Damn you, and your lettuce, too
Benn's birthday was last week. After solid weeks of me trying to convince him that he should get to pick his own birthday activities on his birthday, rather than just sit around the house like we always do, Benn finally chose to go to a BC Lions (that's football, apparently) game and then walk across the street to try the Atlantic Trap and Grill. If you look up Vancouver donairs on Google (and I suggest you do if you feel like being smug, since the wingeing of ex-pat Maritimers is pathetic to witness), this place apparently serves decent Halifax fare. It had just moved locations to directly across from the football place thingy.
So we went. Benn got me carbs, we both suffered through the game (which was a loss so blatant and humiliating that the stands basically emptied themselves long before the end of the last quarter) and then we walked over to the Atlantic Trap and Grill. Drunkards were wrestling each other outside. So far, so good. So we walk in, and there's a big mat on the floor saying "Welcome to the East Coast." It was loud, and had wooden barrels and lots of drunkards. It felt great, especially to Benn, who hadn't gotten the brief respite home which I had a couple weeks ago.
It was crowded and loud. We didn't care. We perched ourselves on stools in the corner, like naughty children, and ordered garlic fingers and donairs from the server (wearing a football jersey which read "Russel Beers"). Our blatantly Haligonian order made him pause.
"Uh... just so you know, the donairs don't come in pitas. They come in tortilla wraps" he said. We blinked owlishly at him for a moment.
"Ooh... kay..." Benn replied. We weren't sure how to respond to that. Why would they come in wraps? They aren't wraps. They're DONAIRS.
When the garlic fingers arrived, we looked at them in confusion. They were served (get this, Maritimers) in a basket. That's right. Like garlic bread. Not on a platter or pan, the way pizza should be served. And yes, it did appear to be cooked on pizza dough, but when we picked them up, they drooped impotently in our hands, sadly dripping grease, and radiated that certain warm moistness that pizza gets when you warm it over in the microwave. They also didn't taste very garlicky.
The "authentic" donair sauce with which we were served was thick, and when you dipped your finger in it and lifted the finger towards your mouth, it left a dripping trail leading back down to the cup, much the way honey does. Oh, and by the way, it tasted like honey.
"What the FUCK?" was Benn's appraisal. "There's LETTUCE under it."
But maybe the donair... wraps... would be better. I had given up hope, but Benn, clinging to the last moments of his birthday, was hopeful.
Soon, more baskets arrived. In each, was a snug, red little tortilla wrap, bristling with healthful-looking lettuce and tomato. A hint of red onion peeped out from the leafy fronds charmingly.
"What the FUCK??" said Benn, "There's FRIES. Everyone knows that the only appropriate side order to a donair is MORE DONAIRS.
... And WHY IS IT RED??"
We began eating glumly. Not only could you pick these up and take dainty bites out of them, but your fingers stayed relatively clean. After a few mouthfuls of crunching though salad vegetables, a hint of meat appeared within the red tortilla. Further in, the cloying honey taste of their "donair sauce" was also detectable. It was bizarre. It was like going to a movie "inspired by" your favourite book. You recognize bits of it, but this is not the same thing.
Seriously, how hard is it to make a decent Halifax donair? Crappy, dirty, two-bit corner places serve them all over frigging Nova Scotia. You can't tell me that the Maritime cuisine is impossible to duplicate. I feel like calling up King of Donair and tattling. Presumably they would come flying down to Vancouver to start a good ole' Halifax knife fight with the restaurant owner, for daring to call this... this... healthy travesty a "Halifax donair".
What gets me is that if a Vancouverite moved East, and went to a sushi restaurant, and ordered a BC Roll, and was served a salmon-head (eyes still staring) covered in rice and roe, with a seaweed salad served on the side, they'd be pretty annoyed. But it seems to be perfectly ok in Vancouver to take a delicious East Coast dish, then cover it with LETTUCE and healthy red tortilla.
