herzlinger
And this is for the winner of my lil' Survey! Drumroll, please...
Suzanne
Please email me your mailing address to sidney@eclectic-idg.com so I can send you the House Beautiful book! Big thanks to all that participated! Your kind words and helpful feedback meant more than you will ever know!!! And to everyone else, thank for reading!
