Have you experienced when a restaurant just falls off of your radar?  In the advertising business this is known as “erosion of top of mind awareness”.  There was a time when Earl’s was one of the highest restaurants on my hit list.  D, Daughter #1 and I liked to stop in for Margarita Mondays.  I loved the patio on Main to catch some rays at lunch time and the St. Vital Earl’s was the first place I ever tasted a Bento Box.  We used to meet clients at the very first Earl’s at Polo Park (on St. James where Tony Roma’s is now) and I would always order the Californian Shrimp Pesto Pizza.  In those days it seemed as if Earl’s had the corner on fresh, premium ingredients and a light-handed cooking style.

So did we just outgrow Earls or did something change?

For us, it was this:  My birthday is at the end of May and often heralds the beginning of those surprizingly hot summer days.  About Easter, I start thinking about how I would like to celebrate with my family and what patio we will assemble at for dinner.  For one of my special birthdays (where the right hand digit is a “0”) the weather in Winnipeg was awful-constant rain and the longest stretch without seeing the sun.  But because we are a resourceful bunch we said amongst ourselves, “let’s just find a covered patio and ignore the weather outside”.  And so it was that we found ourselves at the Polo Earl’s in the hopes of getting onto the patio (that has always reminded me of a circus tent).  As some of my readers know, our family is a bit tricky to accommodate because Daughter #1 gets around in a motorized wheelchair.   We often research ahead of time, which places have stairs or tricky washrooms to maneuver into.  We were eager for the afternoon that we were going to spend on the patio with lots of drinks and an never-ending stream of food.  Unfortunately, when we arrived at the patio, we saw that none of the available tables were the traditional height so we asked if they might possibly move a lower dining room one onto the patio for us.  When the answer was an unaccommodating “no” we left and I will admit that I was in tears (kind of like the lyrics to the old song: “You would cry too if it happened to you!”)  It seemed to us like a little thing for Earl’s to do but would have made all the difference in the world to us.

Now having been in the business ourselves, we know that there are fire codes, and rules and protocol and I don’t blame Earl’s for turning us away but somehow from this moment on, we did not consider ourselves part of the Earl’s family any longer.  We just felt like we were not young enough or important enough or attractive enough.  Do you understand how we were feeling?  I go to the trouble of writing this so that hospitality employees might see how their actions can effect a guests’ special day and even the years to follow.  That is how very important the role of a person in the hospitality business is.  In fact, I teach Food and Beverage Service and Front Desk Management for the Manitoba Tourism Education Council and I use this example (without mentioning Earl’s) as well as hilarious examples from U-Tube clips of Fawlty Towers of how not to conduct yourself and what the consequences might be.

Now it is not because we have held a grudge against Earl’s, it is just that as I indicated earlier, they just kind of fell off of our radar.  That was until the perseverant Cate Simpson of Earl’s found me on line.  Over the last couple of years she has invited me to special events at Earls that I have not been able to fit into my schedule.  So too, when I saw that the re-opening of their St. Vital Earl’s restaurant fell into an unbelievably hectic week, I thought that I would have to decline once more.  Happily, I was able to attend.

Sister #3 and I were immediately welcomed by Earl’s Big Cheese and we settled into a comfy little booth to get our bearings.  The facelift creates a light filled room that is sure to please.

We got a chance to order from their featured cocktails and loved the taste and presentations of both.

And then the food started coming out and we focused on tasting some for our first time.

And then the Californian Shrimp Pesto Pizza arived.  The first tastes were like reuniting with a dear old friend!

Sister #3 had never tasted the recipe before but will be back for more, I am sure.

The evening ended with hot ginger bread-the perfect way to kick off the holiday season.  The snow had started coming down heavily by this time and we had to venture back out into the night but something had changed for me:

Earl’s is back on my radar!

Kath’s quote: “Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.” ― Charlotte Brontë

Love-that is all.

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