Cibo Waterfront Cafe

A great little spot with an intimate atmosphere. The prices seemed very fitting to the meals and the quality. Plus, the service we received was lovely!
Their bruschetta was the best I have ever had, definitely my new go to item on the menu!
This is a restaurant I hope to return to!

I was very disappointed with the service. Our food was pretty cold and the restaurant was pretty empty so when you see chefs standing around in the kitchen doing nothing that’s pretty upsetting. They mixed up our order twice and then overcharged us… I tried to make myself like this place but the food is nothing special and quite bland. Oh and it’s OVERPRICED. If you want some great Italian food with a better price and amazing quality, check out Santa Ana pizzeria!

I really enjoyed my meal at Cibo Waterfront Café.
I had a really great pizza (ate the whole darn thing by myself…) and an awesome soup of the day. But, what really got me, were their frites. We got one for the table but in reality, I should have gotten one for myself! They were super tasty.
I also tried a hummus sandwich but it was not as great as the hummus sandwich I make at home.
Our waitress was incredibly nice and knowledgeable.
Clean but small bathrooms.

A very nice little restaurant. We stayed at the Mere Hotel which is right in front of it so decided to try the Cibo for supper after a walk from the Forks. It was on a Saturday evening and they were busy but we didn’t have to wait for a table. Had a window seat so could see out on the river. Service was good and the food was excellent. Hubby Had the bolognese and I had the carbonara. Also shared a Caesar salad. All was great!

Unforgivable service. Slow, accommodating and surely. The food is serviceable but nothing extraordinary. The venue itself is nice however.

Great food! We ordered the caesar salad and a pizza, both were very delicious. The location is beautiful too!

My wife and I were in Winnipeg for the World Cup and ended up at the Forks park around sundown, looking for a good option.
Although the map in Unilocal left us hanging, we figured it out and arrived. Place was packed, but they were able to seat us within 10 minutes. Atmosphere was great, service was great… the only thing keeping me from a 5star review was the food. It was good, but not great. I had the bolognese, which was quite good. My wife had the seafood pizza, which I would give a ³⁄₅. Flourless chocolate cake was yummy. Overall a nice find in a great location on the water.

I came in with a friend on a Friday evening at 5 without a reservation. The restaurant itself was almost empty but the hostess informed us she could give us a table until 7 and asked us if that was enough time.
We were seated and greeted promptly with an offer of the daily features. They sounded good but we decided to share a few items from the menu. Arancini, seafood pizza and the bruschetta. I selected the fig and ricotta, Brie and Apple, and the mushroom goat cheese.
I started with a Rosie cocktail and finished with a glass of Malbec. My friend stuck to her usual Caesars which came with pickles, olives and lime and a smoked paprika flavoured salt rim.
The cocktails were great. I wish they provided a plate for the olive pits, discarded stir sticks and like wedge.
There were three arancini on the plate on top of a bed of sautéed tomatoes and onions.
The bruschetta was delicious and in my opinion still well worth the money. Two of each flavor and they are on long slices of delicious crostini. Can’t go wrong. I missed the grilled vegetable crostini I had the summer before.
The seafood pizza was also excellent. Loads of great toppings on a barely there flakey thin crust.
Service was attentive and not at all intrusive. Everyone in the restaurant was friendly, welcoming and overall contributed to a nice evening.
Congrats to the management, kitchen and staff at Cibo. I hope to come again the next time I visit Winnipeg.

Service was supbar. Went with a three friends and we were seated promptly in the very nice dining area. Ambiance was modern and cozy. We started off with some great appetizers. Helpful tip the beef bourguignon poutine is definitely a shareable item, if not a full-​on meal. The bruschetta choices were great. As our appetizers were nearing completion a friend still had 2 bruschetta she was working on, but the waitress took away all our appy plates including hers, (weird). Also, the servers were slow at times with water and bills. They all just seemed not to keen on server etiquette, ie. reaching over water glasses and stuff. Otherwise, the food was good and the scenery even better.

There are numerous menu items I am interested to try so I have to return. On this visit, I has the beef bourguignon poutine and the Barletta pizza. While I enjoyed the flavour of the poutine dish, I would prefer thicker fries as the shoestring fries were basically like hickory sticks. But the pizza was absolutely delicious! As for the view, being on the water, there is great potential but in the evening, bright interior lights result in nothing being visible through the windows.

