Pair of foodies rustle up good eats

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This article was published 03/06/2021 (1701 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A pair of Winnipeg-based foodies have likely experienced more of Westman’s drive-in burger joints than most people who live in the area.

Kerry and Stephanie O’Brien run the “Manitoba Small Town Drive-ins Review” Facebook and YouTube pages, for which they’ve visited and reviewed approximately 40 drive-in burger restaurants thus far.

There are more to come, Kerry said by phone in Winnipeg recently, adding they still have a growing list of places they’ve yet to visit.

“There are no bad burgers,” he said. “Every burger’s different and everyone has their own take on it.”

These special takes include special sauces, different buns and other variables that help set them apart.

At the same time, there are a lot of commonalities.

Each burger joint has a house burger, often named after the restaurant, alongside the staples, such as fries, gravy and milkshakes.

Another similarity is that the people in each community believe their burger restaurant to be the best in the province.

“That’s where I come in because I’m not biased,” Kerry said, adding that despite his more critical eye, there’s always something positive to highlight.

Kerry was the first between the two of them to spark an interest in drive-in burger joints, having visited numerous restaurants while working a job that required him to travel throughout the province.

He’d come home and write reviews to remind himself which places he enjoyed the most and why, when Stephanie recommended he film videos to post online.

It all snowballed from there, and Kerry said he’s thrilled to have helped fuel such interest in rural restaurants. The Facebook page now has more than 7,000 members who often offer reviews and tips of their own.

The couple excludes their home community of Winnipeg from the project because there are plenty of promotional tools restaurateurs in the province’s most populous city can access.

“Not a lot of people, especially in places like Winnipeg, would know about a lot of these places and to try and drive some attention to them … is kind of the driving force behind this,” Kerry said, adding he was largely ignorant of what the province outside of Winnipeg had to offer until recently.

Although he has spent his whole life in Manitoba, it wasn’t until he neared the age of 50 that he finally decided to more fully explore his home province.

This was always his and Stephanie’s plan, but they’d anticipated waiting until they hit retirement age to do it, spending their younger years travelling internationally.

But the pandemic brought in travel restrictions, which limited their travels to Manitoba.

Despite this being a limitation at face value, Kerry said they haven’t seen it as such and have enjoyed exploring the province, turning the burger restaurants from their sole destination to a stop along their travels.

“We love doing it,” Kerry said. “Get out and see your own province — there’s so much stuff to do in your own backyard people don’t even realize.”

Some Westman highlights thus far include Tastee’s Ice Cream and Grill in Brandon, Busy B in Boissevain, the Beach Hut in Killarney, Minnedosa’s Dari Isle Drive In and The Boardwalk on Clear Lake in Wasagaming.

Kerry’s favourite restaurant thus far was Jimmy’s Submarine & Dairy Delight in Portage la Prairie, while Stephanie liked Cynthia’s Cornerstone Café in the RM of Brokenhead.

There are plenty more reviews to come, Kerry said, with a whole new slate of restaurants on the agenda for visitation throughout the summer.

» tclarke@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @TylerClarkeMB