“Our whole menu is kind of meant to be shared. That’s our thing. We do globally-inspired and locally sourced.”
Businesses and non-profit organizations regularly open and move in Saskatoon. Today the StarPhoenix talks to Mel and Alisa Skalicky and their son Jackson, who opened Loqui Restaurant in Riversdale in June.
The family took a lot of time touring restaurants across the country to find the right fit for their own restaurant. They had a local contractor build Loqui (pronounced ‘low key’) from the ground up in Riversdale; Mel did some of the interior work himself.
Loqui features a wide variety of items in an ever-evolving menu. They have created a casual and relaxed environment in a unique space for customers from all over the world.
Q: Why did you open Loqui restaurant?
Mel: My son really wanted to do the restaurant, actually. He is a chemical engineer and he was kind of tired of it. So we looked around and we decided if we build it ourselves, it would be better.
I bought our location as a parking lot. Jackson and myself traveled right across Canada going to different restaurants and even down into Austin, Texas. We just wanted to get different ideas of restaurants. And then we had Miners Construction as the general contractors building it. I’m a carpenter also, so I did some of the work inside.
Q: What is your restaurant background?
Mel: I own a smaller café called Tastebuds Café on Lorne Avenue. We’ve had that for 24 years now. We did that, but it’s a much smaller project than this one.
Jackson: I grew up in the restaurant industry with Tastebuds Café, and then I was a server in university. I graduated from chemical engineering in 2011, and I went and I sold engineering equipment for 11 years. I was traveling everywhere, selling equipment, but I was always checking out restaurants. I just got different ideas about cocktails, about menu format, different ideas about interior design.
I always have had a passion for food. I love cooking. I love mixing cocktails.
Q: What style of food do you serve?
Mel: We’ve got a wide arrangement. Some people might say it’s slanted more Asian a bit, but we have steak, chicken and hamburgers.
Jackson: Our whole menu is kind of meant to be shared. That’s our thing. We do globally-inspired and locally sourced. We have a snack portion on the menu, a vegetable portion. We really try to make sure that we have a lot of options for any dietary concern.
If people are celiac, we have a gluten-free fryer that’s also a vegan fryer. No meat products go into this fryer. Just in general we have quite a few vegetarian and vegan options. Our menu is not all vegetarian and vegan, but we do have a whole vegetable section.
We tend to find a decent amount of vegans like to visit us just because we have quite the options. Right on our menu there are symbols for each dietary restriction. There’s dairy-free, gluten-free, nut free, vegan, soy free and vegetarian.
Q: What’s popular on your menu?
Mel: Our number one seller is our Khao Soi. It’s a chicken breast on a bed of noodles with a curry broth.
Jackson: Our Khao Soi (comes with) a northern Thai curry served with rice noodles. It’s a coconut curry broth topped with crispy rice. We make our curry paste in house. We also use chili oil and green onions.
Mel: Our number two seller is Gua Bao, a steamed bun with pork belly. The pork belly is seasoned and spiced.
Jackson: Gua Bao is served with a ginger glaze on the pork belly. And then we have lemongrass in that, coriander and peppers and Japanese mayo. It’s a smaller plate and people can snack on it. The Gua Bao are coming from Taiwan originally. They are a fluffy steamed bun served open-faced.
Q: What is the atmosphere at Loqui?
Jackson: It’s a mid-century modern esthetic. There’s a lot of wood elements. We used an Indonesian tropical hardwood called balau, and that’s everywhere in the restaurant. There are planter boxes with all the same wood. We had custom tables designed and built from a company called Seen Furniture. They are in our neck of the woods in Saskatoon. They helped make the sensory modern vibe.
Mel: We noticed that a lot of people were going back to lots of wood. We put quite a bit of wood on the inside of the restaurant. The solid walnut tables are all handmade by a local furniture maker. We used just local guys for everything in here. There are six big skylights in the ceiling of this place that are all 4 ft by 4 ft. And they all light up in different colors.
And then we’ve got a big courtyard in the backyard that’s all fenced in where we usually have pub tables. But now that it’s (winter) it’s just a big area with lights and stuff. What we hope to do next year in the courtyard is go with more games, like cornhole or ping pong or stuff like that.
Q: Will your menu change over time?
Mel: The menu is ever evolving. If we find something that’s not selling then we’re open to trying something else. It’s mainly season driven. And we had a lot of requests for fish. So now we’re doing a Diefenbaker Lake trout.
Q: Could you tell us about that Diefenbaker trout?
Jackson: That’s a more classic dish. The Diefenbaker trout is served with a cream sauce and then we have local lentils underneath with locally sourced flavors. We use a lacto-fermented chanterelle butter. And then squash, tomato and lentils are kind of the bed of the dish.
Q: Do you have beer on tap?
Mel: We’ve got 10 taps. One of them isn’t a beer — it’s shaft from Lucky Bastard here in town. That’s more of a coffee liquor drink. But the other are nine different types of draft. Eight of them are local. The ninth is a beer we really like out of Calgary. It’s a brewery there that we visited called Ol’ Beautiful. We do local beers such as 9 Mile, Great Western and Shelter.
Q: Do you have a selection of wines?
Alisa: We have a nice compilation of wines and sparkling wines. They’re all curated very specifically to compliment what we have on the menu. Our staff are very knowledgeable in our selections. We do have a beautiful orange pinot grigio, which is an Italian wine. Almost everybody that’s tried it loves it. The wine menu is ever-evolving as well, along with the food menu.
Q: Do you serve desserts?
Mel: Right now we’ve got two desserts. One of them is a banana cream pie that is vegan. And we have a sticky toffee pudding with ice cream on top that we locally source.
Q: Why did you choose the name Loqui?
Jackson: Loqui means to talk or to speak in Latin, and that’s what we’re trying to facilitate. We’re trying to facilitate conversation, people joining together and people sharing food.
Mel: We also wanted to make it that the restaurant is ‘low key’. You don’t have to get dressed up formally to come to the restaurant. It’s not spelled like low-key, but we meant it to go both ways.
Q: What sets you apart from other restaurants?
Mel: I think the decor and our food choices. When you see the interior, so many people have walked in and said you don’t even think you’re in Saskatoon when you walk into this restaurant. The decor of this place is unbelievable.
And we have an open kitchen. Chef Justin is very good about putting the food together and he’ll come out and talk to people when he gets a bit of a break. We like to be there too, though. I think people like to see that the owners are around and paying attention to the restaurant, which we do. We spend many hours at this restaurant.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Loqui
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