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| - I again always have to preface this with my own personal background so that people understand where I'm coming from. I detest beer, or rather I can seem to like it no matter how many I try. I prefer and can drink a cider and I'm also not a wine person but oddly I enjoy port wine. Why am I starting out with this is; West is most likely best enjoyed if for Asians if you're familiar with an Izakaya concept, which is beer with fatty, fried, and or salty food to compliment said beverage.
Since we (my partner and I) do not drink I cannot give a review that would be able to connect with those that can appreciate beer so I apologize if I can't give more than just observations. This place has a wall of taps and a whole menu of exotic canned beers that are divided by colour as if we're wine and by other descriptive words, however I didn't pay too much attention.
What we came here for was the game meat sausages. I have a lot of confidence that if they got the game meat sausages down that their traditional sausages must be just as amazing. I got the wild boar sausage which is a mix of boar, mushroom, and tea from how the menu describes it. The sausage was topped with onions and sour kraut (although I could not find the onions or taste them). The sausage was well cooked and it was juicy with the delicious animal fat that leaked out as you take a bite. The sausage is well seasoned but is complimented by the tartness of the sour kraut and the horse radish mustard I added.
My parter got the Merguez, which is lamb and harissa and she got it in the style of currywrst. Which means that the sausage was cooked and cut up for you and served with bread and a tomato curry sauce. Now on the menu in house it just explains the currywvrst as I have and on the online menu it says in parentheses that this style is not recommended with game meats, and that double portions are available. We found that this might be the case because of the strong flavour of the spices in the curry but if the Merguez might be the exception (or at least for us it was). The spices that flavour the lamb in the sausage and the curry seems to remind us of a shakshuka without the egg. The curry is sweet, tart, and taste or the herby spices.
We also got the pretzel with cheese sauce (made of Raclette and Gouda). The cheese sauce enhances the natural saltiness of the pretzel but doesn't make it too salty unless you eat a bunch of it bite after bite. Again seems like beer would be a good accompaniment but at least we had water. I also found that the accompanying horse radish mustard added another level of complexity to the cheese if you're okay mixing the two sauces. Oh yeah the pretzel is made really well soft in the middle but with enough of a greasy texture to hold up again the cheese and mustard sauces.
We finished our meal with a salted rosemary and maple soft serve ice cream. Now I couldn't tell or taste any hint of rosemary. The ice cream was a well rounded flavour of maple because of the salt, that almost reminds you or caramel but with the woody earthiness that maple brings. I found it sweeter than my liking but because of the roundedness of the taste I ate more than I normally would. My partner said that the rosemary is very subtle and didn't too sweet but did acknowledge the sweetness.
This place would get a five star from me but and here are my critiques. The portion sizes are small, in fact when the currywvrst Merguez sausage came out my partner didn't think it would fill her up. It was surprisingly filler (for her) but I would imagine this would not be the case for most people unless you natural have a small stomach or appetite. Despite the really well made sausage I don't know if it's worth the $12 price tag for the game sausages. The same applies to the pretzel with cheese sauce which ran me a little over $7.50. Btw not a pretzel shape. This is not to say the food doesn't warrant the price but it hard for me to see the size worth that price. But I mean it you understand, enjoy, and appreciate the value of really well done small portioned food available at Tapas and Izakaya you should be able to appreciate this. But if you're think I can get a bratwurst or Italian sausage on the street corner one block east for $3-5 than this is going to be a tough sell to your wallet.
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