Some places are evocative of a city or a time. Try to imagine Quebec City without the citadel, Ottawa without Capitol hill. Some places capture what it is to be in a given city, they encapsulate the very ethos of the place. They are the kind of places that you want to tell tourists not to miss. The experience would just not be complete without a visit. These places breathe life into the history, culture, or people of a given area. They also have to be different. No cookie cutter chain franchises allowed. These places have to have character, they have to make up their own rules, they are by their nature not necessarily for everybody. Those weak kneed tourists who complain how different everything is here need not apply. Hey buddy, want some place where the food and the service is just like home, I got one for ya! It' called home, STAY THERE!
Now Yellowknife is a unique place. A frontier town, born on the Canadian shield, a rolling carpet of bedrock scoured by glaciers and pock marked with small lakes. Tiny trees cling to the cracks in the rocks a true testament to the tenacity of life in the north. It is located on Great Slave Lake, the ninth largest lake in the world and the deepest lake in North America at more than 2,000 feet! Yellowknife takes its' name from the Yellowknives Dene who take their name from the tools they made of copper ore. The Dogrib name for the town is Somba K'e which means money town. It is a literal translation. Much money has changed hands in this town. Starting in the early days of Yellowknife, in the 1930s she is a young town with very old roots. She started as a gold mining town, with gold being discovered right under the town. It was said that Yellowknife was the place where the gold was paved with streets. Today not even one of the many gold mines is still operating. In the late nineties a new mineral rush started. Diamonds! A word to conjure with. The current economic problems have slowed the diamond rush, but they are still there and one day the world will want them again. Nothing new to Yellowknife she has known more booms and busts than a bass drummer in a Hooters.Yellowknife is a town more than a city. At only 20,000 people it is small. It also tends to be fairly high turnover. It has the reputation of a place that people hate to live but love the money that they can make there. It is expensive by southern standards. Yellowknife is a city in work clothes. Business suits are the exception. The preferred dress clothes usually have strips of reflective material on them and room for long johns under them. Fur hats and jack shirts are common. More people smoke than don't. People are different up here, they color outside the lines. Rugged individualists mostly. Ir is the only way to survive the long winter months. We like to say that we have ten months of winter and two months of poor skidooing.
If you want to come north and not look like a southerner you have to learn to talk like a northerner First of all they are ski doos. No matter who makes them, Arctic Cat, Kawasaki, whatever. It's like kleenex no matter who makes them they are all kleenex. A cat doesn't have fur it has tracks and a blade. A kicker is an outboard motor. A mickey is a pint bottle of booze going bootleg price is $50. Brew or home brew is a type of home made hootch usually made with raisins yeast and sugar. A gallon of it goes for the same as a mickey bottle and will get you about as drunk and gives you a funky smell. It takes 24-48 hours to ferment, although it will continue to ferment in your belly. Often making you foam at the mouth. . A musher is a dog sledder. An Otter or a Beaver could be a fur bearing critter or a plane. A honey bucket is a commode, and is more likely to contain pooh than to attract Pooh.
I have a love hate relationship with Yellowknife. I respect her but I really don't spend a lot of time there. When I am there there is one place I love to go. Yellowknife is famous for a couple of places, the Gold Range Bar and the Wildcat restaurant. Both have their charms. The range rocks on a Saturday night and is as raucous as any Bar in Canada. The Wildcat has charm, but it is only open in the summer. When i come to Yellowknife I head to Bullock's Bistro.
Located in Old Town, an area of town located on Back Bay. The Bistro isn't much to look at. An elongated log cabin it rightfully blends in to the landscape. It is a heritage building dating to the very founding of Yellowknife. There aint much in YK that's older. Not much that is non-aboriginal anyhow. Our hegemony seems like a blink of an eye compared to the time that aboriginal people have lived here. Aboriginal people being so much more environmentally friendly, do not leave big footprints. They can occupy an area for millenia and leave no more behind than some stones stacked on each other. They walk in moose hide moccasins and leave little in the way of relics. Relic is a good description of this place. Time has melted it into the muskeg. The permafrost has molded the floors and skewed the straight lines that the logs once formed. Like a well worn glove, it fits this place. There are two doors. Both open. One leads you into a part of the kitchen. That's O.K. there are few rules here, just come on in. Eclectic, I would call what meets the eye. Yeah, eclectic, only on steroids. My online dictionary denies eclectic as: composed of elements drawn from various sources, Heterogeneous. Thank God! I have always been kind of homogeneousophobic. The decor is a melange of postcards, business cards, foreign money, newspaper articles. The walls and tables and, well, every flat surface is covered in signatures. Plastic snowflakes hang from the ceiling. A sign says NO Clothing Permitted beyond This Point. A Caribou head serves as a coat rack. The caribou wears a toque and a ladies bra garnishes the antlers. Bumper stickers and fridge magnets plaster the hood over the grill. A large plastic Salmon hangs from the wall. Fitting. It is after all mainly a fish restaurant.
