Manyata Courtyard Café
55 Avenue Road (Hazelton Lanes)
416-935-0000
lunch for two with all taxes, tip and wine: $95

First, an admission. I used to be a mallrat. Back in the 80s I would spend hours on a Saturday afternoon parked by the planter outside the Le Chateau in the Halifax Shopping Centre, vying for a glimpse of a salesclerk named Philip Pilgrim, who just happened to be the spitting image of John Taylor from Duran Duran.

Once I became a grown-up, I expected that my days of hanging out in a shopping mall and people-watching were long gone. I eschewed food-courts for real restaurants, and traded in my Bonne Belle lipsmackers for MAC and Chanel cosmetics.

So it was an odd sensation this past Saturday upon finding myself seated in the Manyata Courtyard Café to realize that I was, more than twenty years later, hanging out at the mall. Except, I really don’t remember the mall of my youth being this bizarre.

While Greg Couillard’s Spice Room and the adjacent Chutney Bar are tucked away in a corner, all dark wood and marble counters, a sophisticated, exotically elegant space, the Manyata Courtyard Café is smack in the middle of the courtyard at Hazelton Lanes. Decorated with huge palms, high wicker chairs and diaphanous fabrics hanging from frames that separate the area into airy rooms, it is a bright, pretty, refreshing space. As long as you ignore the following:
- nearby foodcourt with people eating burgers and fries off of plastic trays
- shoppers with dogs (why are there so many dogs in Hazelton Lanes?)
- people pushing clattering Whole Foods shopping carts full of groceries
- workers wheeling a dolly of conference tables to an open spot by the escalators and then dropping each one loudly onto the floor
- people staring at the diners and their food
- groups of youths wearing sweatshirts and flip-flops walking past and yelling loudly

Within the café space itself (which is roped off from the main paths within the mall, ostensibly to keep people from wandering in and sitting down without a reservation), the distractions were also high; there was a huge table of people, about half of whom were under the age of ten and insisted on getting up and wandering around regularly; the pianist tinkled away at a grand piano in the corner and had a repertoire that ranged from show tunes to muzak versions of Celine Dion songs; there was a model from one of the shops in the mall wandering throughout the café in different outfits - first a Pucci print gown, then a silk tea dress, and then a strapless leopard print number which prompted a woman at a nearby table to jump up and stand beside her, exclaiming, “We match!” Diner lady was actually wearing a tiger-print outfit, but who am I to quibble?

Amongst this ongoing entertainment, there was food. Eventually.

After a half-hour wait for our appetizers, during which we were finally offered water and bread (house corn bread is topped with cumin, chipotle pepper and pink peppercorns and is delicious) and we watched others who had been seated after us receive their meals, our food arrived. The masaii salad ($9) is a hearty plate of greens; perfectly julienned carrots, peppers, zucchini and jicama topped with tender beets. The Quinoa Mango Macadamia Salad ($12) is the same selection of greens topped with mango and macadamia, a bowl of green quinoa (we never did find out what was used to make it green) and four hearty tandoori shrimp. The shrimp were slightly over-cooked, but this was the only miss in terms of food.

It turns out our server normally works evenings and was completely unfamiliar with Manyata’s menu. He was friendly and affable but not able to answer any questions about menu items or ingredients without checking with the kitchen. At one point I found myself explaining to him the difference between couscous and quinoa, both of which are on Manyata’s menu.

Speaking of the menu, it may still need some tweaking. All four appetizers are salad-based. Ranging in price $9 to $14, there is little difference in price from many of the mains, which range from $10 to $20 with most about $15.

The mains arrived before our appetizers were done and we worried that they would be the worse for wear after travelling back and forth through the mall to the kitchen (food for the café has to be carried across the thoroughfare of shoppers from the Spice Room kitchen), but all was good. The Vietnamese Kraft Dinner ($14) is a massive bowl of rice noodles in a creamy coconut milk sauce with spinach, cilantro, bok choy and chicken. The hungry husband couldn’t finish his.

Across the table, I was having a nostalgic moment with my red snapper fillet on a coconut bun ($14). Tweaking something in the memory centre of my brain, the sweetish coconut bun combined with the perfectly moist grilled snapper, and took me back to my days living in Kensington Market where I’d hit the Jamaican bakery on Baldwin Street for coconut buns and then the fish place next door, where they’d often be grilling snapper on a barbecue out front on Saturday afternoons. Topped with curry mayo and mango chutney, the sandwich inspired a few moments of Homer Simpson-esque adoration (I might have even tried to hug it), before I devoured the whole thing. The snapper was accompanied by more of the same ubiquitous but delicious salad, and great mounds of greasy but incredible yam fritters. I can see coming back for this dish again and again.

Perusing the dessert menu, we considered cherry cheesecake, apple caramel galette and truffle torte (all $8) but were surprised and delighted to see two different options of plates of cookies ($5 for 6 cookies). I wish more restaurants would do this. It’s a perfect way to end a meal when you want something sweet but don’t want a whole piece of rich cake. We shared a plate of House Spice Cookies, delivered to us personally by Rita the pastry chef, and enjoyed lemon cardamom rounds, chocolate sprinkle cookies with almond and chili pepper, and a three-nut cookie laced with Amarula cream.

With the exception of the slightly overcooked shrimp, we were delighted with the food and will absolutely be back. Even the salad that showed up on every plate was a treat, and the menu is a fun mix of world cuisine featuring sandwiches, pizza, a burrito and even chicken pot pie ($15) full of curry and topped with a round of puff pastry.

The service, and perhaps the pricing needs a bit of tweaking – we’d like to see all the servers familiar with every item on the menu, as many of the dishes, particularly the spices used, may be unfamiliar to some diners. The pacing could use improvements as well.

In terms of atmosphere, there’s not much management can do to control other activities in the mall, so diners should go expecting to be amused, but also distracted, and perhaps annoyed by everything from shouting kids to yappy dogs and squeaky shopping carts. We found pretending we were on a patio helped a bit, and it all definitely made for interesting meal conversation.

Manyata is open for lunch Tuesday to Saturday. They also do brunch from 11:30am on Sundays and within the next couple of weeks, will be offering afternoon tea from 2:30pm to 5pm.