One thing you can’t accuse New B’s Café of is being stereotypical and humdrum. To the community of New Bothwell, New B’s is as much of an institution as the cheese factory. But in the last four and a half years, under the ownership of Elle Funk, the café has been working hard to reinvent itself as the best destination burger and pizza place in the southeast.
Funk’s café hasn’t lost the appeal of home-cooked meals and hungry-man portions. On top of these virtues, she’s added to the allure by creating exciting and flavourful burger and pizza creations you won’t find anywhere else.
Every month a new burger hits the menu, and each one comes with its own funky name to characterize its unique qualities. Names like It’s Canadian, Eh!, which, true to its name, contains Canadian back bacon, Monterey Jack cheese, and maple syrup.
“It’s sweet, salty, and just so savoury,” says Funk with a gleam.
Last February she created the Hawaiian Burger, inspired by her trip to the islands.
“It had our signature beef patty, grilled ham, mozzarella cheese, grilled pineapple, and sweet and sour sauce,” she says. “The marriage of all those things was just amazing.”
Another creation, The Hippy Chick, drew a lot of attention in August. The burger was stacked with a breaded chicken breast, shredded carrots, cucumbers, and beet leaves right from the garden, and then smothered in heaps of homemade honey-barbecue sauce and mayo. Ooey, gooey goodness is how Funk describes it.
“We were serving up that burger to a customer and they said, ‘Oh my goodness, we used up half of your napkin dispenser. This is such a sloppy burger, but it’s the best!’” Funk just laughs. “That’s my thing. If you can’t fit it all in your mouth, it’s the perfect burger.”
She admits to spending at least 80 percent of her time in the café kitchen, drumming up inspiration for her next signature dish. Friends and staff are always willing samplers and ready to give her a thumbs up or down.
While she has no culinary degree, she does have a distinct love of food, and raising three hungry children was enough training to keep her pumping out fresh and innovative ideas from the kitchen.
And diners well beyond New Bothwell’s borders are taking notice. In the past year, New B’s creative burgers and pizzas have been winning awards. Last year, New B’s took first place in The Carillon Readers’ Choice Survey for best burger in the southeast. The business’s attached grocery store took second place for best convenience store in the southeast. Funk’s was the only rural restaurant to participate.
Steinbach’s Burger Week will be taking place from September 8–14. Funk has entered a unique burger creation especially for this event, called The Bomb. At this point, she’s unwilling to disclose the secret ingredients.
In the spring, her pizzas also made waves in the Manitoba Pizza Week contest, where she competed with restaurants all across Winnipeg.
“I was up against all of these high-end businesses and I thought, ‘I’m just going to try it,’” says Funk. “It’s the same premise as burger week, just with pizza. It was fun and intimidating all at the same time because all of these other restaurants have so much more experience than I have. I was just ecstatic that we even placed at all.”
Funk took tenth place in the Best Overall category with her Taco Me Away pizza, rivalling competitors such as Pasquale’s and Za Pizza Bistro. She took third place with her Totally Twisted pizza in a category sponsored, perhaps ironically, by Bothwell Cheese. It wasn’t the cheese factory, though, that gave her the win. It was the many foodies who visited her café and entered their online votes.
Outside of contests, too, Funk is continually drumming up ways to make pizza even more quirky.
“On May the fourth, because it’s kind of like Geek Day, I ended up creating a Death Star pizza,” says Funk. “It was just the one day and we sold quite a few of those. We did the same thing during the Jets finals. We made a whiteout pizza and that went over really well. I like doing fun things like that.”
Using locally sourced ingredients also brings her a lot of pride. Without question, Bothwell Cheese is the supplier of all her cheeses. Her pizza crusts are sourced from a Steinbach supplier. Soups, sauces, and all-beef burger patties are made in-house, as well as their third most-ordered dishes: Mennonite classics perogies and kielke with cream sauce.
Pizzas are on special every Monday night and Tuesdays are dedicated as rib or wing nights.
It’s more than the award-winning entrees that are garnering the café a little extra attention, though. The ambience, too, is like something out of the TV sitcom Corner Gas—homey, cozy, and a little bit retro. It’s truly one of those great finds among a sea of small-town eateries.
Funk, in her cheerful, vivacious way, is quick to greet customers who walk through her door. She’s a firm believer that relationship-building holds more of an appeal for her customers than surrounding them with big screen TVs and noisy lounges. A sharing library sits against one wall, welcoming customers to freely take or leave books as they come and go.
“I had to be here for a while to understand what people really want and find out what is drawing them to this place,” Funk says. “Right now, what I’m hearing from a lot of [our customers] is that it’s just a down-home country feeling. People love the friendliness when they walk in the door. They feel like it’s from back in the day. So I’ve really tried to make that my focus and to just get people back to their roots.”
Funk jokes that her location in a small community means the café is in the centre of everything and yet nothing. But it’s only a seven-minute drive from the surrounding towns in any direction, and she believes she has what it takes to build a destination.
“Ever since we started gaining more popularity on Facebook, I’ve seen a shift in people coming in the door,” says Funk. “It’s almost daily now that we get about five new customers a day.”
New B’s Café has a seating capacity of 50 in the restaurant plus an outdoor patio for the summer months. Breakfast, lunch, and supper are served daily. They are open from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Sunday hours are from 2:00 to 8:00 p.m.
A sign on one wall announces the business’s mantra: “Good food, good friends, good times.”