I arrived about 7:00 pm the place was just short of packed. Even in March in Yellowknife a good restaurant is busy. There are about 7 or eight tables, one large one and a half dozen stools at the bar. Being alone I sidled up to the bar and took an empty stool next to this guy with an obvious Aussie accent, he was sitting, not coincidentally I suspect, under an Australian flag that was stuck into the ceiling. There was a giggling group of Japanese tourists in the corner wearing the parkas that the hotel provides for them. You see them on racks in the foyer, under the jackets are rows of sturdy boots to complete the look. Thus armored against what must be a full frontal assault by the arctic climate they waddle about taking pictures of the Polar Bear at the airport and the Inukshuk outside the hotel. The same way I stood next to a Buzzbied British soldier in Red Serge at Windsor castle. Two people are speaking french at the first table. A guy in a big white cowboy hat sits in the front window. Quite the cosmopolitan crowd.
I hate eating alone. But seeing as I am alone, I settle down with a good book at await the server who is busy juggling plates at the table of joyful Japanese. How happy they look as they jump the language barrier and happily juggle the dishes back and forth to get the right meal in front of the right customer. Their laughter is infectious. I wish I spoke Japanese so I could figure out what was so funny. I think they are enjoying the very funny, funky nature of this place. It is different than the sterile, franchise, muzak atmosphere of most restaurants, in most cities. I settle into my stool and my book, almost oblivious, until a plate containing a huge, triangular bun, its' top dusted with flour. It was fresh baked and smelled delicious. My server was wearing an apron and a red check hunters hat. "I saw you here, I've just been busy! Want a menu?" She proffered a laminated single piece of white paper that serves as a menu. A word about that. This place is principally a fish restaurant. They do carry meat, some caribou, some Bison too, I think. But I am a maritime boy. I was here for the fish. When you do something and do it well, do that thing. Don't try to be everything to everybody. Nobody understands this better than the bistro. The menu is not exactly carved in store. What they got is what got caught. Catch of the day, literally. Don't get hung up on the menu and remember to ask before you get your heart set on something. "Nah," I answered. "What's the fish today?" I've been here before I just told her. "You're in luck today, I got Pickerel, Char and Trout." My mouth was watering. "I'll have the pickerel, pan fried!" I practically had to dab my mouth. "Feta or Herb dressing?" "Oh Feta, Please!" I dragged out the please. She smiled and pointed to a gray plastic container "The cutlery is there." I tore the bun in half smeared some of the butter on it and devoured it. I was famished. I fought off the urge to eat the second piece. I have something in mind for that. I picked up my book and started to read. Occasionally I would take in the scene around me. I watched as the lady cooking plated the salads. She heaped the dressing on top and the feta smelled wonderful. There was a lot of it too. She finished a couple of dinners for the french speaking couple at the first table. Turning to the Australian guy she handed him the plates and said "You mind handing these to that table?" He was laughing as he turned. "I'll be your waiter this evening!" He said cheerily as he set the plates down in front of the french couple who were laughing heartily. The Japanese table found this hilarious and a wave of laughter crashed over their table. The atmosphere of this place is so casual and so
The cook walked to the grill and turned a fish in a pan. The sound it made as the fresh fish hit the hot pan was magic. The smell is indescribable. I would love to know what is in the sauce that they apply to there fish. It is as addictive as crack cocaine. The spicing is perfect. By the time my fish arrived I was famished. took a fork full of fish and raised it, first to mu nose for a brief moment to savor the smell and then to my mouth where the senses go wild. First there is the warmth of the flesh which releases the flavor and the scent of the spices. Then there is the mouth feel of the seared surface of the fish which, upon meeting the teeth and the jaws responds with the feel of perfectly cooked fish, the caramelized surface created by the hot pan and the tender center, nut overcooked one bit. The flavor released is pure heaven. I enjoy every chew. I then raise my glass and with ice cold Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale, the pride of my native Nova Scotia, and washed it down with that cold clean taste. I am an unabashed homer. I follow that with a fork full of crisp greens, lathered in feta cheese, ambrosia. The fries, which had never seen the inside of a blast freezer, had only minutes before been potatoes. Potatoes! I had watched while the cook had inserted the potatoes in the chopper that had spat out the fries seconds before they had been put in the fryer. This is how french fries were meant to be made. There is no freezer in the equation. The fries too are perfect. the quintessence of their kind. Crisp, perfectly salted, Devinne. If I were on death row this would be my last supper, but thank the good Lord I am not so I can come back and have this same meal many more times.
By now some of the people are getting up to leave, there is conversation, among tables not just at tables. Fitting. For in the North, a place f immense size and tiny population, restaurants are meeting places as much as eating places. In years gone by people could go weeks or even months without even seeing or talking to another soul. So many restaurants suppress joy and conversation, to maintain a cold and controlled environment. Not here. This place is a throwback to another time when people treasured the company of strangers. The old saying "Strangers are just friends you haven't met." really suits this place.
Soon I too am finished and get up to wait for my cab. The sun is just setting in the spring sky. Back Bay is back lit by the amber rays. The Japanese are making there way to a waiting van. They are laughing and carrying on. My breath hangs in the air like smoke. My tummy is full and I have a glow from the experience that rivals the sunset. I am truly grateful that there are still places like this one. Places that defy the sterile uniformity of modern eating holes. Character, this place has it in spades. Yeah, this throwback's definitely a keeper.
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