Ciao! February March 2020 CIAO_FebMar2020 | Page 27

ciao! reviews
Snow and Moon
Neighbourhood . . . . Kenaston
Address .5-1727 Kenaston Blvd
Phone . . . . . . . 204-309-0606
Entrées . . . . . . . . . . .$10-$19
Icy treats are having a moment.
Globally in major cities, particularly
in incubators of Instagram-ably
cute desserts like Japan, Korea
and Taiwan, finding new ways to
ice cream is where it’s at, whether
stretched, nitro-frozen or spread in
thin sheets and rolled.
Winnipeg, however, is a less pop-
ulous city full of discerning diners,
meaning the trends that stick are
those worth hopping on the band-
wagon for. It also means that while
visiting either of Snow and Moon
Dessert Cafe’s cute locations (South
Kenaston and St. James) you’re just
as likely to see an aspiring influencer
documenting her ice cream as a
jock munching on multi-coloured
macarons or the ladies who lunch
set daintily downing a mountain of
strawberry “snow.”
Most varieties of shaved ice
involve flavouring delicate shreds of
ice with sweet syrups or toppings.
Snow and Moon differentiates its
product by shaving frozen milk
into light and fluffy flakes that cake,
clump, and melt on the tongue
almost identically to the white stuff
outside yet taste as luscious and rich
as ice cream.
This sweet snow comes in choco-
late, vanilla and fruit flavours and is
served in knock-your-socks off por-
tions, in wide white bowls. Matcha
flavoured snow, with its muted
green hue and delicate grassy fla-
vour, is a top pick.
Yogurt lychee snow extends the
idea to a new, cultured frontier of
dairy, and yogurt’s signature tang
makes a perfect backdrop for the
needed, be fed is the Holy Grail.
Enter Beaurivage.
Chef/owner George Chamaa is at
the helm of this charming Lebanese
eatery, which recently relocated to an
inviting strip-side spot on Corydon
Ave, still bearing bamboo from its
most recent sushi-slinging tenant.
From his open kitchen in the centre
of the room, chef Chamaa handily
churns out mouth watering Middle
Eastern fare in a prix fixe parade that
changes nightly.
For $35, sample three appetizers,
two salads and three main courses,
or kick in for the $40 “dinner
supreme,” which also includes des-
sert and Lebanese coffee, brewed
to order. There is also a deluxe sea-
food menu available but it requires
advance ordering (two days ahead).
Appetizers are testament to the
versatility of vegetables. Fire-kissed
eggplant is whirred into a silky,
tangy and intensely smoky baba
ghanoush served with warm slices
of pita. Delicately spiced cauliflower
reaches new heights, broken into
florets and fried until crisp and bur-
nished brown. A stewy mixture of
rice and tomatoes, lightly redolent
of mint, is neatly packed into warm
grape leaf bundles under a generous
drizzle of tahini.
Light and refreshing salads come
next, including a crisp house salad
and a parsley-packed tabouli, zippy
beaurivage biStro
and lemony, which is served with
crunchy leaves of romaine for easy
Neighbourhood . . . . . Corydon
scooping.
Address . . . . 788 Corydon Ave
Entrées offer heft in the form of
well-prepared proteins. On one visit,
Phone . . . . . . 204-691-6999
beautifully spiced and exquisitely
juicy chicken shawarma and kebabs
Entrées . . . . . . . . . .$30-$40
of savoury beef were the day’s fare,
Indecision can be the bane of served with a fluffy pilaf of bulgar
eating out, as any hungry would- lashed with tahini.
Lebanese kibbeh seem to have
be diner who’s ever spent too long
searching for a restaurant online been dreamed up by a meatball
knows all too well. These days, when mad scientist. A warm-spice scented
options have been converted to an ring of minced eye of round is
endless scroll, a place where one mixed with pulverized bulgar and
can sit down and, with no decisions wrapped around a core of juicy
sweet, syrupy lychee fruits.
Hot café style drinks, as well as
smoothies and iced coffees topped
with milk snow, are also on offer.
An alluring dessert case supplements
the menu with Asian-inflected patis-
serie like matcha roll cakes and ube
macarons.
Shibuya honey toast, a treat pop-
ular in Japan, is typically made by
hollowing out and cubing the centre
of a section of squishy Japanese
milk bread, tossing the cubes with
honey before reinserting them. A
warning for those clinging to carb-
conscious New Year’s resolutions:
what emerges from the kitchen is a
golden brick of bread the size of the
plate, capped off by a frilly whorl of
whipped cream. Order extra spoons
for the dieters anyway. Once set on
the table, its warm-from-the-oven
smell is impossible to resist, and the
fluffy interior—shot through with
honey and topped with a scoop of
vanilla ice cream—is pure pleasure.
It must explain why, even when
the snow is falling, this ice cream
shop is packed. At the end of the
day, it’s all about fun.
Snow and Moon Dessert Cafe is
open Mon-Sat 2 pm-10 pm, Sun 1
pm-8 pm (Kenaston); Mon-Thu 1
pm-10 pm, Fri-Sat 1 pm-11 pm, Sun
1 pm-9 pm (St. James).
ciao! / feb/mar / two thousand twenty
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