My Brother’s Place
686 Topsail Road
Ph. 745-2767
My brother Jim sells stuff to eat
Like trotters, tripe and sausage meat.
I dare not by his window stop,
Lest he should offer me a chop;
For though a starving bard I be,
To hell, say I, with charity!
Robert W. Service - My Brothers, Verse 3
Trotters and tripe were not on the menu at My Brother’s Place, Topsail Rd. although I’d happily have ordered them if they were. Few of my dining companions would have though and that’s the problem with offering such delicacies in restaurants. Most of what’s offered - not for “charity” mind - has broad appeal and, I’m sure, does well for most eateries, including My Brother’s Place.
The My Brother’s Place restaurants actually were started - according to information supplied by the company - by “two brothers with fifteen years of experience in the service industry.” Good for them. Most siblings, including many of those coupled in pictures on the walls of the four Newfoundland My Brother’s Place restaurants, wouldn’t - or didn’t - get along well enough to successfully operate any kind of business together. Like, for example, Joe and Dominic DiMaggio. Joe’s younger brother was an outfielder for the Boston Red Sox. According to Joe DiMaggio’s biographer, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Richard Ben Cramer - Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life - Joe and brother Dominic weren’t close.
I visited My Brother’s Place on Topsail Rd. a few times recently, once for lunch with my bud Linda and again for a family supper. It’s a large restaurant with: booth and table seating, a large island bar - fronted by a windowed dessert cooler, featuring several types of cheesecake - a peninsula divider crowned with a large fish tank, plenty of large windows and a cozy corner housing several video gambling machines - an extant phenomenon these days.
Linda and I began lunch by sharing a plate of Thai wonton appetizers. Eight arrived on a sparkling stainless steel tray. They were triangular, made from wonton wrappers topped with bits of chicken and very finely chopped mild white onion, then folded and quickly deep-fried. The wontons were not greasy. They were covered with a sprinkling of diced green pepper and softened mozzarella cheese. I suspect the wontons had been placed in a salamander or under a broiler for a few seconds to soften the cheese. All was drizzled with what tasted like a spicy hot plum sauce. They were light and delicious as well as crisp and crunchy. I scarfed down five and they filled me up, even though they tasted extremely light.
Since we were in a sharing mood we continued by splitting a dish of chicken fajitas. They were bigguns with lots of white chicken meat, red peppers and onion. I filled mine with sour cream and red salsa. They tasted very good but I was not nearly as impressed with the Spanish rice, served on the side. It tasted tired, flat and prefabricated.
The next day I went back for supper with six members of my family.
None were as ravenous as yours truly which meant I was the only one in our group to order an appetizer. My Brother’s Place shrimp cocktail fit the bill nicely. Eight large shrimp dangled, along with wedges of lemon, around the edge of a martini glass filled with seafood sauce. The shrimp was very satisfactory, moist, mildly flavoured and tender. The pink dipping sauce didn’t pack a lot of peppery heat but was quite zesty all the same.
My mother, not being too hungry, stuck with the mandarin chicken salad. It was a colourful mix of lettuce, red pepper, mandarin oranges, oriental noodles and bean sprouts. Topping all was a generous helping of sliced chicken from one of those processed chicken breasts. The chicken was moist but lacked a lot of flavour. Overall the salad benefited from the tasty sesame ginger dressing that suffused the dish.
Matt, my soccer player nephew made a meal of My Brother’s Place Buffalo chicken and red peppers flatbread. It was the most colourful plate on our table, featuring a nice smoky barbecue instead of tomato sauce. A flatbread dressed in such fashion is a close cousin to the pizza, a favourite food of most teenagers. It came with a crispy fresh garden salad that looked fine, however, it was the flatbread Matt devoured in what seemed like a few seconds. I guess that pretty much summed up his assessment of the bulk of his entrée.
Brother-in-law Des had cod tongues, along with some baked potato. The tongues were not uniform in size, several being small and others large. He and I found them to be quite enjoyable since we both like our tongues a little crispy and not too greasy. Cod tongues prepared in similar fashion were served with my sister’s salmon platter, which also featured a skewer of shrimp and tossed salad. All of her meal was delicious. The salmon was a tad overdone but I did like the light batter coating, an unexpected but interesting treatment I thought.
My entrée was a combination of two things I love, pasta and Cajun cuisine. It was jambalaya pasta. However, I’m very particular about my pasta. I like it cooked properly. Pasta should not be cooked so that it’s lost its resolve. The pasta I was served was flabby, limp and quite uninspired. Too bad because the rest of the ingredients - especially the sauce - were good. It was a blush sauce subtly flavoured but quite creamy and rich, a perfect match for the peppery Italian sausage included in the dish.
Speaking of pasta, I’m reminded of something Julia Child once said. I’m paraphrasing but it went something like this.
“I won’t go out if someone’s serving me pasta. Pasta is what people make for you when they don’t know how to cook!”
I guess Julia had been served limp, soggy spaghetti once too often. It’s true that many people think all you need do is throw the stuff in a pot of boiling water and forget about it. Not so.
I tried a couple of desserts at My Brother’s Place. First, let me recommend their simple but tasty and not too rich apple torte. It was just rich enough with a thin, thickened cream layer situated between the apple filling and the crust. You may feel a little guilty eating the apple torte but not nearly as guilty as you would filling your gob with a thick slab of their cheesecake.
My cousin Hallie had a yen for deep-fried ice cream. It was, as they say, “nothing to write home about.” She was convinced they had fried the battered balls of super hard vanilla ice cream
in the same vat of fat they used for everything else, i.e. chips, fish, onion rings, wontons and so on. I wasn’t so sure but I did have a lingering notion that the batter really should have been hugging chunks of chicken in a dish of sweet and sour, with fried rice. The topping of “red” strawberry sauce that helped give the two golden battered globes the look of two giant sweet and sour chicken balls, did not lesson the power of that suggestion.
Recently I read the following in an article by Lopamudra Ghatak for the India Times News Network:
“With individuals displaying distinctive traits, working with siblings can become quite a daunting task. From attending to king-sized egos to having to deal with temper tantrums, sometimes a little knowledge (about one’s siblings) can prove to be quite unsettling.”
I tend to agree. My compliments to the sibling duo that made a go of it with the My Brother’s Place Restaurants in Newfoundland. Don’t be surprised if you see more of their restaurants popping up in the years ahead.
Our meal for seven at My Brother’s Place, Topsail Road - including four glasses of wine and tip - cost $183.
Best Points:
They handle large tables efficiently.
Areas for Improvement:
Improve the batter on your deep-fried ice cream.
Ratings Category:
My Brother’s Place, Topsail Rd. gets 7.5 points out of 10.