Leopold’s Tavern earns its dive-bar status Tavern offers reliable fare and a comfortable, lived-in feel By: Alison Gillmor Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Wednesday, Sep. 26, 2018 Last Modified: 1:06 PM CDT Friday, Sep. 28, 2018

Opinion

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This article was published 25/09/2018 (2286 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Leopold’s Tavern on South Osborne — part of a chain that started with one location in Regina and then spread to Saskatoon, Calgary and now Winnipeg — is a self-proclaimed dive bar.

Now, you can’t just say you’re a dive bar. That’s like giving yourself a cool nickname. The only way to achieve true dive-bar status is to have bought a fine drinking establishment 50 years ago and then watched it fall slowly into Bukowski-like decrepitude and disrepute.

Also, the women’s bathrooms should be unspeakable.

OK, that’s my rant. So how does Leopold’s do for what it is, a postmodern facsimile of a dive bar? Well, the washrooms are perfectly clean, which is probably just as well — nobody really wants authenticity there. And Leopold’s manages to pull off a comfortable, cluttered, lived-in feel, with nods to historical style — including black-and-white octagonal tile on the floor near the bar, some exposed brick and a pressed-tin tile ceiling — and interior walls absolutely plastered in kitsch and memorabilia.

While the nostalgic wall decor was done in a few days rather than gradually layered over the years, at least it’s been customized to its locale, with 1970s Blue Bombers calendars, Jets hockey cards (original team) and pictures of the Guess Who when they were young and skinny.

Most importantly in the genuineness stakes, Leopold’s is the kind of neighbourhood joint the South Osborne stretch really needs right now. It’s got food, beer and booze, a friendly, noisy ambience, and it’s open late. The place is already hopping.

Specializing in upscale bar food, Leopold’s offers mostly solid and honest but not outstanding versions of old-time bar snacks and meat-and-potato mains. Simple, straight-up snacks include pickled eggs, kettle chips and dip, or a tin of smoked oysters served with aged cheddar, hot sauce and crackers. Sampled Scotch eggs are good, medium-boiled and wrapped in sausage with a crisp crumb finish.

Mains include a variety of poutines, burgers and fries, sammies and wraps.

We started one evening with a Bucket o’ Bacon, which, as advertised, is a (small-ish) metal bucket of meaty, thick-cut bacon, spiced up, cooked medium and served with a little maple syrup, making for a heart-stopping collision of salty, fatty and sweet.

A good classic cheeseburger is straightforward and homey, the soft, shiny-topped house-made bun struggling to contain the big meaty patty and all the fixings.

Fish and chips are good, though the fish’s crunchy batter could have been lighter. Chicken fingers feature proper white meat in crisp breading, but the honey dill sauce was over-dilled and under-honeyed, possibly a Saskatchewanian misunderstanding of this weird made-in-Manitoba condiment. At $16.25, they also feel overpriced.

The chef’s salad is a fresh mix of greens, carrots and radishes, served with blue cheese and one of those very nice Scotch eggs, let down a little by the only-OK mustard vinaigrette served on the side. Mac ’n’ cheese, available as a main or a side, is rich and creamy and given some unpretentious crunch with a gratin of Parmesan and crumbled Ritz crackers.

The only dessert is the deep-fried Mars bar, an absolutely insane Scottish treat — augmented here with ice cream, whipping cream and chocolate sauce — that needs to be crispier on the outside and meltier on the inside.

If you’re watching your wallet, Leopold’s offers happy-hour bargains, along with weekly specials like Taco and Tequila Tuesdays and Wings Wednesdays. Weekend breakfast (served 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays) is also a good deal, with $12.95 buying you a peppery Caesar and an egg sammie served up with hash browns.

The sandwich is good, though the sausage option saw the massive meat patty overpowering the fried egg. The promised hash browns were basically truncated shoestring fries, an unexpected but pretty tasty variation, actually better than the regular fries the night before.

Service is friendly and brisk, bar-style. There’s a jukebox, which is fun — as long as some guy doesn’t get overly enthusiastic with the arena rock category. The regular house music is pretty loud at night and a little quieter at weekend breakfast, maybe in deference to customers ordering the Hangover Cure (a carby pileup of cheese, bacon and fried egg on a bed of fries).

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca

Alison Gillmor
Writer

Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto’s York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992.

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