Gluten-free pasta and more at Urban Deli

We’ve made a few updates to our gluten-free offerings, including the list of gluten-free products you can purchase here at Urban Deli.

Heather Turnbull from The Gluten-free Menu has made some wonderful changes and we’re excited to be able to offer them.

She now has a soft multi grain bread and a soft white bread, both gluten-free and dairy free. We’re able to retail both of these, as a look at our gluten-free list shows. We’ll also continue to use her gluten-free molasses brown for our sandwiches.

And there’s more!

We’ve now added gluten-free pasta to our product list – angel hair, lasagna and penne – all of them available for purchase here at the Deli. This is thanks to Hodgson Mill. They’re providing us the pastas – all natural brown rice pastas with golden milled flax seed.

You can have a look at all the gluten-free products we offer for purchase on our gluten-free page. (You can also download the.pdf file.)

Of course, we also us these products in the restaurant, so if you’re looking for a gluten-free friendly place to eat, Urban Deli can fit the bill!

Hope you have a fabulous weekend and if you get a chance, drop in and say!

One last thing …

We’re open Moms’ Day — that would be Sunday, May 8. In fact, as of Sunday our new hours kick in, including being open Sundays from 10:00am to 3:00pm with our breakfast menu.

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Gluten-free quinoa wraps – our recipe

We hope you made it to the Simply For Life (SFL) seminar last night at the Trade and Convention Centre. If you did, you may have seen us. We were one of the many Saint John vendors taking part. Events like this are always full of information and for us it was a nudge to get on something we have in the works: identifying the SFL approved items on our menu.

On the subject of foods, last year when we were at the Fundy Food Festival we served up quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) wraps and they really went over well with everyone. Quinoa is a gluten-free food and we’re posting our recipe (see below).

 

What’s quinoa?

Quinoa is a grain-like crop grown for its seeds, which are edible. It has a long history as a food source. More significantly, it’s known for a number of valuable properties. Wikipedia tells us quinoa is,

“… Highly appreciated for its nutritional value, as its protein content is very high (12%–18%). Unlike wheat or rice (which are low in lysine), and like oats, quinoa contains a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, making it an unusually complete protein source among plant foods. It is a good source of dietary fiber and phosphorus and is high in magnesium and iron. Quinoa is gluten-free and considered easy to digest.”

Now, here’s our quinoa wraps recipe, via our long time friend Lianne of Exhale Coaching in British Columbia. Thanks Lianne!

Quiona Wraps Recipe

Ingredients

  • 1 cups quinoa (keen-wa)
  • 2 cups water
  • Lettuce (iceberg, butterhead or romaine)

Method

Combine water and quinoa. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer covered and cook for 15 minutes.

Marinade

  • 3 tbs ginger, fresh and grated
  • 1 garlic clove minced
  • 1-2 tsp red pepper flakes
  • 1 tbs cilantro
  • 1 tbs olive oil
  • 2 tbs honey
  • 3 tbs lemon juice
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1-2 scallions (optional)

Method

Combine ginger, scallions, garlic, red pepper flakes, and cilantro. Whisk together olive oil, lemon juice, honey and salt. Combine these together and then add the quinoa.

Note: can be served warm or cooled. Next day, it’s even better. Can be served on its own or with a dollop of peanut butter / peanut sauce on each with the lettuce.

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A word about our BBQ sauce

A couple of weeks ago we came upon a great site for foodies called Plato Putas. We stumbled upon it via Twitter because they had a post titled Trip Report: Saint John, N.B., Restaurants. And guess what restaurant they loved? Yes, the Urban Deli.

And yes, we may be slightly biased in our love of their site. 🙂

One of the things they loved at the Deli was our BBQ sauce so we decided to do something we don’t normally do and mail them a bottle. But that also got us thinking … A lot of people have commented on our sauce, so we thought we’d give you a brief word or two about it.

As with any great tasting sauce or dish, the secret to its success is in the blending and proportions of the herbs and other ingredients — all the elements of flavours that make up the condiment or dish.

Now, we can’t give you a detailed recipe — it wouldn’t be much of a kitchen secret then — but we can tell you that it’s a combination of onion, garlic, chili’s’, sugars, vinegars, and one or two special flavours that are brought together to make our Urban Deli Gluten Free BBQ sauce.

Unfortunately, beyond that we can’t really tell you much without giving the secret away. But if you haven’t tried it yet, please pay us a visit and check it out! We’d love to see you!

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Seafood provides endless opportunities at Urban Deli

Seafood chowder (gluten-free)

If you want to have a sense of some ocean fare, try some of the seafood items off our menu. We have a bowl of hot seafood chowder available which is great for those foggy Saint John days. It is served with a homemade buttermilk biscuit and consists of lobster, shrimp, scallops, haddock and salmon. This has become a popular choice for many of our customers especially when accompanied by a glass of white wine.

