Greg "Grga" S.'s Profile

Warren is seriously under-served when it comes to lodgings, and when it comes to lodgings that don't cost an arm and a leg, the pickings get really slim. Fortunately, if you widen your search a little bit, the situation gets better. Budget Lodge is that most unusual of finds: an inexpensive motel which isn't a dump.

Oh, sure, the furnishings are dated. Okay, really dated. Okay, except for the TV and the microwave (and probably the mattress), I'm guessing that all the fittings in my room were original equipment from when the place was built, and I'm also guessing that that was probably in the 1950s. If you're the kind of person who says, "Darling, we simply must redecorate the living room. That colour is SO last year!" you'd probably hate it. Personally, I find it kind of funky. But the most important thing to me is that my room be clean, and it was. In fact, I've stayed in much pricier and allegedly classier places where I was much more dubious as to how sanitary the place actually was. I wouldn't go so far as to say that you could eat off the floor, but at least you don't have to worry about what you might catch.

No wi-fi, but you can't have everything.

I had to go to St. Catharine's to exchange my out-of-province license for an Ontario license. Fortunately, a couple of old friends offered to drive me up there, hung around while I did battle with the bureaucracy, and then took me out to lunch to recover afterwards. I was looking longingly at the Perkins across the street, but hey, they were paying the piper, so they got to call the tune.

Our server was good. She had a sense of humour (or at least enough sense to laugh at our silliness), and was helpful in making our choices. She also accepted it with good grace when I told her that I'm diabetic, and thus would not be buying any of their overpriced drinks, and would she please bring me a glass of water. (It was gratifyingly large, too.)

I can't complain about the food. I had the clubhouse wrap with a side Sonoma salad. The wrap was good, if not outstanding. The salad was quite inspired. I sure didn't expect such an original recipe from a chain. I'd happily eat here on someone else's nickel any time.

But I'm taking a point off for the prices. Maybe I've been spoiled by eating at the Eighties for so long, but with prices like these guys charge, I would expect to be licking the plate and sucking on the napkin for every last molecule of ambrosia. Dudes: it's just food. It's not bad, but it's totally not worth what you're charging for it.

To be honest, I didn't go into Bulk Barn with the expectation of buying anything. I just wanted to kill some time while I was waiting for the bus after running some errands. I was expecting a super-sized version of the bulk food aisle at Save-On Foods or wherever. And they did have lots of bulk stuff, with way more variety. (I did a double-take when I saw the dried strawberries. I had never seen those before.)

But what really stoggled me was the selection of English tid-bits, like tinned treacle pudding, Yorkshire pudding mix ("just add eggs"), Branston Pickle, Rose's lime marmalade (that was tempting), and (trumpet fanfare, please): *Batchelor's Mushy Peas*. (Just sitting right there on the shelf, in front of God and everybody. I couldn't believe my eyes. And only $1.89 a tin. Not nearly 5 bucks, like the grossly overpriced place that sells it in North Vancouver.)

They had a bunch of other imported foodstuffs, too, but that was the shelf that excited me. If they had Jaffa Cakes and Hula Hoops (and ajvar), the place would be perfect. They also have all kinds of cute cooking stuff, like cake pans in shapes like Dora the Explorer and Spider-Man.

I'm the kind of guy who would eat the cuisine of a different country at every meal, if I could, so when I was asked if I wanted to have lunch at Artemis after church, I jumped at the chance. (After all, Greek food is on the list of my 210 favourite national cuisines.)

I tried the Greek salad with souvlaki. (Yeah, I know: how stereotypical. But hey, I gotta start somewhere.) It was good, but considerably different than I was expecting. I don't think I've ever had a Greek salad without cucumbers or olives before, and I've definitely never had sauce poured on my souvlaki before serving before.

(It wasn't bad at all, just unexpected. At this point, I don't know enough about Greek cuisine to say whether this was a matter of the food being modified to suit Ontario palates, or whether it's a regional variation which I hadn't encountered before, so I'm now accepting funds for a research trip to Greece, so I can speak authoritatively about the way Greek food should be served.)

In my opinion, there's no such thing as "too many sushi joints". (Then again, I used to live on Lonsdale, which has 13 sushi joints in a 12-block stretch.) So when I found out that Fort Erie has sushi, and more importantly, multiple sources of sushi, it made my day.

The name "Japanese Restaurant" is a wee bit misleading. They do offer things like udon and teppanyaki, but not yakisoba or okonomiyaki. Sushi is what's front and centre here. They offer enough other dishes that an ichthyophobe could still eat here, but, let's be honest, it's a sushi joint. (Apparently, there used to be a Chinese buffet in this location. If you come here expecting pork fried rice and egg rolls, you're going to be in for a pleasant surprise.)

Tokyo is different from the Yukiguni 2, in that it's all-you-can eat. I love sushi so much that all-you-can-eat is definitely the way for me to go. I could bankrupt myself in no time, if I had to pay by the roll. It also has a much longer menu (at least compared with the lunch menu at Yukiguni). However, I was disappointed to learn that they don't have goma ae, either.

