sauerkraut – Michael Eats

Location: 1878 Mattawa Avenue, Mississauga
Website: https://brandtmeats.com/brandt-food-market/

I’ve written about hidden gems on this blog before, but it doesn’t get much more hidden than this place. It’s located along a dead-end industrial road, and unless you happen to work in the area, there is zero chance that you’d drive by the place.

(And even if you did, it’s so nondescript that you likely wouldn’t even realize that a delightful little Eastern European supermarket and restaurant can be found within.)

It’s actually a factory outlet for Brand meats, a Mississauga-based manufacturer of various Eastern European sausages and meats, and it features the aforementioned supermarket, along with a hot table with a nice spread of stuff like schnitzel and cabbage rolls.

I went with the BBQ pork chops, which features tender braised pork and mushrooms in a zippy sauce. The meal comes with two chops piled on top of a mountain of sides (you can pick two, and they are generous). I had the potatoes, which are basically like hash browns, and the sauerkraut, which is well above average.

Nothing about it particularly blew my mind, but the plate cost ten bucks and was piled high with food, so it’s a fantastic deal.

Location: 59 Cameron Street, Toronto
Website: http://www.makerpizza.com/

A Reuben pizza is one of those things that’s simultaneously ridiculous and oddly compelling. It probably shouldn’t work, and yet… as soon as I saw it, I knew I had to eat it.

Here’s how Maker’s menu describes it: “Montreal smoked meat, mustard béchamel, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, Russian dressing, everything bagel crust.”

It sounds absurd (and amazing). It looks absurd (and amazing).

Alas, it’s just absurd — it’s not particularly amazing.

I will say that the (non-absurd) pizza at Maker is some of the best in the city. Even in this particular pie, that’s fairly apparent; the crust is outstanding. It has an amazing flavour, a good amount of char, and an absolutely irresistible crispy/chewy/bready texture. I was afraid that the everything bagel elements would overwhelm the crust, but they actually work quite well.

The crust also manages to not completely collapse under the deluge of meat, sauerkraut, cheese, and sauce, and it manages to do that without feeling overly substantial. That’s no small feat; certainly, it’s a testament to how good the crust is here.

And while the Reuben elements are all tasty (the thinly-sliced smoked meat is a little bit tough, but the Reuben flavours are otherwise perfect: it’s meaty, cheesy, salty, sweet, and vinegary, with everything balanced really well), it never quite coheres as a pizza.

It just feels like too much stuff. It needed more bread to balance out the voluminous ingredients, like… oh, I don’t know, a sandwich?? It probably would have worked better as a calzone, but then that wouldn’t have been nearly as Instagrammable, which I imagine is half of the point of this thing.

And that’s the problem — even though all of the elements are really good, it’s a food mashup that never should have been mashed up. It’s a gimmick. I would have rather eaten a Reuben sandwich or a regular pizza. This takes two great things and makes both of them less great by combining them.

Tag: sauerkraut

A Cheap, Tasty Lunch at Brandt European Food Market

The Reuben at Maker Pizza