Centrale Bergham
1611 Bank St., 613-695-8844 , centralebergham.com
Open: Monday to Thursday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to midnight, Friday 2 p.m. to midnight, Sunday noon to midnight
Prices: large sandwiches $7.99 to $10.99
Access: No steps to front doors or washrooms
This column doesn’t stray often to cover fast-food franchises, but today’s subject, Centrale Bergham on Bank Street at Heron Road, is a distinctive, excessive and hyper-meaty exception.
I’ve steeled myself and lunched there three times in the last week — not because the food is artisanal or delicious, but more because it intrigues and even bemuses me in terms of its multicultural message and uniqueness in Ottawa.
The casual eatery is a franchise of a four-year-old Montreal business that has ballooned to nine locations there and counting. A second Ottawa location is planned to open on Donald Street in the east end.
I don’t know what the company’s name, Centrale Bergham, evokes for you. It did not prepare for what I found there, namely massive sandwiches that were hybrids of submarines and pita pockets. “Kebab bread,” is Centrale Bergham’s term.
They were always very well-stuffed, with one or more kinds of meat. In particular, combining chicken and beef between bread is a reoccurring theme.
If the contents and sizes here are not daunting enough, there are the swaggering sandwich names such as “the Majestic,” “the Maximum” and “the Supreme,” which give reason for pause.
In all of them, the chunks of chicken, strips of sausage, meat patties and beef “bacon” are halal-certified, and indeed there are indicators on the menu that the foods and flavours of North Africa are a pillar of Centrale Bergham’s concept.
For one thing, the so-called “Original” sandwich, tucked away on the menu beneath heftier options, wraps three spicy beef merguez sausages and cheese in its bread-y embrace.
Also, among the joint’s 10 or so customized, mayo-based condiments are Algerian and Moroccan sauces — in addition to its American, Samurai and Biggie sauces, mind you. Indeed, one of the chief tasks for Centrale Bergham’s cashiers is explaining to first-timers the myriad sauces. (“Moroccan and Samurai are the most spicy, Algerian is a little spicy, American is mayo and ketchup…”)
So, if you question whether Canada is a mosaic of cultures, then at least Centrale Bergham is. And I didn’t even mention the tandoori and curried chicken sandwich options or, for that matter, the “Oriental” sandwich stuffed with tandoori chicken, fries, green olives and cheese.
So, you pick your sandwich — or burger, or wrap, or poutine — and choose your sauce. Once it’s been made, the cashier calls you back to the counter, you pick up your meal and then sit down to, as the slogan on the wall says, “taste the world in every bite.”
The Supreme sandwich brimmed with chicken, marinated in “kebab spices,” and piled on top of somewhat dry merguez sausage halves. Health food it wasn’t. Nor was it as impeccably coloured and crafted as its matching, much-styled image shown on the menu. But the hearty, protein-forward sandwich, fortified with Algerian sauce, provided plenty of flavour.
On another visit, in the interests of efficiency, I asked Centrale Bergham to make a mix of its “Red” and “Yellow” subs, meaning tandoori and curry chicken. Once more the result was imposingly meaty, but with two distinct flavours, the sharper curry and the more rounded tandoori.
I’ve had the Special, as much to see if I could eat a mound of tandoori chicken on top of two beef patties and live to tell the tale. I did. My dining companion told me that the patties struck him as McDonald’s-esque, as did the Centrale Bergham’s fries.
Not found under the Golden Arches, but available at Centrale Bergham, was the King burger, which stacked its beef patty and cheese between fried onions and a crispy chicken cutlet. A colleague who sampled it said it was surprisingly sweet, perhaps from onions and barbecue sauce.
Another colleague enjoyed his Philly steak mini-torpedo, which he said tasted as a Philly steak sandwich should.
Dessert might not be high on your list after a sandwich here. But if it is, the choice is between a faux “tiramisu” by the French dessert company Nubi and a wedge of Daim Pie, a Swedish-candy-based treat similar to IKEA’s almond chocolate cake.
Should these European desserts not appeal, there are quintessentially Canadian alternatives at the Tim Hortons that adjoins Centrale Bergham and shares with it a crowded parking lot.
But even if there are no Timbits at Centrale Bergham, I’d contend there’s something admirably Canadian about the place, too.
phum@postmedia.com
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