Chatting online with a friend about getting a good breakfast meal isn’t good especially when you’re hungry at work.  After talking about a few places and brekky dishes I realized I haven’t had an outstanding breakfast meal in Winnipeg other than home cooked meals and maaaaybe Fort Garry Hotel’s Sunday brunch buffet.  My ideal breakfast would include some awesome eggs benedict from Musa in Toronto, a simple scrambled eggs with shrimp from Ken’s Restaurant, and outstanding potato pancakes.  I’ve only had potato pancakes from Perkin’s although I’ll have to try some from Falafel Place.  Searching for this is going to be a mission in itself so instead I decided to be lazy and go to Alycia’s for lunch today. It helps working four blocks away from it.

loving the perogies

Alycia’s is a local Ukranian restaurant here in Winnipeg open for 30+? years.  Coming in for the first time, you see some portraits of famous and somewhat famous people with their johnny hancock.  This place was also one of John Candy’s favourite Ukranian restaurants to go to…niiice!  The interior has a local family owned restaurant feel with their own pictures posted on the wall and other Ukranian related wall postings.  They serve breakfast, lunch and dinner and even though I was drooling over brekky earlier I was craving a perogy lunch with the, drumroll please…..perogy platter.  Tadah! To go…no tadah.

Growing up, I have never had a home cooked perogy meal, an unfortunate downside of not being Ukranian, I know!  The only perogies I’ve had were store bought with mommy cooking them nicely.  Cooking it isn’t rocket science either leaving you with 2 options: boiling or frying.  Boiling ‘em was alright but deep frying these bad boys was where it was at!  FYI, deep frying food was (is?) a regular in my family’s place.  Fruits and veges?!  What?!  Fried eggrolls and fried rice with fried eggs and chinese sausages was our staple food.  Anyway, back to my lunch review.  I decided to try boiled perogies this time around and was glad that I did.

this little mess sure tastes great!

After taking my styrofoam in a bag back to work I was greeted with 6 pieces of boiled perogies sauteed in butter (not heavily in butter thank the lord) and fried onions, 3 slices of kulbasa I think, and a side of coleslaw and sour cream.  The kulbasa was good and tasty but it’s not like I’ve never had anything like that before…NEXT!  The coleslaw was on the better side but it’s coleslaw, a balancer to the meat and potatoes, and isn’t something to rant about for more than this sentence.  What surprised me in this simple dish was the perogy.  In my storebuying boil-sauteeing perogy days, the flavour came from the regular filling and the butter.  These home cooked perogies seemed similar but I knew something was slightly different.  After dipping my first piece in sour cream and having my first bite there was something else that added to the flavour.  It was as if they had boiled these things in chicken broth or something.  It was wonderful and definitely hit the spot!  These perogies definitely changed the way I looked at boiled perogies…boiling them in chicken broth is going to be my perogy 2.0 project.  Yum!

glad they didn't use too much butter.

Alycia’s Perogy Platter Review

PRESENTATION     ©¢¢¢¢       1/5

VALUE                  ©©©¢¢      3/5

FLAVOUR             ©©©©¢      4/5