Across the Board Cafe
Across the Board Game Café at 211 Bannatyne Ave. (at Main St.) is a unique style of restaurant in Winnipeg’s Exchange District. This is their second location and an absolutely beautiful room with soaring ceilings, chandeliers and two walls of windows. Cheerfully adorning a number of walls are bookshelves full of games, old and new from all over the world.
On the evening we visited, one of the concept’s owners’ Olaf Pytllik was our Game Master. He spoke about how the cafe came to be and that the over 1,000 games on display were once housed in his basement. He also told us about the current board game business and how the game that we were playing was an award winner the previous year.
But to the food!
My husband and I both selected noodle bowls and think that we ordered mistakenly. The noodle bowls were actually soup but were on the entree section not the soup section of the menu. We do often have a hearty soup for our dinner. This one was quite light and indeed we still had the munchies shortly after finishing it.
Others in our party ordered more successfully with two siblings selecting Italian Sausage Alfredo which I salivated over when it arrived at the table. It was composed of a crumbled Italian sausage tossed with spinach, sundried tomatoes and sautéed mushrooms in a creamy alfredo sauce.
Another pair selected the generous Summer Salad
and a German Bratwurst Platter. The hit were the pretzels and a couple more of them were requested for dessert.
The good news about eating light at dinner was being able to order from their specialty snack items. I make nuts and bolts at home on a regular basis as they provide our nutritional quota of oats.
Across the Board’s version had less garlic and Worcestershire sauce than mine but still were very enjoyable by the handful as we played the night away.
Across the Board Game Café is co-owned by Olaf Pytllik and Clinton Skibitzky. They are open Thursday-Sunday 11 am – 10 pm and Friday and Saturday 11 am – 12 midnight. They are closed Mondays. There is an all day menu including a kids section available. They are wheelchair accessible.
Kath’s quote: “It is impossible to win gracefully at chess. No man has yet said “Mate!” in a voice which failed to sound to his opponent bitter, boastful and malicious.” A.A. Milne
Love never fails.
