Connie'sCorner

April 03, 2010

Connie’s Corner Café

967 Main Street

Mon-Fri 8:15am to 3pm

Sat 8:15am to 2pm

Connie’s Corner Café needed a revisit. We hadn’t been there in two years, and in fact, it was one of the only places I went without Leif, so he had to try it out. Turns out, mediocrity is sustainable because they earned a D+ rating yet again.

It possesses a quintessential North End style - self-serve coffee (tiny cup refills are extra), street crud on the windows and pictures of obscure (mostly) Manitoba celebrities and poorly-moustachioed (wispy) musicians to assault the eyes. Also, no debit. Cash only. Or as they would say in the North End: “Kashoonlie”

I had their “Trapper Special” which comes with three meats. I quote from the menu here: “garlic, bacon, wieners.” I asked for no wieners and they charged me an extra dollar for the favour. The “garlic” was garlic sausage, and this is the only place we’ve been to that listed it as casually as that. The rest of their menu was equally unique. Last time I was there, they had no printed menu, just the one posted on the walls. This time we had a table-version, listing such things as a “BBLT,” a bannock and boloney with lettuce and tomato sandwich. The concept of a bannock and baloney sandwich scared me.

The bannock turned out to be the best part of the otherwise insipid meal. It was soft, thick and delicious. It made me feel better about their Campsie-quality coffee. It was weak as tea but without the pleasing flavour. The sausage I got was definitely the worst I’ve ever had. They looked like the normally execrable factory breakfast links I’m used to, but were ten times more awful. I’m really not sure how they achieved that, but way to go. The potatoes were actually good and were cooked thoroughly, but had no flavour to them at all. The bacon was paper-thin, but actually pleasing to the tongue.

Leif had their country omelette with meats and veggies inside, but as soon as he cut into it, a deluge of egg water and slurge came pouring out. We’re used to bad omelettes but this was a first. It was like an alien giving horrible birth.

In the end, Connie’s serves up big portions of bad food, much like barely-better Juney’s just down the street. Usually, after having bad coffee, we like to go to Starbucks or somewhere else to get a decent cup, but Selkirk and Main is in the middle of a coffee desert! Where can we get decent coffee around there???

This place is truly unique in Winnipeg.

Just to add to the pile of kitsch, there’s a converted Cigarette machine that now dispenses stickers instead of smokes; a lava lamp made to look like a ketchup bottle obscures the view of Connie in the kitchen cooking (damn alliteration again!), and the tables were adorned in red & white checkered tablecloths.

We sat across the room from the “Thunder Voice Crew Area,” a little nook for the Thunder Voice Crew, apparently. The menu is posted in big huge letters on the wall above the counter (and one in the TVC Area), to promote clarity, I presume. The breakfast names are all Métis/Aboriginal flavoured, and most of our party ordered The Mad Trapper which came with more meat and eggs than the regular Corner Special. It also featured bannock instead of toast, something we were all craving.

Well, the meat-deluxe platter was good and bad. Nice quantities of meat for the sampling, but one of those were hot dog wieners. Hot dogs at breakfast? Not in my book. I did polish one off, but refused the other. I don’t remember the last time I actually passed on a breakfast meat. I dislike many meats, such as breakfast links, but I’ll get down with them because I hate wasting food. Well, the wieners, as Ravi once said, were food worth wasting. A quote not heard since the dark days of the Pony Corral breakfast. Not a good sign, Connie.

The rest of the meats were pretty good, bacon and garlic sausage. Nothing to write home about, but decent. The hash browns tasted like they were frozen an hour previous and were in nice chunks but halfway between mushy and solid. The bannock was dry and burnt a little bit, and was obviously cooked in the grease of the meat, as it bore the taste of many different animal’s fat. Good thing we didn’t have any vegetarians with us that day. At least we could douse it all in Louisiana Supreme hot sauce. The coffee was self-serve, and siphoned right from the underground reservoir. Neither are good points, and the filmy water we got wasn’t encouraging either.

All in all, this place is quite fun to come look at. The servers are cheery, but sparse. The food is plentiful, but greasy and mediocre. When I consider how questionable the washrooms were, I don’t think I’ll be back very soon.

However, if you ever want to eat breakfast under a picture of Ted Dibiase (The Million-Dollar-Man), C3 is the place to be.

Self Serve Coffee! Bring your own service.

July 6 2008

Connie’s Corner

967 Main St.

“Corner Special” $2.99 + Coffee

Connie’s Corner Café (henceforth referred to as C3) is a brilliant eyesore. It has kitsch-out-your-ass, and I love that. It goes beyond good or bad taste; it really has a class of its own. Often when I saw this restaurant in the past I thought it was a hostel, as the teepee (tipi?) pictogram resembles the Hosteling International logo. As well, the sign proclaiming they will buy your old video games and junk in the window makes it seem like a pawn shop. Somewhere in the middle of hostel and Pawn shop you get restaurant.

Soon as you step into C3, you are blown away by the absolutely cluttered walls, full of pictures of old hockey stars, old rock stars, old vacation pics and miscellaneous art, all atop of the bathroom/kitchen tile work and teal paint. Throw in a couple walls coloured lime green and you’ve got yourself a kitch-tastic breakfast spot. Not to mention the mini (non-functioning) jukeboxes on the counter and the larger (functioning) jukebox in the corner that played wonderful country hits.

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