Night Owl, Nuanced Asian Contemporary

A new restaurant always gives a reason to celebrate, especially so when said restaurant fills a niche that has been somewhat missing. Night Owl is the most recent of Hong Kong style cafes to pop up in Winnipeg, offering small bowls of delicious and quick Chinese fare for busy and hungry travelers. And while it is certainly not the first to the party, it does a commendable job of creating an attractive experience that should tempt customers going forward. And so on a breezy and warm morning in Winnipeg, I rounded up a fellow colleague and jotted down to Night Owl.

The building itself lies on Pembina Highway in a stretch of newly developed Asian restaurants. Taking up a good proportion of a city block, Night Owl has a lot of space to work with. First off the huge signage is attractive and modern, designed to take entice traffic but by foot and by car. More impressive are the interiors with large grand wooden tables and pleasant booth style seating. The aroma of wonderful stews and noodles greeted me as I arrived, leaving me salivating and anticipating the coming meal.

Showing a care for details, I was impressed by the wooden flip-out menus here. Engraved with its logo and name, the chefs clearly have taken the extra mile to complete the ambiance of the restaurant. It does not end there though, as I flipped through the colorful and well arranged menus. Knowing that a large portion of its customer base might be unfamiliar with this type of cuisine, the chefs carefully explains each family of dishes while showing beautiful en-glossed photos of each. Teppanyaki skewers, Liangfen (starchy noodles), rice noodles, egg noodles, rice and hot pots all have their respective time in the menu with a thoughtful but not overwhelming array of options within each. Truthfully I would not have been happier with the direction Night Owl took with its menu design and options.

The cartoony sounding Hot-dip dishes resemble that of Japanese shabu shabu where a bevy of ingredients are flash cooked in a hot broth. The key difference here is the rich ?pork based soup that is soaked into each item of the hot dip. An incredible array of ingredients (upwards of 20 total) are available and range from potato to fried tofu to shrimp and cuttlefish balls. Pricing is arranged based on the number of ingredients (6, 9, 12, or 15). We went with the six item option including Beef Ball, Cuttefish Ball, Yuba, Chinese Vegetables (Choy), Mushroom and Fish Tofu. And while each ingredient was nothing spectacular, it was the luxurious broth that makes the dish soar.

Making a big deal about it on the menu made us want to try their Cold Liangfen. A classic in China it consists of jelly starchy noodles in a cool and refreshing black bean sauce. Indeed the noodles were excellent with the perfect consistency of smooth and chewy. A bigger problem though was in the sauce which although seemingly rich, was actually surprisingly bland and disappointingly greasy. By the end of the bowl I was slurping up large gobbles of oil and grease more than sauce, gross!

Thankfully this Beef Stew Noodle was much better. The large piping bowl had a nice bevy of thick egg noodles, topped with beef and finished with bok choy. The noodles used here are nice and chewy, intentionally slightly undercooked so it can soak up and finish at the tableside. Indeed it had taken up the aroma and richness of the beef and star anise based broth. Ultimately though the star of the dish was the tender and rich beef slices and while I could grumble at the small-ish portion, it was the tastiest morsel of food we had at Night Owl.

Night Owl impressed me by its beautiful and carefully crafted restaurant and while the food has its highs and lows, there were certainly enough unique and tasty offerings here to recommend at least one visit, especially for those yearning for Hong Kong Cafe Style food.