The Lazy Owl

New tavern has cozy atmosphere, big portions, and ROCKin’ fish n’ chips

hammad ali staff writer

I’m one of those people who loves going out for a meal by myself. After a long, tiring week, I like to go out someplace cozy, order a drink and some comfort food, and more often than not I’ll take a book along to get some light reading done. Sometimes, I might even take my work along with me. On more than one occasion, I have solved something I was stuck with for hours as soon as I sat down with the same problem at a local diner.

All of which are reasons why I was glad to see the newest neighborhood restaurant open on south Albert, just a moderately distanced walk from my place. Two doors down from Dandy’s Ice Cream at 4550 Albert Street, Rock Tavern is the latest neighborhood gathering spot serving delicious food, local craft beer, cocktails, and a variety of wines in a cozy, welcoming atmosphere. Open every day from 11:30 a.m. to at least 10:30 p.m., their menu offers a wide selection of appetizers, soups and salads, burgers, pizzas, and a number of other main courses. For dessert, you can actually order a scoop of the vanilla ice cream from Dandy’s. It can even come along with a warm chocolate brownie, made in house, if you like.

The restaurant has been in operation for just under a month, and has a growing social media presence on Facebook (Rock Tavern) and Instagram (@rocktavernyqr). Be warned if you follow their pages, though! Sometimes photos of delicious burgers or sandwiches pop up at times when you are supposed to be working or sleeping, and this has posed a slight inconvenience for this writer more than a few times.

Some of us had the opportunity to go down there for dinner this past week, and I for one will definitely be going back. It was the evening of Remembrance Day, and the place was not too busy or loud, something I was thankful for. Chef Braitman was in fact able to come out for a chat with our party of around 10 people, and highly recommended the fish and chips. While I had originally intended to go with the Southern Heat Smash Burger (it was the perfect weather for it that evening), a number of us took his recommendation and had no regrets.

Made with rockfish, which is a variety of the pacific snapper, the fish and chips were flavorful, soft, and flaky – and at 12 ounces of fish, more than enough for someone with a healthy appetite. In fact, some members of our group eventually had to get takeaway boxes for theirs. When sharing this tidbit with the chef, he mentioned that the fish and chips is one of their fastest moving items, and they have a 6-ounce fish burger on the menu also made with rockfish.

After 12 ounces of lightly battered and delicious fish and chips, I didn’t have room for dessert. However, I have found myself staring at the burger section of the menu multiple times since on their website. I figure if I do a weekly visit for the next little while it will still be two months before I have tried one of each, four months if I want to alternate with the fish and chips. If you take

Rock Tavern

a look at their menu and think it looks pricey, I definitely want to point out that the portions are huge. In fact, two members of our group were able to share one. Personally, I would never do such a thing, but I also used to eat two dinners daily for a big chunk of my life!

Be that as it may, I highly recommend the Rock Tavern! Go down there the next time there’s a Riders game, enjoy it on their big screens along with some drinks, and, if you are feeling peckish, get the fish and chips!

Rock Tavern The Rock Tavern & Eatery logo on a photo of group of people drinking wine around a table. Guess you didn’t get the E-Vite…

Restaurant review: The Lazy Owl

Come for the empty Cabela’s feeling, stay for the clamato on tap

jorah bright arts writer

Food services at the University of Regina are sparse right now. Until the winter semester begins, we have Extreme Pita, the newly opened Tim Hortons and Momentum Café, and URSU’s own Lazy Owl, which re-opened in September with a new name and new menu since it closed in 2020. And it’s interesting, to say the least.

The hours are strange: 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. and only on weekdays is certainly a choice. It eliminates the ability for students to go out drinking with friends on Friday nights, or to go out for drinks on the weekend at all.

Since I’m only a second-year student, I can’t tell you what the old Owl looked like before the rebrand. (Editor’s note: For some reason, the rebrand did not actually include décor changes of note). But the new one has a very strange atmosphere. It has the same atmosphere as a Cabela’s right before closing, except sometimes they’re playing a morning talk show where they talk about shoes on the TVs. The combination feels like a breach in The Owl’s aesthetic.

The new menu is seemingly very fancy – unnecessarily fancy. And poorly executed in its fanciness, to boot. I don’t need a salad with chickpeas and dried cranberries when a basic chicken caesar salad would do the job just fine. The options aren’t varied. There are only two vegetarian options, and that’s it. And no, the vegetarian options are not the salad or the veggie wrap, despite both of those things being mostly vegetables. The vegetarian options are actually the poutine and the cauliflower bites.

Similarly, there are very limited halal options. There is the aforementioned poutine, two chicken burgers, and the Cali club. Yet, despite the chicken being listed as halal in the Bacon Cheddar Burger and the Cali Club, there is also bacon in both those meals. It just doesn’t make sense to list a meal as a halal option but then put something non-halal in the meal.

The salad dressing they have for the caesar salad side with the grill orders has an aggressive amount of garlic, yet still somehow tastes watered down. If you get the fries that come as a side dish for many orders in the evening, they often taste like they were cooked earlier in the day instead of fresh.

For Christmas, they have a cranberry buffalo wings option, and I am very confused. Tart and spicy seem very strange together. I guess I still haven’t eaten an orange since my last article, so I can’t say much about strange fruit flavours.

Another menu item that just confused me was clamato under fountain drinks. Clamato is not a fountain drink. I would be concerned if I saw a soda machine dispense clamato. Why is clamato on tap? Who is drinking the clamato on tap? Are they okay?

Also, despite being a student-union restaurant, it’s kind of pricey. I can’t always afford to spend $15 on a meal alone and then spend $3 on a fountain drink, clamato or not. But let’s talk about the good things at the Lazy Owl. The seasoned fries are very well-seasoned. It’s a good combination of spices. The breakfast skillets are huge. It comes in a massive bowl and looks daunting to finish. It’s a large amount of food for $12. The Long Island Iced Tea tastes like those gummy coke bottles. The cinnamon buns are pretty good. Though I don’t drink, multiple sources have told me the Lazy Owl buys good tequila.

Hopefully, in the future, the Lazy Owl will have more options for varied diets, and make the atmosphere feel less like a nearly closed Cabela’s.