There are some dishes that do better as takeout than others and sadly the items from Café Landwer are best eaten at the restaurant. Landwer recognizes this fact, as their menu has morphed to include more travel-friendly offerings like sandwiches, pastas, and pizza. Luckily, it’s always been an eclectic mix of ethnicities and choices, so these new additions don’t seem out of place.

The sinia kebab ($19) was almost like a hearty pizza anyways, a base of their soft chewy pita that’s slathered with tahini and then topped with a full charbroiled eggplant, large hunks of roasted tomato and red onion, and chickpeas for added texture. Of course, there’s cubes of the namesake beef kebab topping everything - they a bit tougher, but still has the nice balance of spices and flavours. It’s something the rest of the flatbread ingredients lack, relying merely on the tahini, which isn’t powerful enough to flavour the dish. It’s something a crack of salt and pepper at home helps to improve.

With all the juicy vegetable toppings on the flatbread, it does get soggy in the middle. Do yourself a favour and cut it into quarters and give it 8-10 minutes in a hot oven. This really helps make the flatbread handle better and gives the ingredients a chance to heat up. If you’re hungry, just start with the chopped salad it comes with to tide you over (another thing a crack of salt doesn’t hurt).

In fact, 6-8 minutes in the oven is what all their pizzas need. It does melt the cheese on the burrata pizza ($16.95) so that it pools out over everything, but cold tomato sauce isn’t really my thing. Next time, I’m going to remove the cheese from the pie before reheating and add it back afterwards. It’s a dish we’ll certainly re-order - a simple pizza like a margherita but creamier and more decadent thanks to the burrata.  

Even Café Landwer felt something was amiss with the feta and eggplant pizza ($18.95) as I now see it’s been removed, and the feta’s been swapped with mascarpone cheese instead. It’s true, the big cubes of soft feta cheese were a bit jarring to have in one bite and should have been cut into smaller pieces; a spreadable mascarpone would be much easier to combine with everything.

Let’s hope the replacement also takes the black olives and cuts them down a bit. Indeed, Café Landwer doesn’t skimp on ingredients, but adding so many olives simply overpowered everything, including the delicate roasted eggplant. In my mind a ratio of 40% eggplant, 40% cheese, and 20% olives would work the best.

It might seem strange to order a burger ($18) from the restaurant – my poor husband, who must get a weeknight burger from Café Landwer, just so there’s vegetarian options for my flexitarian diet. Needless to say, I didn’t try it. He notes that while the bun could be refresher, the burger isn’t bad. It not as good as a gourmet burger found elsewhere but does remind him of the ones you used to get in the 80s/90s at neighbourhood joints.

In fact, one bite of the fries accompanying the burger and I get what he means. They’re likely the mass frozen variety, but I’m transported back to Van Horne plaza where I’d tuck into an order of these same flour laced spuds at the fish & chips place. Strangely, these lukewarm not fully crispy fries were what we spoke about the most and finished completely. The taste of nostalgia.

If all else fails, the chicken shawarma hummus ($16) is always a safe bet. It’s perhaps a tad waterier than having it at the restaurant, but the chickpea base is just as smooth and luscious and there’s just as many tender pieces of chicken on top. The tightly wrapped flatbread is perhaps the hottest thing in the order and perfect for ripping apart and tucking into while waiting for the other items to reheat.

Like most people, I can’t wait until we can eat out at restaurants again – spring patios, please arrive soon! Café Landwer’s outdoor dining is where you’ll find me, tucking into dishes like the shaksuka that definitely isn’t made for delivery. Until then, kudos to Café Landwer for hustling and creating new options to weather the COVID takeout needs. While it doesn’t live up to your regular menu, I appreciate the tenacity. 

To classify Café Landwer into a type of eatery is difficult. Their menu is as eclectic as Pickle Barrel’s, a mix of Arabic, German, and American dishes that don’t seem to go together, but somehow is listed on the same page. Moreover, the food options are so extensive that it hardly seems like a café. It’s not until you learn about their history, it starts to make sense.

The company first started as Landwer Coffee (named after owner Moshe Landwer) as a roasting facility and coffee bar in Berlin. As the Nazi began rising in power, Moshe decided to move his family to Tel Aviv, well before WW2 would stop them and here  the roasting facility was re-opened and grew in prominence until it was finally sold to a larger conglomerate in the 1980s. Seeing the potential of the brand, Federman & Son’s expanded it into a chain of casual restaurants in Israel, which eventually went global with locations in Canada and the USA. Hence, their menu has Middle Eastern and German elements, with Western dishes like burgers and pizza added to please all.

While you’re waiting for the mains, a hummus bowl is a great starter. The shawarma version ($14) starts with a base of thick silky hummus, drizzles on olive oil, and fills it with juicy chunks of chicken shawarma that’s incredibly flavourful.

The one topped with four small crisp falafels ($13) is just as good. Café Landwer’s creations are fluffy and moist and have a lovely green hue from the pulverized herbs mixed into it.

At first, we nursed the piece of fresh from the oven stone-baked bread since the hummus to bread ratio seemed off. Boy was it good, the hot steaming bread with the cool shawarma hummus, and a slice of pickle. We were essentially creating our own sandwiches. Once the bread was done, our server offered to bring another piece ($1). This could have easily been a meal for one.

Landwer’s famous schnitzel ($19) is good with the pork pounded thinnly, the bread crumb coating applied lightly, and cooked just long enough so that everything is still moist. It’d be even better with more salt as it was under seasoned and really needed a condiment. The ketchup accompanying the fries seemed off, my husband ended up using the tzatziki from my main, better than nothing.

Generally, it seems like Landwer under seasons their dishes. While the grilled salmon ($23) had a lovely citrusy za’atar crust, it didn’t have a speck of salt. Even the Landwer’s rice, despite incorporating caramelized onions, lentils, almonds, and being so richly hued was rather bland. In hindsight, I wish I would have just tried to flag down a server to bring us salt… it’s such a common spice that would have really made everything much tastier.

With that in mind, on a return visit I rolled the dice on having Mediterranean shakshuka ($15.95) instead. There was no way a cast iron pan of stewed tomatoes with chunks of feta would be bland. Thankfully, the bet paid off and it was indeed as full flavoured as I hoped, the tomatoes nice and thick with some onion and big chunks of eggplant. My only mistake was asking for the eggs done medium, they arrived rock hard so there was no runny yolk to dip the hot pita into. Note to self: always get the underdone since the hot pan will continue to cook them.

A bit of pita was the tomato sauce topped with nutty tahini or the cool creamy lebnah was even better. I can see why Landwer’s brunch menu is so popular as this is where the mains shine. It only puzzles me why people bother to wait for a table when there’s an all-day breakfast section on their dinner menu - I’d happily have brunch for dinner any day. When the sun starts to go down, why not tuck into a hot pan of tomatoes and eggs with a fluffy yeasty warm pita? Sweet dreams, indeed.