#FoodPornFriday Breakfast Poutine from the St. Joachim Diner

My wife and I have been meaning to try the St. Joachim Diner for a couple years now. It was featured on You Gotta Eat Here and I've heard nothing but good things. The problem is that it's not really close to home. St. Joachim is about an hour drive for us. That's a long way to go just for food. 

What finally changed that is that I learned that there is an outdoor farmers market in Belle River on Sundays. The same day as the farmer's market at the Riverside Sportsman's club. Now if I start out from my house and head out to Tecumseh, I'm about half way to Belle River. Then if I continue on to Belle River, it's really not all that far to St. Joachim. Sounds like a good way to spend a Sunday morning eh?

Well that's exactly what we did last weekend and it was awesome. Got some great cheese, baked goods and vegetables at the farmers market and found out exactly why the St. Joachim Diner has the reputation it does. 

The place looks like it's right out of the 70s. The outside looks, well, lets just say I wouldn't stop there if it hadn't been strongly recommended. But man the food is good! The portions are huge. The menu has a great selection of items. They were great with the kids and have a great kids menu.

That huge picture up there is their version of Breakfast Poutine, which was only $9.50 for that huge plate of food. That is a plate of fresh cut home fries topped with bacon, ham, sausage, tomatoes, green onions, montreal style cheese curds, and a poached egg, all smothered in hollandaise.

The real shining piece of the dish was those fresh cut home fries. They were amazing. They reminded me of the Irish Nachos from The Kildare House (which they may or may not still serve, but I used to love). I strongly suggest whatever you order for breakfast you get something with those fries. The rest of it was amazing as well, but the fries made the dish.

My wife got the Fish Taco which really wasn't a taco, but rather a Naan wrap. She noted that it was amazing and one of the best things she's eaten. Ever. That after our great food filled trip to London last weekend.

We went for breakfast but will be heading back for dinner at some point. I really want to try the burgers that got them on You Gotta Eat Here. Especially The County Road Pizza, which is a Burger not a pizza. Here, just read this description: 7oz. burger with panko fried mozzarella, sauteed pepperoni, bacon and tomato sauce on a fresh baked bun, served with breaded mushrooms and creamy dill dip. 

Seriously if you haven't checked this place out yet and you are in Windsor Essex you need to fix that or you are doing yourself a disservice. I expect to be back many times. I expect that our 'farmer's market tour of essex county ending at the St. Joachim Diner' will become a regular Summer Sunday outing for us.

I drove 45 minutes just to eat at Jack's Gastropub

Hoping to get in at least one more restaurant during Windsor Eat's Winter Bites we headed out to Kingsville, Ontario Saturday to try Jack's Gastropub. Now Kingsville is about a 45 minute drive out of town from where we are, so I doubt this will become a regular trip.

We got into town a little early (on purpose) and stopped in at the Butcher of Kingsville before driving around a bit to find Jack's. For some reason I thought it was located on Main St. when it was actually on Division. No big deal, Kingsville isn't very big at all and it took less than five minutes to find.

Jack's is located in a converted house. There's a small bit of parking outside and it looked like there was an overflow lot as well, but we didn't need it and I didn't think to confirm. A quick walk around the front of the place gave us a good look at a large obviously popular heated patio. It's mid January and the patio was packed, at just after 5pm. Once inside I couldn't help but point out the very cool little bar room off to the right. If I lived in Kingsville I could totally see sitting here drinking some craft beer and catching up on some reading.

We were asked if we had reservations, which surprised me given the time of day. Note to self and anyone reading this: make reservations, even if you think you are coming too early to need them. Thankfully they did have some room for us upstairs. As noted the place is a converted house. Well they didn't convert much at all. It was still very house like upstairs. We walked through an obvious living room, to the back hall, almost to the kitchen, up the stairs, past two bathrooms and into what I guess was at one time a main bedroom. Much of the original fixtures were still there. There were also lots of hats. No clue on this one, I guess someone digs hats. Cool enough.

Bad iPod pic of the Beer Menu

We got a booth seat, noted they have a high chair up here (hey cool this is a place we can bring the kids), and started looking over the menus. Note I said menus, as in plural. No I don't mean mine and my wife's I mean the food menu and the beer menu. That's right Jack's has a beer menu. I didn't think anywhere south of London had a beer menu. Awesome!

