Leopold's Tavern doesn't try to replicate the Strat — and that's a good thing

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The QR Code on the hardwood table coaxes open a smartphone menu to help locate the target: anything with eggs, pickled or otherwise.

Sheets of Plexiglas sway, chained up between tables to feebly ward off the ever-expanding global pandemic, as golden-oldie Mirror in the Bathroom barks cocaine innuendos from a computerized jukebox at this new, Saskatchewan-based chain restaurant that’s boldly reclaimed Old Strathcona’s most important corner.

The new Leopold’s Tavern now sits inside a continuous architectural box going back to photos from the 1890s where you can spot fresh-dropped train tracks, a brand-new Strathcona Hotel, and little evidence of the road we’d be calling Whyte Avenue for the next century and change.

In the spot the Strathcona Hotel’s bar lived for more than a century, the Tavern is finally open for business, its neon-outlined Gretzky icon behind the bar the rough equivalent of a touring country singer head-turtling whatever local jersey impresses that night’s town. And yet the space is already so full of familiar faces wanting to embrace history old and new that the owners can easily exhale and say “mission accomplished”: despite it all, people are coming, seeing, and even buying the T-shirts. And pre-emptive or not, and whatever eye of this savage storm we might be fooling ourselves in, something about that feels like a stolen swig of spring after a yearlong winter.

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“We’ve got big boots to fill,” Leopold’s general manager Malcolm Rabb told the paper last week — which of course triggers echoes, and makes me wonder if birds would think the same thing about dinosaurs if they were less mired in their pecky present.

But how long had it been since I first walked into the Strat? At least halfway to when W.P. Kinsella is said to have haunted it in the mid-60s, which is something. I was underage then — an extra cold winter with bad mittens — and certainly so impressed with the red terrycloth tables that I still fantasize about spilling beer on them and getting yelled at by the staff. Part of that aging dive bar’s joy was how direct the staff was, of course, Mary and Tom and the lot, as you ordered — literally — a “table of beer” in those tough little 7 oz. glasses, which constantly chimed between walls slatted with hardwood halfway down to protect the sorts of damage people who ordered a couple more “tables of beer” come up with as the night, then the generations, slip away.

You’re for sure going to have your own memories, some of them reliable, if you spent any time at this rugged institution. My editor’s great grandmother served there, met her engineer husband at the bar after working on the rails across the dirt road — which led, literally, to said editor’s existence. For others, well, it was just one of the cheapest places to get drunk, the Transit of the south side or what have you.

But we all had something in common under those glaring bulbs amid nebulas of cigarette smoke, plaquing up teeth and wallpaper alike for most of the bar’s history.

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Pool tables won from stranger to stranger. A jukebox that didn’t stop you from playing the same Hip song five times in a row. Old men in the corner who would rat out the one person in the bar with a camera (OK, too personal, sorry). Former kids complaining the bar was being overrun by current kids. That thing everyone says of any lost bar, some impressively gross bathrooms, often co-ed before that was cool. And, yes, those fart-bomb pickled eggs that made it an extra bummer when inside smoking was banned.

Mike Perrino, who’s run vintage shop Whyte Knight half a block west for nearly 30 years, recalls, “All the little round tables, people would sit by themselves, people who’d been going there for decades. I used to get a couple beers and say, ‘Hey, can I have a seat?’ And then you could just talk with someone completely different, and the stories that would come out would be amazing.

“It was a place where anybody could go regardless of pocketbook range. It was rough, but it was fun; real, but always interesting.”

He notes, “The character maintained itself to the end. It’s just the desire to keep the business going, I think, waned. That’s all that happened.”

Hanging TVs, then VLTs under those giant goofy playing cards, further dragged the Strat into the 21st century, variously crowded on a Friday night with hippies, punks, veterans, future mayors — anyone, really. Or that certain weekday afternoon vibe when it was just you, the bartender and one old survivor talking to their echo in the corner.

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And in those moments you’d especially notice how the place held onto a sort of glorious, golden emptiness you feel watching old hockey games, before every inch of the boards were pimped out to the highest bidder.

However we understood it, though, the Strat lived a long and wonderful life. Then, like so many of its long-enduring geriatric celebrities, it died.

Leopold’s Tavern is the first business open in The Strathcona.
Leopold’s Tavern is the first business open in The Strathcona. Photo by Fish Griwkowsky /Postmedia

When I asked Perrino if he wanted to check out Leopold’s, he was enthusiastic, and once in we kept twisting our heads to summon the old bar. The front door is on the corner now, and a long bar sits in what used to be the hotel lobby. There’s a walled party room in the centre, and the old main entrance leading out to the new patio is almost at the back by the kitchen and bathrooms — decorated with record albums behind plexi, and almost disappointingly sanitary.

Stapled to the walls amid countless, valueless hockey cards, hang thousands of photos of almost any famous person you can think of: Oprah, Elvis, Dolly, Frida, Whitney, Childish Gambino, Freddy Mercury, Gene Simmons on a toilet … and the 1899 mayor and council of Strathcona. I joked that Ruth Bader Ginsberg must be up there, then found her with a laugh.

It’s an interesting play — a clutter of nostalgia and loyalty not to anyone so much as everyone, visual overload even further layered with flags, plastic fish and generic prints found yellowing in cabins everywhere.

Even though this dense approach is opposite to the Strat’s “hurry up and order, why are you talking to me about the empty walls?” the white noise décor is so uncool, thus so unpretentious, it’s somehow a similar philosophy.

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“It’s a welcome addition to Whyte Ave,” say Perrino, “rather than a replication of something that used to be on Whyte Ave. And they’re trying to make an interesting, connected feel — to make it seem like it’s been there for a while with all the pictures on the wall.

“But I love seeing the old things. That exact mayor sign used to hang in the lobby of the hotel.”

Those of you missing a Strat pickled egg might try Leopold’s Scotch Egg.
Those of you missing a Strat pickled egg might try Leopold’s Scotch Egg. Photo by Fish Griwkowsky /Postmedia

Back to the food, Leopold’s $7 Scotch Egg is the closest thing to those rubber, pickled orbs we used to douse with tiny packets of salt and pepper, then gobble whole — and it’s worth it. The fries, meanwhile, too closely resemble chicken bones, but the blue cheese burger is solid, too — especially the fat, perfectly soft onions.

Asked his favourite thing, Perrino’s answer is quite sweet. “It’s like the old Strat … hanging out with a friend.”

fgriwkowsky@postmedia.com

@fisheyefoto

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