Little Souse On The Prairie - Part One

You CAN go home again. Minutes after stepping out of her cozy grape-scented business class seat, Sheena is whisked away to the official welcome committee function at Bleachers (formerly known as the Vendome - one of the oldest continually operating public houses in Winnipeg, and an architectural gem currently covered up by fake green astroturf ceilings). In the atmosphere of old WHA paraphenalia, pre-Asper Blue Bomber glory days and $10 pitchers of Fort Garry Dark Ale, the paler amongst us are called "Aristocrats" and offered cheap discount soapstone carvings.

The festivities wrap up, and we head to the home of our honoured hostess for one of my all-time favourite Winnipeg culinary traditions: Gondola Pizza. Now, some people like thick-crust pizza. Some prefer thin. Gondola is, as they say Incomparable, because this is no-crust pizza. I defy any of my readers to measure a Gondola crust exceeding a 1 mm thickness. The toppings (pepperoni & mushroom in this case) held together with a small layer of cheese. It is then cut into squares - NOT slices. Even the middle pieces can be safely picked up with fingers only. No excessive runny sauce to ruin the carpet, no crumbs. You can even knock the box off the table, have it land upside down, pick it up the next day and before you can say "abracadabra" you have yourself some breakfast.

After a little bit of shopping and lunch down in Osborne Village (great nachos at Carlos 'N Murphy's , margaritas kind of sucked in a too-much-mix-not-enough-lime-juice kind of way), we ventured out into the mothership of mullets - Transcona. Transcoma, Trashcona, take your pick. Where the collar might be Blue, but never ever ones beer. Sheena loves the intricacies of interprovincial beer pecking orders and remembers how horrified she was when she first moved to Ontario and people who lived indoors actually drank Labatt's Blue. We had other names for it growing up.


Sitting at the Silver Spike, one of several venues on the Trashcona Pub Crawl Circuit just down the block from the CN shops, watching the local house band at 4pm with family, friends and associated hangers-on. Still daylight out, so no requirement to go through the in-house metal detector.


I insisted to my eastern compadre that he indulge in the Holy Trinity of Manitoba best brews: Club, Labatt's Lite and the mysterious Google-elusive Standard Beer. The same Standard Beer which caused El Chaperone to blaspheme on the side of a Mennonite Brethern Church a couple of years back following Canada Day festivities. Also insisted on the OV, but didn't put it in the Trinity since Quebeckers like their legacy Carling O'Keefe products almost as much as 'Peggers.

The evening entertainment which followed this prolonged warmup is deserving of its own blog post, but let us just conclude with the remark that Sunday morning's 6 hour drive was punctuated with bad trucker coffee, Old Dutch Ripple, stale Tootsie rolls inbetween head-bobbing naps with the shades on.