What we then realized is that we didn't have a copy of the special Winter Bites menu that brought us here. This was quickly corrected and we ordered. I went with the Pulled Pork Poutine followed by a Farm Burger, which is an all beef burger topped with bacon, goat cheese, onion tanglers and fried egg on a toasted Kaiser. Instead of a third course Jack's continued with the awesome offering up a Beer Tasting Flight.  That's right, instead of desert, you get four beers to try. For my flight of beer I decided to get Walkerville Blonde, Okanagan Springs, Maudit and Dead Elephant IPA. I will admit that I was slightly disappointed that between the bottle list and the craft beers on draft they didn't have anything I haven't tried before, but that is become more and more common as I reach the 700 beer's reviewed mark.

Flight of beers, a beautiful thing.

The beer came very quickly and it was nice to see a waitress point out which were which. I've been to a few places that serve flights that forget that important step. Our first course showed up before I had finished the first glass.

The Poutine was great, probably the best I've ever had. My pulled pork was fantastic and I tried a bite of my wife's Cheeseburger Poutine and it was good as well (though not as good as mine, score). Seriously this stuff is awesome.

Now here comes the one bad experience this whole trip. While about half way through my poutine our mains showed up. Holy cow, talk about fast. At this point we have probably only been at Jacks for 20 minutes. I can't help compare this to the disaster at Crave, this trip is like the complete opposite. Now I'm not happy the second course came out before finishing the first, but really, if it had to happen to any type of food, is it really that bad to get a burger while still eating your fries? I think most of all I just would have liked a breather and time for things to settle and to drink some more of those beers.

My Farm Burger

So that main course, how was it? Fantastic! Truly fantastic. This may be the best burger I've ever had. I'm still on the fence about it. It's most definitely up there with Motorburger. It might actually be better. I think I'm going to have to go back to Motorburger to check.

The picture over there doesn't do this burger justice. It was big, thick and amazing tasting. I couldn't even finish it, which is a rare thing for me (I'm a big dude for a reason). I also have to add, that bowl of coleslaw was great. Why I need to add that. I don't like coleslaw, well most of the time. I hate bitter, pickled tasting slaw. This was not that this was creamy fantastic slaw.

So yeah, this was good. Really good. Remember up top I said that the 45 minute drive meant this won't be a regular trip. I was wrong, totally wrong. Right now I'm sitting here typing this and trying to figure out how I can get back out to Jack's again this coming weekend, or maybe somehow tonight. Anyone know a good sitter?

Finally stopped in at The Butcher of Kingsville

Saturday afternoon we had plant to hit up Jack's Gastropub for dinner to try their Winter Bites menu. Since we were heading into Kingsville anyway, we decided to head out a little early in hopes of catching The Butcher of Kingsville before they closed. We made it five minutes before 5pm, just in time.

I've been hearing good things about The Butcher of Kingsville for quite a while now, at least a year maybe more. Actually when I was looking for somewhere new to try for my birthday dinner, two different people suggested I just go to The Butcher and buy a steak and make it at home and that will beat out almost everywhere I could possibly choose to eat. The BofK is a full service butcher shop that focuses on whole animal butcher, local, responsibly raised meats and handmade foods.

The place itself is right on the main drag in Kingsville Onatario and has a very inviting storefront. The front service area is small but doesn't really need to be any bigger than it is. Behind that is a small cafe counter where they serve coffee, deli sandwiches etc. We were already out in the county for dinner so didn't get a chance to try the cafe. Behind this was the butchery itself, surprisingly out in the open. I'm used to going to places like this where the 'work' is behind closed doors. It was a cool touch.

Staff was very attentive, answered every possible question we had, and even went above and beyond by ensuring we knew how to cook each item we bought. In addition to all the fresh cuts at the counter, they also had two coolers of prepared and pre-cut food. If we weren't due to be out for a couple more hours we would have grabbed a frozen meat pie for sure. Prices were extremely reasonable and comparable to other local meat sources. 

For my wife and I, the best discovery we made at The Butcher of Kingsville is to find out that they are the same people who did the beef share that we had taken part of a year or so back. It was called Country Connect and was awesome. You paid a set price and that gave you a portion of a cow, along with other subscribers. At a set point in time (I can't actually remember the frequency) the butcher would deliver you your cuts. What we thought was awesome about this, over and above the extremely fresh cut meat and high quality, was that it was a complete mix of cuts. This introduced us to a bunch of cuts of meats we never would have tried otherwise. The best part of all this? We found out that The BoK still does this, just through the shop! We will definitely be signing up for this for BBQ season this year.