An Off-Season Look at Stratford, Ontario: The City's Restaurant Community Continues to be Open for Business and Not Just for Locals
An Off-Season Look at Stratford
BY BRYAN
LAVERY
It may be the end of another Stratford Festival
season which brought diners in droves to the city for prix fixe menus, but the
city’s restaurant community continues to be open for business and not just for
the locals. Stratford has been known for decades for setting the benchmark when
it comes to dining, but until just a few years ago it wasn’t feasible for many of the
restaurants to operate year-round. But that has changed.
A full calendar of exhibitions
and special culinary events, music programming, and lots of restaurants, cafés,
food specialty shops, bakeries, farmers’ markets, epicurean treks, galleries,
antique shops and a wide-ranging system of parks and recreation along the Avon
River means that there is plenty to do in Stratford during the off-season.
Savour Stratford has had successes in steadily
increasing the awareness of the many and diverse offerings of Stratford when
the theatre-goers are gone. Programs featured under an expanded Savour
Stratford brand include Stratford Chefs School dinners, tutored tastings and a
series of self-guided culinary trails.
Paying homage to the rise of
craft beer and the boom in bacon as a culinary trend, The Bacon and Ale Trail continues
to be a great success. After all, Perth County pork is legendary. This is the
home of the Ontario Pork Congress. The Stratford Chocolate trail showcases skilled chocolatiers and bakers
that work in a city with a storied history in candy making. Boutique chocolate-makers
include Chocolate Barr’s, Rheo Thompson and The Rocky Mountain Chocolate
Factory. Another well-liked tour is The Maple Trail, with maple-inspired
stops with offerings that range from maple balsamic vinegar, to a maple-smoked
bacon BLT, and, at Mercer Hall, a maple Manhattan.
Stratford boasts many independent
niche retailers and specialty services situated in its downtown late-Victorian
streetscapes, and in the well-preserved commercial districts on Downie, Ontario
and Wellington streets. There are a number of great bakeries including the
Downie Street Bake House, which bakes artisanal premium breads — high
quality, hand-crafted and free of artificial additives and preservatives — and
bills itself as, “Really Good Bread from the Wrong Side of the Tracks.”
The quaint tree-lined streets just north of
the river are great for walking and sightseeing. Several of the stately
heritage homes and princely Victorian, Italianate and Second Empire edifices in
Stratford are B&B’s.
Visiting Bradshaws, a premier
culinary retailer known for its holiday grandeur, is an annual Stratford shopping tradition. Operated
by Jeremy and Carrie Wreford, the downtown retailer recently celebrated its 120th
anniversary and remains one of the country's truly inimitable stores.
This year the maturing restaurant
community had a gastronomic rebirth and several restaurants were relaunched
with plenty of fanfare — continuing to reinforce Stratford's
already impressive status as one of Ontario's premier culinary getaways.
One of the standout features of
Stratford's culinary scene is its laid back approach that unites restaurants
and farms through food. There are so many exceptional restaurants in
Stratford that it is impossible to recommend one or two. A short list includes
Bijou, Rene’s Bistro, Restaurant at The Bruce, Mercer Hall, Sirkel Foods, Pazzo
Taverna & Pizzera, Madelyn’s Diner, Keystone Alley, Down The Street Bar
& Restaurant, Foster’s Inn and The Parlour Gastropub. These establishments remain
open year-round.
Chef Robert Rose’s Canadian Grub
is one of few restaurants in the country serving exclusively Canadian grown and
refined products. We
also can’t resist Monforte Dairy’s
30 types of artisanal cheese, and visiting Monforte on Wellington, the seasonally-inspired osteria on Market Square, is always a highlight. The restaurant features an
ever-changing selection of cheeses, charcuterie, salads, soups, preserves,
pickles and other specialties, prepared by Monforte’s culinary team.
Mark and Linda Simone
bought Bijou in March, added a new entrance off Wellington Street, a new bar in
the front area and extended hours with plans to operate the bistro for 10
months of the year. Chef Max Holbrook added to the daily-inspired chalkboard features a globally-inspired
tapas menu of shareable plates featuring Perth County ingredients. The menus of
small plates are paired with craft wines and some old world classics.