Like most all-you-can-eat sushi joints, you mark down what you want on a slip of paper, and they bring it to you. It's more fun to do this in a group, of course, and I've learned to be a bit flexible about whether they actually bring everything I ordered or not. (After all, if there's something you're missing, you can always order it again.)

Winners: probably the best thing I had this time was the "Las Vegas roll". Lots of variety, resulting in a roll which may be too wide for some people to handle.

So-so: I ordered a couple of rolls with mango in them, because it sounded like a good idea. Even though I like mango, however, it doesn't really work for me in sushi.

Losers: I ordered the wonton soup, as I always do when I can, because I love wonton. Unfortunately, the broth on the wonton here is really uninspired. Even Wong Wing frozen wonton soup is better than that, and that's a sad thing to have to say.

What? It's McDonald's, right? This is the company that spends so much effort to make sure that every Big Mac is the same as very other Big Mac, no matter where in the world you order one, right? You'll never get a good burger at McDonald's, for the same reason you'll never get a bad one. The place is aggressively mediocre.

In fact, if I weren't in a rush, and reluctant to risk missing my bus, I wouldn't have ordered from here, but I did. Mistake.

For whatever reason McDonald's normally formidable quality control doesn't seem to apply here. I don't know why. McDonald's internal mantra is "Q, S, C, and V" Quality, Service, Cleanliness, and Value. Now, of those four terms, only one (Cleanliness) means the same things in McDonald'sese as it does in English. But this place isn't even clean. The food was definitely nastier than usual. The chicken burger, while at least identifiably chicken (as opposed to the mystery meat in the McChicken burgers of yore), had undergone some kind of mysterious (and probably trade secret) process to suck all the flavour out of it. The chocolate banana pie (which I ordered in what turned out to be a misplaced burst of optimism) was more overdone than any of these pocket pies than I have gotten at any fast food joint anywhere. Granted, they didn't manage to mess up the pop, but that would have taken extraordinary measures.

The prices were also significantly higher than the last time I was at a McDonald's but that was a while ago.

I may still visit a McDonald's once every five years or so in the future. But not this one.

I was delighted (if somewhat surprised) to learn that Fort Erie (which is not a big place) has sushi.

The decorations are very clearly Japanese, and somewhat classier than the kind of el cheapo bento box joint where I normally got my fix in BC. The menu (or at least the lunch menu) is a *lot* shorter than I'm used to. There were only about a half-dozen choices, plus a couple of specials. I was particularly disappointed by the absence of goma ae, as that is a particular favourite of mine. The tea is good (I think I finished a whole pot by myself.)

The sushi lunch comes with five different types of sushi, eight pieces of salmon roll, one gyoza, half a dozen pods of edamame (which I've never seen in a bento box before), pickled ginger, and green salad. The salad came with a cream type dressing, rather than the kind of vinaigrette that I'm used to getting. (At first, I was afraid that it was going to be something boring, like thousand island dressing, but it was quite tasty, and not something I've encountered before. I'm still trying to figure out what was in it.)

To be honest, I'm not really sure whether the food was really awesome enough to elicit the thrill of delight I had upon tasting my first bite, or whether I've just been sushi deprived for too long. (Well, certainly the latter is true.) I'll have to check out the other sushi place in town for comparison.

It so happened that I found this Wendy's while they were promoting their new fishburger, so of course I had to order it with fries. (Mushy peas were, of course, too much to hope for.) The service was fast and friendly, which was kind of reassuring, because this is not tourist season, and that end of Garrison Road was kind of feeling like a ghost town.

Granted, it's only fast food. They're never going to get five stars, but at least they're a consistent, known quantity.

There are restaurants which are licensed to serve alcohol, and then there are bars which happen to serve food. This place is definitely one of the latter. Not that the food's bad. It's just that it's impossible to pretend that you're anywhere else but in a bar. If you're a drinker, you should probably add a point to the score I'm giving. (If Yelp allowed me to straddle the fence and give it 2 1/2 stars, I would.)

The walls are lined with mementoes of Crystal Beach's glory days as a tourist mecca, and of the local sports teams, especially minor hockey.

The service is friendly. (Well, to be fair, everybody in this town seems to be friendly. I haven't run into a grump yet.)

The price is higher than I'd like to pay, given the ambience and the quality of the food, but it's the only place to eat out for several blocks in every direction, which probably explains why there is a small but vocal crowd of regulars.

I didn't notice the huge President's Choice banner the first couple of times I drove past here, but apparently valu-mart is a subsidiary of Loblaw's, so it carries the same brands, but not as much selection, since the store is smaller.

The prices are better than I feared, but still higher than I'd like. One whole aisle appears to be dedicated to pet food and supplies, which, given the small size of the store, makes for a pretty substantial commitment to pets. There's another entire aisle dedicated to things like pop and chips, so the selection of actual food is even more limited. The produce selection is pretty good for the size of the store, and there's a cart where produce which is past its prime is bagged up and marked down, so if you're not picky about how your produce looks, you can save.

One thing about the parking lot is that there are no dedicated pedestrian pathways, so every moment you're in the parking lot, you're a fair target for Ontario drivers. (Granted, that's not quite as dangerous as being in Montréal, but it pays to keep on your toes.)