Here comes the sun(burger) Chef Wendy Murray brings Underground Café’s iconic menu items to new Exchange District café By: Eva Wasney Posted: 7:00 PM CST Monday, Mar. 7, 2022

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This article was published 06/03/2022 (1024 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The sunburger is back, but this time it’s being served above ground.

Wendy Murray, owner of the former Underground Café, has returned to the Exchange District and is now slinging her iconic veggie burgers out of the kitchen at the Royal Albert Arms. The live music venue is a stone’s throw from her previous location on Arthur Street.

To say she’s glad to be back is an understatement.

“I love this neighbourhood,” says Murray, sitting in the sunlit atrium of her new dining room. “After I closed the restaurant, I was too depressed to come down here.”

“I love this neighbourhood. After I closed the restaurant, I was too depressed to come down here.” – Chef Wendy Murray

She had been running the Underground — a basement café with bright murals and mismatched chairs — for 23 years when she made the decision to close up shop in the fall of 2016. Murray had hit a financial and administrative wall.

“I was opening, working all day, closing, doing all the paperwork, all the business meetings and I just couldn’t do it anymore,” she says. “One morning I was brushing my teeth and I was like, ‘We’re done.’”

Murray has spent the intervening years making sunburger patties for friends, cooking at a senior’s home and working in a large hotel restaurant.

The corporate kitchen world was the antithesis of her approach to cheffing.

“I’d rather go back to making a little bit less money, being in the Exchange and doing what I want to do,” she says. “No more crappy, premade frozen food.”

The opportunity to return to her old stomping ground came by way of Royal Albert manager David McKeigan, who also owns the Pyramid Cabaret. McKeigan took over the historic hotel and music venue in 2019 after the building went through a series of closures and reopenings. The pandemic has been spent hosting shows when restrictions allowed and restoring the space’s heritage features to their former glory.

“I’d rather go back to making a little bit less money, being in the Exchange and doing what I want to do. No more crappy, premade frozen food.” – Chef Wendy Murray

Murray opened the 40-seat street-facing restaurant last Thursday, a little over a week after she and McKeigan decided to partner up.

For now, she is serving a pared-down Underground menu with plans to bring in more vegan and gluten-free items in the future. Former regulars should be pleased to see the return of favourites such as the sunburger, a seed-filled vegetarian patty served on a bagel with creamy dill sauce; the Wendy, an egg salad sandwich; and the spicy tuna and chicken salad sandwiches.

“I’m sort of anti-food trend,” Murray says. “I believe in comfort food done well, freshly made every day with whole ingredients, and who cares if there’s butter and cheese in it?”

The new café opened with a similarly pared-down staff, with Murray in the kitchen, until traffic in the neighbourhood picks up again.

“Maybe as, you know, the record snowfall melts and it warms up and after two years of COVID… you’ll start to see people on the streets again and the (area) come alive again,” she says.

Working at the Royal Albert, a place she spent many late nights as a youth, feels like proper homecoming. “I don’t know if it’s the neighbourhood or these old buildings with their creaking floors, I just feel so comfortable here,” Murray says.

The Royal Albert restaurant, located at 48 Albert St., will be open Wednesday through Saturday for lunch, dinner and late-night service. Visit royalalbertarms.net for more information.

eva.wasney@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @evawasney