Good Eats at Home — Loaded Pierogi
Over the past couple of years, the way we eat from restaurants has changed. While sometimes we still go out, like I did to Northern Flame last week, the pandemic has precipitated a huge growth in delivery services like UberEats, Door Dash, and Skip the Dishes. Eating from spots that you order via these, or even directly as some restaurants are offering, is a different experience with some different considerations. Gone are things like ambience, and perfect control of how a dish arrives, in are aspects like packaging, how it handles transportation, and similar matters.
Today we’re talking about a small Canadian ‘quick service’ chain — Loaded Pierogi. I originally discovered the place on Skip the Dishes, and it looked interesting. Since then, it’s been a go-to spot for me as it’s been quite good and we have had several things from there over the year. In fact, until looking it up today, I didn’t know Loaded Pierogi was a chain (there are 12 locations across Canada, primarily in Ontario) but it definitely has some good eats, and handles delivery quite well.
Loaded Pierogies food serves 6 or 10 pierogies (depending on size) with a wide variety of toppings. There are a bunch of options on their menu, and all of them can be customized with additional toppings heavily. This ranges from a variety of cheeses, to meats like roasted chicken and pulled pork, to a variety of vegetables like avocados, and onions.
The first of the orders was a Chicken Bacon Ranch pierogi dish that my mom picked out. It comes with a roasted chicken breast cut up, double smoked bacon, caramelized onions, and cheddar cheese served with a buttermilk ranch dressing and topped with green onions. With the choice of crispy pierogies (and choosing 6 of them), it all comes together.
The pierogies serve as the canvas for the toppings in most Loaded Pierogi dishes, being either boiled or crispy. We generally prefer the crispy ones, and they provide a nice texture base, and are well made. They don’t have standout flavor on their own, but being the canvas works quite well, and being well cooked is important — it fills a similar role to pasta in Italian cooking.
As for the Chicken Bacon Ranch, the chicken is perfectly cooked, cut into small pieces throughout the dish with nice seasoning. The bacon serves as shots of smoky scrumptious bites inside the dish, and the sauce is a silky smooth and delicious with it, helping meld everything all together.
On the other hand, if you are wanting lots of cheese, the Get Cheesy dish is more your speed. This comes with cheese curds, goat cheese, habanero cheese, and a rich cheddar sauce, along with caramelized onions. There are also typically green onions, but given my brother doesn’t like them he opted not to have them (there is a lot of flexibility like this in selection). This particular one also has extra cheese curds as well, to give it even more cheese power.
With all that cheese, this dish is incredibly cheesy as you might expect. The different cheeses also layer nicely to create a rich flavour with different notes within it. My brother, who is the cheese monster of the family, called it the closest thing to poutine that he’s had without fries, though pierogies are also potato based. It was much better than Loaded Pierogies take on Mac and Cheese which was a disappointment whne we tried it a while back.
Last but not least, was my choice, Ms Piggy. This comes with hickory smoked pulled pork, goat cheese, crispy onions, and finished with a tasty barbecue sauce, and flavoured with green onions. I also added some cheddar cheese for some bonus cheese on the dish.
This is one of my favourites from them, with the other being the Wild Mushroom and Truffle dish. The pulled pork is perfectly prepared and absolutely delicious, and goes perfectly with the barbecue sauce and the onions for a very tasty dish. Pulled pork isn’t something that every place does, but they do it very well.
One aspect I haven’t discussed yet is the packaging. Being an outlet that already did take out and delivery, Loaded Pierogi already was ready for delivering. Their dishes all function on the same base of sorts with pierogies, mac and cheese, or poutine and then the appropriate additions. With this, they have one of the sturdiest delivery set ups I’ve seen, and the bowls the dishes come in are very good for eating. They work perfectly for the meals and they keep the heat in without overcooking anything.
Overall, I thoroughly recommend Loaded Pierogi if you are looking for some pierogies with a rich option of toppings at a reasonable
Loaded Pierogi has three locations in Toronto, and one in each of Hamilton, Bowmanville, and Ottawa in Ontario. Outside of Ontario it has three locations in Edmonton, two in Winnipeg, and one in Charlottetown.
You can order directly from them here.
You can also find their locations on Skip The Dishes, DoorDash, and UberEats
