FOOD CULTURE
Neighbourhood: Tuxedo
Address: 645 Sterling Lion Parkway
Phone: 204-221-2985
Entrees: $12 – $37
On a suburban strip of Winnipeg, surrounded by big-box predictability, Food Culture blooms like a small act of rare and heartfelt grace. Inside, colour and meaning are everywhere: a mural of red and orange poppies beams warmth, and vases of golden wheat stand tall on wheat-hued linens, reminding diners that Ukraine’s heart beats in its soil. The room hums with the easy conviviality of a Ukrainian family table, feeling worlds away from its strip-mall setting.
The menu reads like a cross-section of Ukrainian life: agrarian, celebratory, and richly varied. It begins, as tradition insists, with the zakusky table, an array of cold dishes meant for sharing and toasting echoing tapas or mezze. A sampler of salo, delicately cured pork fat perfumed with garlic, melts like butter on dark rye. Herring with potatoes, a pairing of land and sea recalling the Black Sea coast and the Dnipro River plains, delivers bright briny notes that balance a sip of chilled vodka. Crêpes with red caviar offer a festive note of luxury, while marinated mushrooms and pickled vegetables capture the country’s enduring preservation culture, practical, yet also deeply sensory. This is the spirit of Ukrainian hospitality: abundance without pretense.
Soups are often the heart of the meal, and the borscht proves why. A ruby-coloured bowl, enriched with pork and beef, gets a swirl of sour cream to balance the beet’s earthy sweetness. Garlicky pampushky buns are handy to mop the bowl clean. Each spoonful tastes like the heart of home cooking, warm and restorative.
Hot plates follow in celebratory stride. Village potato pancakes are crisped to golden perfection; soft inside, topped with creamy mushroom gravy and dill. Meat-filled crêpes, rolled like little gifts, are rich and satisfying. Slow-roasted pork with vegetables captures the kitchen’s knack for turning humble ingredients into something quietly elegant. A piping hot clay pot, brimming with tender meat and root veggies awakes with familiar aroma even before the first bite.
Locally, Ukrainian dumplings are ubiquitous to its cuisine, and Food Culture honours them in abundance. Varenyky (perogies) come both savoury and sweet – classic potato and cheddar for comfort, and sour cherry for delight – served playfully with a bib and gloves for eating by hand, just as tradition allows, both cherry juice and laughter inevitable. The pelmeni, smaller Russian-style dumplings filled with beef or chicken, speak to the way culinary borders blur, yet distinct traditions remain.
Though it will surely require a loosening of the belt, ending the feast with one of the extraordinary pastries in the dessert case is a must. Like the signature honey cake, most are layered with decadence and cream.
What distinguishes Food Culture is not nostalgia but renewal. Amid its transportive dining room where heritage and heart find contemporary form, the hospitality, as in any Ukrainian home, is generous to its core.
