Chip off the ol’ Block Kick back and enjoy elevated comfort food, cocktails at Mitchell Block's upstairs lounge, the Wet & Dry Dept. By: Alison Gillmor Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2018

Opinion

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This article was published 16/10/2018 (2264 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With a recent rebranding and a new menu, the Mitchell Block’s upstairs lounge offers a big-city take on drinks and bar food, with some good dishes and a couple of standouts.

Its easygoing ambience is also important. When you go to a lounge, after all, you want to be able to lounge.

The space has a lot going on — with marble, wood, satin and brick finishes — but it all comes together in the long, low-lighted room, which offers a film-noir view from tall second-storey windows to the street outside.

The padded chairs and tufted banquettes are — crucially — comfortable enough for relaxing but upright enough for eating.

The brief menu draws on some of the same inspirations as the main-floor Mitchell Block restaurant, with late-night, small-plate versions of elevated comfort food, as well as some more bar-snacky stuff.

The lounge’s name comes from the building’s long history. The 1887 structure was originally the home of the W.J. Mitchell Drug Company, the second floor being the “wet and dry department” where drug tinctures, elixirs and powders were mixed.

These once included such redoubtable 19th-century potions as “Prairie Pain Relief” and “Botanic Bitters,” so it feels right, somehow, that attention is now turned to artisanal cocktails.

The Wet & Dry mixologists have managed a cliché-free cosmo, something that’s been hard to pull off since that drink’s Sex and the City heyday. This fresh, subtle variation uses house-infused pear vodka.

Makers of house cocktails can sometimes get a bit carried away with the naming process, but I felt strangely compelled by the elaborately monikered “Against the Attrition of Modern Life.” (It had been that kind of week.)

I received a compact drink that started with a peaty Scotch rinse and finished with a balanced, bittersweet combo of cynar, sweet vermouth and Jim Beam, and did, in fact, provide some temporary relief from our 21st-century condition.

There’s a far-ranging wine list, though not a lot of by-the-glass options, and a brief roster of some imported and local beers. (Beer lovers are encouraged to ask about whatever off-menu brews might also be available.)

The food menu offers small dishes that could accompany drinks or combine for a light supper.

Soft-baked pretzel sticks are served with a nice dip of mustard and sweet whey, an often overlooked cheese-making byproduct that’s good at complementing and expanding other flavours.

The brussels sprouts, finished with puddles of aioli and mustard seeds, could have been hotter and crispier, but the kale caesar salad is very good, the assertive edginess of the greens cutting the intense creaminess of the bacony, lemony dressing, which gets added richness from shaved preserved egg yolk. The salad’s sweetbread “croutons” are also a kick, the mild, tender offal meat finished with crisp breading.

Boneless pork buttons, an underused cut, are deep-fried and served with five-spice barbecue sauce, for what feels like a grown-up take on nuggets. The fried chicken, which uses whey in the glaze, is tender, and accompanied with vinegary house-made pickles.

Classic spaghetti with red sauce and homemade ricotta — which is so much better than the standard supermarket variety that it’s almost like another food entirely — has a lovely, honest simplicity to it.

Sriracha mac ’n’ cheese is so deliciously rich it might be overwhelming as an entrée, but it works really well as a small, shared dish.

The creamy, smoky cheddar bechamel is offset by the heat of the sriracha, which is embedded in the fresh-made corkscrew pasta. The noodles were just slightly soft on one occasion but close to perfect another time.

There are just three desserts, including an (unsampled) affogato. Coconut adds an interesting flavour layer to a milky panna cotta, but the dollops of “mint gel” feel inescapably reminiscent of toothpaste.

A good option is the flourless chocolate cake, whose brilliant add-ons include sweet ricotta, gelato and sour cherries, as well as dehydrated chocolate mousse, which sounds a bit precious but turns out to be slightly crisped, biscuity shards of super-concentrated cocoa flavour.

(One note: The Wet & Dry Dept. is a popular place for private parties, so you might want to check the venue’s social media accounts to make sure it’s not booked before heading out.)

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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