On a daily basis, we try to have a new quiche available and one of our specialties is our seafood medley. This quiche has the same ingredients as our chowder but also includes spinach and usually aged white cheddar cheese. It is served with your choice of side and topped off with a melted cheese sauce on top. Today it is available for order and these sell very fast!!

Other menu options include our sesame crusted seared tuna loin and our wild Pacific salmon burger. If you enjoy the tuna, it is also available on our romaine chiffonade salad served with wasabi vinaigrette.

Sesame crusted tuna steak burger

There are also endless opportunities available with catering or special events. Many seafood creations can be chosen from. We have made coconut shrimp, ceviche and excellent mini lobster rolls. Make any day/night special by calling us for catering, take-out or just stop by the restaurant to try any of our menu options.

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A nice article and brief round up

There was a very nice article in here magazine yesterday about Liz and the Urban Deli. If you missed it, have a look:

Yes, that’s the Deli’s story.

Speaking of hustle and bustle, we’ve been pretty active lately with the restaurant and our catering. We’ve also made a few small changes to our site. One of those was to keep our menus as downloadable files (.pdf) but to also put them into regular web page formats. So under menu in our navigation, you’ll see all our menus:

We think it’s a bit easier that way because you may not want to download a file just to see what we offer.

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At Urban Deli we have been told we have nice racks, racks of ribs that is…

Saint John, New Brunswick has been experiencing an excellent summer season. The sunny weather has incited many to heat up their barbeques, crack a cold beer (or non-alcoholic drink) and socialize.

At Urban Deli we have customers that come in specifically to enjoy our applewood smoked ribs (available as a half or full rack). What is really intriguing about our ribs (and many customers do not know this) is that they are available to be purchased and taken home to be re-heated.

Ribs after a five hour smoking process

This means you can throw it on the barbie and really impress your guests when they arrive.

These ribs are given special attention from the very beginning (starting first with their five hour smoking process which is done on-site) and so has our BBQ sauce.

Great care is taken to ensure the right flavours come through and since our BBQ sauce is made from scratch, we have been able to certify that it is gluten-free.

Half rack of applewood smoked ribs served with your choice of side

Each set of ribs purchased are pre-marinated in our BBQ sauce and we even give you enough on the side for basting or dipping purposes when you pick them up to take home.

So when you are thinking about heating up that barbeque or grabbing a case of cold beer, remember that even with a busy schedule you can always stop by or pre-order our ribs.

Add any of our appetizers (like our roasted garlic and artichoke dip), side salads, hand-cut deli frites to your order or get one of our fabulous desserts.

Take all the credit, we really don’t mind.

There’s no time like summer for barbecues and there’s nothing like ribs for putting the scent of summer in the air and floating through the neighbourhood. 🙂


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The ladies behind the scene

Urban Deli will be celebrating its first year in business on July 13th.  We are also celebrating a year anniversary for two very special team members: Dale and Candy.

Food wise, everything at the Urban Deli begins with Dale and Candy who we label ‘the ladies from the second floor.’

The ladies work daily to consistently prepare our customer’s favourite menu items.  From our daily quiche, pulled pork BBQ sauce, gluten-free cheese sauce to our very popular maple vinaigrette and wasabi vinaigrette dressings, split pea and ham soup, homemade buttermilk biscuits, deli mustard right through to our muffuletta ‘muff-uh-LET-uh, Deli burgers and of course the piece de resistance….our homemade desserts.

A meal without one of the Urban Deli desserts by Dale is incomplete.  Dale’s repertoire of desserts include and are not limited to; Our very popular carrot cake with filling, lemon sour cream pie, apple crumble, chocolate molten cake and cookies.  From our second floor you can find Candy and Dale working hard at squeezing lemons for our scratch lemonade or brewing our famous ice tea made from five tea blends.

Many of our products have been tweaked and fine tuned by the ladies so they can capture the right consistency.  Recipes at the Deli are always evolving and we always welcome customer feedback. For everyone at the Deli there is more to our food; It is both an art and a science.

Recipes to success are simple…hire team members like Candy and Dale who:

  • Want to be at work
  • Have a sense of humour
  • Are very reliable/committed
  • Have strong communication, organizational and time management skills
  • Want to have fun and can laugh at themselves first J
  • Don’t take things personally…because receiving ongoing feedback for the purpose of fine-tuning recipes in order to deliver a consistently great product to our customer is critical to everyone’s success

Thank you Dale and Candy and we look forward to celebrating year two with each of you!

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