Boun’s Restaurant

Hands down my favorite place to eat in Winnipeg. The food is always good and fresh, portions generous, price is great, and the staff are friendly, if not sometimes overworked or spread thin. Totally worth it. The owner (Boune) is friendly and always checks on us. I once came to pick up an order and there was an entire table of my friends sitting there eating, all having come of their separate and own accord. So I sat down and joined them! Just a testament to how good the food here is. My favorites are the Summer Rolls, The Ginger Fish, and the Green Curry Coconut milk stir fry (I get it either with chicken or shrimp). So. Good.

Being from Orange County, California where there are phở places in every strip malls, I had high expectations when to comes to phở. My thoughts of trying a vietnamese, thai and Laotian restaurant was not a good idea. What was I thinking? I ordered phở, panang curry and pad thai. I couldn’t tell which has the authentic flavor of the 3 Asian cuisine. I spent $ 60 for all my orders. I should have just cook ramen soup at my sisters house. The kimchi soup I cook tasted way better than the phở here. The pad thai and the curry tasted bleh. I haven’t tried Laotian food but the curry and pad thai here doesn’t taste like the authentic thai food i had in the OC. And the phở? I can cook better phở at home. And considering the price, Canada is more expensive than in California. I think $ 60 is not worth trying out restaurants here in Winnipeg. I’ll save my $$ from eating out.

Everything here is quite excellent. I particularly enjoy the chow mein noodles since this is what I’m accustomed to growing up in San Francisco. The noodles are stir fried together as opposed to having the sauce on top of noodles. The phở is also great and you get a lot.
Staff is always friendly. Their concept of not spicy still has a kick so be careful if you ask for a 10. Your head may explode.

This is my first review of many to come as I travel quite a bit and love trying new food spots (I try hard not to eat fast food).
Boun’s was recommended to me by a client and every time I visit Winnipeg I always eat lunch here (at least a few times).
The food is fresh, made to order, and tastes authentically great. The price is right on par with other Thai restaurants across canada.
4 out of 5 due to the décor… it looks original and the bathroom isn’t the cleanest but they put all efforts in their food quality.

So, I’ve been sitting on this review for a bit. I really couldn’t decided what to give it (between three or four stars). I’ve decided to give it three.
Staffs were really friendly and for just service, I would have given 4 stars.
Here is why it’s only three in my books:
I grew up eating Laotian food. So, you can say, my expectations are kind of high!
I walked in knowing that I want some good comfort food since I’m home sick and wanted something SPICY!
First thing that caught my eyes, no sticky rice. If you know Lao food, you should also know that sticky rice is the staple of their food. So, I was little bummed that they didn’t offer that, we even asked (off the menu) if they had it since my kids loves it!
But we figure, we’ll give it a try anyways!
We ordered, Chicken Satay, Mee Krop Noodles, Papaya salad, Laap and a bowl of rice.
Chicken Satay: 4, I had to break it down for my toddler but he enjoyed it. You can taste the marinate in the skewers.
Mee Krop: 4, Chicken & Vegetables gravy over crispy noodles, a surprising tasty dish. It was full of flavor and if you had the Chinese version, this is just as good.
Papaya Salad: 3, I liked the spicyness (we got an ⁸⁄₁₀ spicy level) of it but felt like it was missing something. (I’m usually picky about this dish since I’m spoiled by the made to order at the Laotian markets back home.)
Laap: 2, It looked like the dish was stir-​fry with the bean sprouts & other veggies, but it lacked flavors that is usually in Laap! If you’re looking for an authentic Laap dish, try A Taste of Laos (off of Erin), although it come close, it’s still not exactly how I would like it. Again, my expectations are high in this one as well!
I do see that the restaurant is leaning towards a melting pot of all Asian foods. I now know, what to expect at Boun’s.

The menu here is a bit confusing as this restaurant calls itself an «Asian» restaurant. So which country in Asia? Well, I’d say foremost it’s Laotian but Laos and Thailand share similar cuisine, so there is definitely the flavours and the heat of Thai food here. Then there’s a few Vietnamese dishes and then the random Chinese dishes. Prices are very moderate and fair as most starters are $ 3 – 9 and most shareable entrees are $ 10-​$ 13. I tried 3 curry dishes and they were all delicious! Definitely come here and order a bunch of dishes and share family style as they will bring you a big bowl of rice. You can order dishes here ranging from a heat quotient from 1 – 10. I have a high tolerance to spicy foods and eat spicy foods often so a «7» is perfect for a good hit of heat as I could still taste the food and not down water like crazy. I would order an 8 or 9 next time to see what that’s like but I think 3 would be good for most palates if you don’t eat spicy food that often and don’t bother adding any heat if you can’t eat spicy at all.
The «panang curry» ($ 10.95) with chicken has coconut milk curry with green peas and lime leaf had a great creamy texture but not a lot of complexity in the curry. Although I really enjoyed this dish, I preferred the other two curries more. The «basa curry» ($ 11.95) was recommended by the server and with good reason — it was so yummy! You can select red, green or yellow curry and I opted for yellow curry with a fillet of basa (a white fish) with vegetables. Amazing sauce — definitely try this one! The matsaman «potato curry» ($ 10.95) can be made with chicken, beef, pork or shrimp and is cooked in coconut milk curry with potatoes, nuts and basil. The beef in this dish was tender and flavourful — I really liked the crunch of the peanuts in this dish too.
The restaurant is located near Lovey’s in the strip mall on Marion Street — there’s very limited parking here so you might have to park on the street but there’s plenty of free 1 – 2 hour parking on the street. The interior space here is bright, modestly decorated and clean. Food was prepared fairly fast and the service was very friendly and warm. A lovely place for lunch or dinner (plus some to take home if you order a few dishes to share).