If you’re one to personify a restaurant to be your new best friend, let me introduce you to Shirley’s.
Chef Renée Girard’s brilliant little restaurant, which officially opens in Osborne Village on Friday, March 14, is already the talk of the service industry town after two soft openings last week. And how could it not be, when everything is already this good?
The 35-seat space is named after Girard’s grandmother, and surely that Shirley would have loved it. It’s so welcoming thanks to a staff who are all Girard’s friends, including general manager Ali Vandale (the service is attentive and gentle), the dishes are a continuous delight and the bar program by Christian Lepp is tight (I highly recommend the smoky Naked and Famous).
There’s walk-in only seating at the 10-seat bar (lunch is walk-in only too), while the fun sunflower-yellow tables are open to reservations for groups of up to six, all serviced by teak chairs and comfy banquettes that have a nice little wood shelf behind them — perfect for resting your elbow.
Girard designed the room alongside her friend Beth Schellenberg, while Girard's partner Ken, who is a project manager for his family’s mill working company, Kane Millwork, was instrumental in bringing it all together. You’ll be charmed with accents like half curtains on the windows that look out onto Osborne that were sewn by her sister-in-law, and the service window into the kitchen where Girard’s regular partners-in-cooking, chefs Zac Chizda and Maddie Magnus Walker, can be spied.
Girard has plenty of cooking experience in the city, from Forth to Langside Grocery, along with being the former sous chef of Brent Genyk’s excellent St. Vital restaurant Harth, where she was frequently running the pasta station in a position that saw her highlighted by The Globe and Mail in 2019 as one of ‘the country’s next top chefs.’
The following year, she launched the condiment and fresh pasta company Made by Paste that helped many of us Winnipeggers through the pandemic with products like A Very Good Dip, Ragu with ‘Ndjua, three-cheese ravioli, anchovy dressing, and the now-legendary Black Market Crunch that Girard makes with the most-excellent team at Black Market Provisions. (Note: some of these products are still available at Black Market, and there’s a shelf at Shirley’s Restaurant and Gourmet Grocery (that's the full name) that greets you at the front door with the Crunch along with tinned fish from Europe and various artisanal products).
The dishes
Shirley’s has perfect French fries. They are quarter inch in thickness (sorry, 6mm), crispy enough to snap and served with a smoked mussel aioli that adds a creamy, briny tang. One could simply have a seat at the bar and snack on these with a cocktail and you’d already be a winner.
You should also do a pickle plate, composed of late-summer vegetables that’s a mini celebration of crunchy textures and seasoned brines (I loved the slices of yellow zucchini; and don’t skip on the garlic scape), plus the shrimp cocktail because they are poached until just firm and served with a horseradish-spiked green tomato sauce that sticks right to them once you dip.
Another gluten-friendly dish to share is confit leeks, served simply with green raisins and toasted pine nuts on a pool of poaching oil that’s been subtly spiked with white wine.
“A Very Nice Salad” is exactly that, featuring baby gem lettuce and radicchio tossed in a caramelized lemon vinaigrette, all snowed upon by creamy, slightly nutty comté cheese.
Beef tartare is served on a pillow of pizza fritta, adding warmth and two textures (a crisp crust and an airy, chewy centre) to the delectably seasoned, perfectly diced beef. The anchovy cream that sits on top, along with the diced chives, rounds out all the flavours, so each bite has something creamy, acidic and grassy, to complement the beef.
The chicken Milanese is as comforting as being hugged by your child when you pick them up from school. The cutlet is equally crispy and juicy, the slices of mortadella add some silkiness and that gentle pork funk, and there’s of course melted Parmigiano-Reggiano too. A Dijon sauce and a pile of arugula complete the ensemble, ensuring each bite has just enough bitterness.
And the pastas! There are three on the menu, and if you want to experience what al dente means while fighting an urge to lick sauces from plates, here you have it.
For the vongole, bucatini provides a delectable vessel for the sauce of clams, white wine and butter. Roll it altogether on a fork, close your eyes, and experience the joy that long noodles can bring. Just watch your slurp, as nothing shoots sauce like those hollow bucatini noodles.
Wide, flat, hand-cut pappardelle is presented folded over on itself with a bright green traditional pesto. Again, if you are dining solo and tucked into this by yourself at the bar, perhaps accompanied with a glass of Gouleyant Sauvignon Blanc (the slender European-focused wine list has a few whites and reds that are also available by the glass; along with local Low Life Barell Houses’ Club Red), you could be forgiven for blurting out Kurt Vonnegut’s uncle's adage, “if this isn’t nice, what is?”
Finally, the hand-rolled carrot cavatelli is an adaptation of a dish that saw Girard podium at the Winnipeg leg of the Canadian Culinary Championship in 2023. This update, using cavatelli instead of capunti, has somehow become even better.
Cavatelli is one of those pastas that’s so hard to nail, given how easy it is to still be a touch raw in the middle while the outside crinkles can get gummy. Not so here. These chewy little pockets, with those honey dipper-like lines to catch all the sauce on the rounded parts, are remarkable in themselves. Then, there’s the braised beef with its just spicy enough Vietnamese accents via Girard’s house made 10-spice, along with anchovy sauce, brown sugar and ginger, that each noodle holds until you burst them in your mouth. With shavings of raw red onion, a handful of Thai basil and mint, and a wedge of lime to squeeze over it all, this is pasta bliss.
And remember, this was a soft opening, so one can only imagine these dishes will be even stronger once Shirley’s opens to the public.
What a joyous addition to Osborne Village, where the culinary offerings already include Sous Sol, Crumb Queen/Andy’s Lunch, Zaytoon, Pho Hoang, Spicy Noodle House and many others, including Shirley’s neighbour Baby Baby that opens this month too.
Shirley Restaurant & Gourmet Grocery is located at 135 Osborne Street. It's open for lunch from Wednesday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., (lunch starts March 19) and is open for dinner starting March 14, Wednesday to Sunday, 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Here’s the website
