Branches serves top-notch lunch fare
Sherwood Park spot deserves to be sampled
When it comes to yearround destination greenhouses, Holes’ Enjoy Centre has pretty well written the book, for better or worse. Up in St. Albert, patrons can truly enjoy a respectable meal, purchase a leg of lamb, food processor, indulge in a spa treatment, and pick up some raffish garden gnomes to complement those flats of petunias, basil and Early Girls.
But it’s a competitive business in this land of snow, and their larger competitors haven’t been asleep.
Take Greenland Garden Centre in Sherwood Park, for example, long an attractive greenhouse operation. Of late, it’s even more of a draw, considering the addition of Branches, a Strathcona County secret treasure more Edmontonians should sample.
During the warm months, the outdoor tables surrounded by a demonstration garden are the ticket, but the sleek, clean, contemporary room that gets us through the winter is pleasant enough, too. That said, someone should remove the large, rolling hospital-style tray holder for used plates that sits near the entrance, a genuine eyesore.
As at, say, Famoso, diners pick a table, peruse the menu and queue up before a tempting array of baked in-house treats at the service counter, and pay up. Later, a server arrives at the table with the food and drink. This always strikes grouches like me as a classic example of putting management ahead of the customer, since the house works you both ways, but there it is.
At any rate, this minor irritation is offset by the satisfying plates and friendly service. True, the menu here won’t change your life, but it admirably reaches beyond the usual lunchtime chart toppers.
Take the ricotta fritters ($9) for example, which started us off: tiny, perfect, light, lemony pillows served with a very impressive tomato jam that took us back to an imaginary county fair. At an earlier visit, we had the crab and scallop cakes ($13), which were also light and elegant and complemented with a vibrant mango salsa and pineapple sriracha aioli that you will never find in a bottle.
Other choices included the fish tacos ($15), a margherita pizza ($14.50), heirloom spinach salad ($12) and a quinoa and wild rice buckwheat crepe ($16).
Each is worthy of your consideration, but the last two were the standouts on my last trip. The salad was quite remarkable — likely the best I’ve had in town this year — a concerto of very unexpected dark, firm leaves served with frozen grapes, berries, watermelon radish, candied walnuts (!), perfectly dressed with a blackberry balsamic and a lovely little ceremonial mound of chèvre panna cotta on the side. You’ve got to try it.
Ditto for the crepe, which I’ve tasted twice now, with similar sterling results. I am a sucker for a good savoury crepe, and you won’t find many better than this one around here, stuffed with chard, brie, and a pilaf of quinoa and wild rice, and covered with a surprisingly light mushroom cream sauce.
Staying away from fish tacos at most places in the Prairies is sound advice, as the basics (fish, tortillas, salsa) are often terrible. Not so here. Who knows if the fish — or any fish sold commercially these days — is actually mahi mahi. But it was a toothsome, firm white ocean fish and not basa or tilapia. The salsa was fresh and decent, the flour tortillas better (and fresher) than average.
I’ve had the margherita pizza — one of the signature dishes here, with a serious oven to deliver righteous goods — twice. The first was excellent, the second a bit of a disappointment. Yes, we know that Napolistyle thin-crust pizzas are cooked quickly in very hot ovens and that some North Americans (not this one) find the real thing a bit “runny.” But in this case, the pie over a busy lunch hour was pulled out of the oven a minute or two early, with a resulting crust problem.
We were too full for dessert, but as mentioned above, the cases seem to hold a variety of delights, which were being snapped up at a healthy clip. The wine list is small but well considered and fairly priced with Alley Kat on tap for beer drinkers. Service was just fine throughout. A gold star or two is also awarded for presenting thoughtful dishes for vegetarians and gluten-free diners.
Given the concept and the fact that Branches is basically a lunch/brunch spot only open for dinner on Fridays and Saturdays (although they do a happy hour from 4 to 6 p.m. Monday through Wednesday), the attention to detail in the kitchen and solid restaurant fundamentals seem particularly meritorious, in full bloom.