Among Stratford’s
most eagerly awaited openings this year was The Red Rabbit. Jessie Larsen and Chefs
Sean Collins and Tim Larsen created the community-shared and worker-owned
venture in a former bridal shop on Wellington Street. The instantly successful,
down-to-earth, farm-oriented
dining experience is built on years of deep symbiotic relationships that
remain at the heart of The Red Rabbit experience. There is a dedicated
focus on Perth County ingredients from area farmers like Church Hill Farm, Perth County Pork
Products, McIntosh Farms, and Soiled Reputation. Regional ingredients abound on
The Red Rabbit menus and include addictive house-made salumi (beef heart
pastrami) and delicious rillettes of rabbit. Be sure to try the Colonel Collins
fried chicken and waffles, which has become a Stratford staple. In search of a
watering spot that serves great craft and house-infused cocktails? The Red
Rabbit is the ticket. Keep in mind that The Red Rabbit is closed on Tuesday and
Wednesday, from now through the winter.
The once celebrated Church Restaurant, where the Stratford Chefs School started in the kitchens back in 1983, was
purchased and painstakingly refurbished by Rob and Candice Wigan. The former Baptist church turned dining and
music venue is now the stunning Revival House and gastro-lounge Chapel. Chefs Kyle Rose and Byron Hallett
met seven years ago in London, Ontario, and have been working together
on and off since. “Our friendship started over a love of salty pork products,
knives, hard work and the beverages that follow. We’re passionate about using
local and sustainable ingredients, showcasing nose-to-tail cuisine and the best
of what Ontario and Perth County have to offer,” declares Rose.
On a visit to the Chapel, we began the evening with the Ontario Gouda Tasting. The
sampling consisted of four half-ounce portions of Mountainoak and Thunder Oak Gouda
(favourites were wild nettle and fenugreek), which the kitchen sources from the
charming Milky Whey Fine Cheese Shop on Ontario Street. Chef’s pairing takes
cheese tasting to a whole other level. It was comprised of lightly pickled
apple balls, a mound of torched maple meringue, a glass of fermented celery
water, florets of crunchy charred dehydrated broccoli and a gorgeous chunk of
pure comb honey from the "Revival House Hives" (produced in partnership
with Huismann Apiaries).
The charcuterie board was underpinned by
technique and skill and the salumi had lots of flavour. The offering included
speck (smoked pork leg), lonza (cured pork loin), coppa (salt-cured from the
neck) and rillettes which in this case were a rich spread of savoury, seasoned,
slow-cooked pork. It should be noted that there were a heady 22 VQA’s to choose
from on the impressive wine list.
Chef/restaurateurs Aaron
and Bronwyn Linley, former owners of
Bijou, introduced Linleys Food Shop,
located at 51 York Street, in late-July. The chef-driven shop features
catering, restaurant-style food to take away and a selection of gourmet fare.
Both experience and proclivity led the Linleys —known for their visionary
cuisine that espouses global inspiration, modern French technique and the very essence
of Ontario — to become formidable culinary retailers.
Bill and Shelley Windsor, who own The Prune,
purchased Mercer Hall Inn this summer and placed Chef Ryan O’Donnell at the
helm. The restaurant at Mercer Hall continues to offer chef-inspired food and
drink featuring heritage pork, line-caught west coast seafood and Ontario-focused
wines.
After several delays, Down the Street Bar and Restaurant re-opened to rave
reviews in July with Chef Lee Avigdor in the kitchen.
Following on the heels of last fall’s opening
of Black Swan Brewing, comes
Stratford’s own micro-distillery, Junction
56 Distillery. Owner Michael
Heisz began his first batch in April, and is starting with vodkas,
vapour-infused gins and moonshine on the shelves at Junction 56. The facility and retail outlet
opened to public in mid-September. Tours and tastings at the distillery
run every Saturday.
There are plenty of great cafés
in Stratford. Anne Campion’s Revel Caffé, behind the red brick City Hall (with
its gables, turrets, gargoyles, and finials), is a great place to grab and go or
sit and watch the sights through the large glass windows facing onto Market
Square.
BRYAN LAVERY is
eatdrink’s Food Editor and Food Writer
at Large.
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