Segovia owners to open Clementine, new Exchange District breakfast spot

The owners of Segovia are opening a breakfast spot in the Exchange District early next year.

The restaurant, which will be called Clementine, is set to open in the basement of 123 Princess St. in February.

Co-owners Adam Donnelly and Carolina Konrad have spent the last six years building up Segovia, an Osborne Village tapas spot, into one of the best-known restaurants in the city.

Now, the pair have two young children and are looking for a change.

"We just felt there was no real ambitious restaurant doing breakfast in Winnipeg, so we thought it would be really cool to just do that and do something different for us," said Donnelly, who is also Segovia's head chef. "When we opened six years ago, there was no other small-plates restaurant in the city, no other tapas restaurant, so it worked out for us, so we're just going to try to bring that spirit of sharing and community to a breakfast place but without totally sharing everything."

The brunch spot will be open from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. seven days a week, and will have a coffee and cocktail bar.

The price point will be slightly lower than Segovia, and the service a bit more casual, Donnelly says.

"We just want people to feel comfortable, especially in the morning. Some people are grumpy and don't have time to read through this menu and Google what the hell they're going to be eating," he said. "I feel like when you go eat [at Clementine] you'll be able to tell we own it. For people that are fans of Segovia, I feel it's just another place for them to go."

Donnelly and Konrad are opening the space with chef Chris Gama and Raya Konrad, who will be running the front of house and their coffee program.

"Parlour and Little Sister are opening up a roastery … just across the street from Parlour," said Donnelly. "So we're getting all our coffee trading from them and they're going to roast all the coffee beans for Clementine."

Fiona Sanipelli, who designed Segovia, has been brought in from New York to design Clementine's space.

Sanipelli and Donnelly grew up together in Pinawa, Man. — as did Parlour owner Nils Vik.

Now, Sanipelli is designing restaurants with Dutch East Design, a company she helped found, in New York, but Donnelly and Konrad wanted to work with her again.

"It's going to be absolutely beautiful. I feel like the room is going to look the same as [Segovia,]" said Donnelly.

'Everybody wants to do dinner'

As for the food, Donnelly hesitates to call the menu eclectic but said it will have a variety of influences — including Spanish, Mexican and Japanese.

Gama and Donnelly went to Los Angeles and San Francisco on a research trip for menu inspiration, but the greatest influence comes from Donnelly's time living in Melbourne, Australia, where breakfast is a big deal.

"All four of us who are in the restaurant together have been to Australia or lived there and they just do amazing breakfasts, and it's the most important meal of the day there. They just put time and effort into that," he said. "Everybody wants to do dinner [in Winnipeg] because you spend the most money at dinner, you can do basically the most creative things for dinner. But we wanted to say, 'Hey, we can take all that effort and making everything from scratch and do it for breakfast and brunch.'"

The all-day menu will be split into categories with smaller plates and mains. Clementine will also bake its own bread in house.

"There'll be, hopefully, a lot of little dishes on the table that everybody can kind of share. They'll have their own individual breakfast and a couple other smaller things to share amongst everyone else," Donnelly said. "I know a lot of people are very opinionated about their breakfast, to say the least, and they don't want to share, so we kind of want to ease them into it."

One thing will be exactly the same as Segovia, Donnelly said — the time, thought and effort put into the dishes.

"We just want to have more composed dishes where you're like, all these things go together. We've taken the time and effort. Everything's made from scratch," he said. "If it's good and affordable, I feel like people will travel to have a good meal. So, that's what we're hoping will happen."