Sam’s Cafe at Fairmont Confectionery
102 Fairmont Ave., 613-728-0931, www.facebook.com/FairmontConfectionery
Open: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily
Prices: Vietnamese subs $4, single-serving entrées with rice $7, entrées $9.75 to $15.95
Access: Steps to front door
Since some time in the Great Depression, the Fairmont Confectionery has met the corner-store needs of its neighbours in Hintonburg.
But last month, there was a shake-up at the back of the store, something that the original shopkeeper of eight or so decades ago could scarcely have imagined.
Last month, the store’s new owner created a 10-seat mini-eatery and take-out counter within the confectionery and named it Sam’s Café, after himself. But since Sam Souryavong is from Laos, and since the former legal clerk spent four months last year at the long-established and accredited Wandee Culinary Art School in Bangkok, the café’s fare is resolutely Southeast Asian.
Sam Souryavong, owner and chef of Sam’s Cafe. (Jean Levac/ Ottawa Citizen)
Its soups are Thai and its sandwiches are Vietnamese. Most importantly, Souryavong’s Thai curries and stir-fries are sufficiently complex, calibrated and potent in their flavours to make you forget that you’re eating in a corner store.
It will help if you sit at the table for six, facing the red back wall adorned with Thai art. But even then, you won’t feel swaddled in the exotic ambience of other fancier Thai dining rooms. The buzz of the door opening will be audible, as will be the bells of the lottery ticket machine. You’ll be just a few steps from Souryavong and his sister Sandy (who previously owned a Vietnamese restaurant in Markham), working in the well-organized galley kitchen.
But then, the transparency of the home-style experience here is one of its charms. You can see the pantry that the Souryavongs rely on, covet the massive mortar and pestle used to make the fragrant curry pastes from scratch. You can ask the siblings, who always wear aprons from that Bangkok cooking school, about their food. Of course, you can ask for the dishes to be made as hot as desired.
In short, the confectionery’s a good place to have Thai cooking demystified, as well as purchase lottery tickets or a newspaper.
The lightest and quickest of lunches here would be a Vietnamese Banh Mi sub ($3 0r $4 each). Souryavong makes a traditional one filled with Vietnamese sausage, ham and pâté, as well as one that substitutes his own prikpow, a pungent Thai chili paste, for thepâté. Curry chicken banh mi and baked chicken banh mi, both with chunks of well-seasoned meat, were pleasing and accessible.
Grilled chicken sub from Sam’s Cafe in Fairmont Confectionery
Vietnamese salad rolls, with shrimp or chicken, were fine and fresh.
Salad rolls at Sam’s Cafe in Fairmont Confectionery
But the dishes that really sing are those that display the Thai mastery of blending intense, complimentary flavours, such as Souryavong’s punchy version of tom kha soup, thick with aromatics and medium-sized shrimp or chicken.
The curries here were flavour-forward and exemplary, thanks to those made-from-scratch curry pastes.
There were distinctive touches too — green chicken curry came with round Thai eggplants, including miniatures that packed a small sour pop.
Green chicken curry at Sam’s Cafe in Fairmont Confectionery (Jean Levac/ Ottawa Citizen)
Red beef curry came with pumpkin or squash.
Red curry with beef at Sam’s Cafe at Fairmont Confectionery
Both curries, Souryavong said in an interview, barely deviate from his cooking school’s recipe.
If you’re lucky, the café will have Massaman curry as a daily special posted on its white board.
Massaman curry at Sam’s Cafe in Fairmont Confectionery. (Jean Levac/ Ottawa Citizen)
While the café’s version, Souryavong said, has been dialed down to be less chili-packed than his textbook’s version, it was richly textured and still teeming with flavour, including hints of nutmeg and cardamom. Souryavong said that his Massaman curry paste has twice as many ingredients as his other pastes, and that’s it’s a half-morning of roasting, toasting, pounding, blending and grinding to make a batch.
A focused stir-fry of chicken and basil had the fresh hit of Thai basil, and could be made with as many Thai chilis, finely minced, as a customer demands.
Chicken basil stir-fry at Sam’s Cafe in Fairmont Confectionery
The bracing papaya salad, chili-flecked and nicely nudged with the funk of shrimp paste, was sharp and incendiary.
Papaya salad at Sam’s Cafe in Fairmont Confectionery (Jean Levac/ Ottawa Citizen)
Larb, the Laotian salad, set taste buds jangling in all directions with its finely chopped roast chicken, green onion, shallots, cilantro, ground toasted rice, fish sauce and lime juice.
Laotian chicken salad at Sam’s Cafe in Fairmont Confectionery
What’s missing at the café? A customer might wish for a wider range of meal-enders, as house-made desserts have consisted simply of small containers of coconut-cream-topped tapioca, with hidden pieces of taro or squash.
Tapioca butternut squash coconut cream dessert at Sam’s Cafe in Fairmont Confectionery
You might prefer an ice-cream treat from the confectionery freezer.
There’s no beer here, and no tea either — just water, or a soft drink from the corner store’s coolers.
Finally, there’s no Pad Thai served at the café. Souryavong explained that his standard four-burner range doesn’t produce sufficient heat, and he refuses to serve a “soggy” version.
“I don’t have a lot of choices, but whatever I have is what I do best,” Souryavong said. His admirable standards should be high enough to delight Thai food fans and newcomers to the cuisine alike.