Welcome to the East Coast, my ass. I feel the way that Chinese people must feel when they walk into a "Chinese" restaurant and see people eating Chicken Balls and Fortune Cookies. Except that while Chinese American cuisine has taken real Chinese cuisine and added three sides of deep fried glory, Damn Vancouver has gone and REMOVED THE GREASE AND COVERED THE THING IN LETTUCE.
You know your country is big when you miss the culture from your side of the continent.
So we went. Benn got me carbs, we both suffered through the game (which was a loss so blatant and humiliating that the stands basically emptied themselves long before the end of the last quarter) and then we walked over to the Atlantic Trap and Grill. Drunkards were wrestling each other outside. So far, so good. So we walk in, and there's a big mat on the floor saying "Welcome to the East Coast." It was loud, and had wooden barrels and lots of drunkards. It felt great, especially to Benn, who hadn't gotten the brief respite home which I had a couple weeks ago.
It was crowded and loud. We didn't care. We perched ourselves on stools in the corner, like naughty children, and ordered garlic fingers and donairs from the server (wearing a football jersey which read "Russel Beers"). Our blatantly Haligonian order made him pause.
"Uh... just so you know, the donairs don't come in pitas. They come in tortilla wraps" he said. We blinked owlishly at him for a moment.
"Ooh... kay..." Benn replied. We weren't sure how to respond to that. Why would they come in wraps? They aren't wraps. They're DONAIRS.
When the garlic fingers arrived, we looked at them in confusion. They were served (get this, Maritimers) in a basket. That's right. Like garlic bread. Not on a platter or pan, the way pizza should be served. And yes, it did appear to be cooked on pizza dough, but when we picked them up, they drooped impotently in our hands, sadly dripping grease, and radiated that certain warm moistness that pizza gets when you warm it over in the microwave. They also didn't taste very garlicky.
The "authentic" donair sauce with which we were served was thick, and when you dipped your finger in it and lifted the finger towards your mouth, it left a dripping trail leading back down to the cup, much the way honey does. Oh, and by the way, it tasted like honey.
"What the FUCK?" was Benn's appraisal. "There's LETTUCE under it."
But maybe the donair... wraps... would be better. I had given up hope, but Benn, clinging to the last moments of his birthday, was hopeful.
Soon, more baskets arrived. In each, was a snug, red little tortilla wrap, bristling with healthful-looking lettuce and tomato. A hint of red onion peeped out from the leafy fronds charmingly.
"What the FUCK??" said Benn, "There's FRIES. Everyone knows that the only appropriate side order to a donair is MORE DONAIRS.
... And WHY IS IT RED??"
We began eating glumly. Not only could you pick these up and take dainty bites out of them, but your fingers stayed relatively clean. After a few mouthfuls of crunching though salad vegetables, a hint of meat appeared within the red tortilla. Further in, the cloying honey taste of their "donair sauce" was also detectable. It was bizarre. It was like going to a movie "inspired by" your favourite book. You recognize bits of it, but this is not the same thing.
Seriously, how hard is it to make a decent Halifax donair? Crappy, dirty, two-bit corner places serve them all over frigging Nova Scotia. You can't tell me that the Maritime cuisine is impossible to duplicate. I feel like calling up King of Donair and tattling. Presumably they would come flying down to Vancouver to start a good ole' Halifax knife fight with the restaurant owner, for daring to call this... this... healthy travesty a "Halifax donair".
What gets me is that if a Vancouverite moved East, and went to a sushi restaurant, and ordered a BC Roll, and was served a salmon-head (eyes still staring) covered in rice and roe, with a seaweed salad served on the side, they'd be pretty annoyed. But it seems to be perfectly ok in Vancouver to take a delicious East Coast dish, then cover it with LETTUCE and healthy red tortilla.
Welcome to the East Coast, my ass. I feel the way that Chinese people must feel when they walk into a "Chinese" restaurant and see people eating Chicken Balls and Fortune Cookies. Except that while Chinese American cuisine has taken real Chinese cuisine and added three sides of deep fried glory, Damn Vancouver has gone and REMOVED THE GREASE AND COVERED THE THING IN LETTUCE.
You know your country is big when you miss the culture from your side of the continent.