I was looking forward to lunch here as I’d heard a lot of good things about the food. Plus they had arancini on the menu – a Sicilian treat not commonly found in Winnipeg (Pasquale’s has had suppli, the Roman version, for decades).
My lunch partner had the beef bourguignon poutine. It looked like a hot mess, but it’s poutine, so that’s to be expected. I did not try it, but she did not care for it and left about half. She didn’t elaborate on why she didn’t like it, so I will give the kitchen the benefit of the doubt, and chalk this one up to personal taste.
I had the daily soup (chicken noodle) and caesar salad, plus a single arancini. I was surprised at how flavourless the arancini was – the risotto, the filling, and the surrounding tomato «sauce» were all tasteless except for the «flavour» of oil in the sauce. I suspect they didn’t use «real» risotto for the arancini, as the rice was much drier than one would expect from leftover risotto. The sauce wasn’t so much a sauce, but more like a dry pico de gallo in terms of texture, but this seemed to be more onion than tomato. If you like onions, you’d like this. But if you prefer the flavour of tomatoes, this is not the accompaniment for you. This whole dish could have used a good dosing of salt.
The caesar salad did not fare much better. The salad was dressed in too much oil and not enough of any other flavour. I had to try to get some of the prosciutto with each bite, just so I could get some flavour. The chicken noodle soup, however, had enough salt for all the food at our table. Take away the salt, and I think the soup actually had good chicken flavour. But it was overwhelmed by the salt. Note to the kitchen – I know it’s chicken noodle soup, but try cooking the noodles to order and adding it to the soup. It would help avoid mushiness.
Service was fine, though given there were only a few other tables occupied, I would have expected more attention. I would have liked more water refills, especially once I started eating that soup, but I don’t remember getting more than one.
It is a very nice restaurant, though. They did a great job with the renovations, keeping the character of the old building but giving it a modern, sophisticated air. I feel that could almost apply to the food, too. The menu items appear to have a modern sophisticated air, but the final product is lacking in execution.
If other people wanted to eat here, I would go. I feel I should give this place another try, after all, rather than judge the food on just one experience. But as it stands, I’m in no hurry to return.

Went here for the first time at the end of June. The décor is wonderful with brick and old machinery. Food was awesome! Will be back next time I am in Winnipeg.

Located right behind the hip Mere Hotel is this sexy little spot. Really a GREAT one two punch for a night visiting Winnipeg. The waitresses are SEXXXY and cool. The Poutine (a Canadian favorite) comes in beef or lobster. For the unknowing: Poutine is French fries covered w/​gravy and cheese. Yessss! Their standout? Eggs Benedict — brioche covered w/​prosciutto and a dreamy sauce. The best in Canada.

I would give it 5 stars if the breakfast was as excellent as the lunch and dinner. The toast I had for breakfast was okay, but the burgers and shoestring fries I had for lunch was so good.

Cibo opened about a month or so ago in the former Amy Street Steam Plant (in 1923) at the foot of Rupert Avenue. Cibo is tucked right behind The Mere Hotel which is this funky colourfully striped box structure near the condos on Waterfront Drive. This eatery is associated with the hotel but oddly enough doesn’t provide room service to the hotel. We didn’t spot Cibo right away so the easiest directions is to park on Waterfront in front of the hotel on street parking and walk through the lobby and straight through and you’ll get to the adjacent building. Apparently there’s only a couple of spots for the eatery so it’s easiest to park on the street.
The long rectangular space has high ceilings, a bar on the right side when you walk in with a large open dining space in the back. There’s lots of windows to give you a spectacular view (more so in the summer but even in the dead of winter) of the Red River and all that is Winnipeg. The vibe is fun, cool and relaxed where the menu offers up lots of bruschettas, antipasto, pasta, pizza, pannino and grilled items. Their wine menu could be improved a lot more as a space like this would definitely benefit from a wider wine selection and more by the glass.
Service was knowledgeable, friendly and efficient. The best items were the bruschetta as there are 7 flavours to choose from plus a special. For $ 12 you can choose a combination of 3 — brie/​apple/​balsamic, mushroom herbed goat cheese and the artichoke/​pesto/​parmesan were all delish. Burger ($ 14) — beef patty with pickled shallot and reggiano aioli was a let down as the patty was overcooked and completely dried out with too much aioli and the matchstick fries were soggy and stuck together like hashbrowns. The lamb and mint pizza ($ 18) has ground lamb, shallot, parsley and mint. The crust is thin crispy with a very slight chew. The pizza needed more flavour as there wasn’t much to the ground lamb meat and there was no discernible mint flavour.
Overall, I would go back and try other items and their breakfast too. But definitely a good place to have a drink and some eats in a cool space especially if you’re going to the MTC or Concert Hall for a show. Really great to see how busy this place was on a week day evening in the first month of opening.
*****
I’ve gone back 2 more times since my first visit. Sunday lunch was quiet and breakfast ends at 11 am so we had to order off the regular menu. I loved the carbonara $ 14 — double smoked bacon, yolk, chili and pecorino. I don’t usually order pasta as it’s not a fave for me but this dish was pretty damn good. It wasn’t as heavy as a traditional carbonara though I am not saying this dish was light in calories by any means. There was a nice heat to this dish and all the components were just perfection. Get this one.
The spanish chicken panino $ 14 — paprika, chicken, spanish goat cheese, peppers. Excellent sandwich. Fries were still soggy.
Third visit was a friday lunch — it was very busy with nearly all tables taken. I had the pear and prosciutto thin crust pizza $ 16 — there was fresh arugular sprinkled on top of the pear and prosciutto and blue cheese. A decent pizza with good flavour but crust was not the same as my last visit and tasted more thin and cracker like.
Service has been good and decently knowledgeable. I love the space here.