Brch & Wyn's new menu ready for its close-up

Brch & Wyn is ready to help us cozy up this fall with a new cafe menu and tasty wines.

After a brief closure, Brch & Wyn is back with a revamped menu that expands on the cafe and wine bar’s delicious food and drink offerings. First opened in September 2021, Brch & Wyn is located on the lower level of the Bradshaw Lofts. The restaurant is a resurrection of Brch, a Waterloo cafe that shuttered during the pandemic, which was run by the same team behind the Bradshaw condo development. 

Keystone Hospitality brought back the cafe concept, while also adding a wine bar component – the word ‘wyn’ means ‘wine’ in Afrikaans, a nod to the restaurant group’s South African connections. Just over a year into its run, Anthony Jordaan, co-owner of Keystone Hospitality, said the timing was right to take the restaurant’s menu to the next level. 

Jordaan and his team recently shuttered seasonal sister eatery Ken’s Bru Garden for the winter, which he said created an opportunity to funnel some of the group’s resources into Brch & Wyn. Building on the cafe’s menu of light, lunchy bites, Brch’s new food line-up includes flatbreads, sandwiches, and soups, such as roasted tomato and sweet pepper, which are made fresh daily. 

“There are a couple of really cool, healthy flatbreads,” said Jordaan. “It’s kind of like a pizza but then there’s super light, fresh toppings.”

The Papa, for example, is layered with roasted chicken, smoked bacon, roasted peppers, arugula, confit garlic, aged cheddar, and crispy onions. 

The new food items complement the cafe’s espresso-based beverage menu, which features beans sourced from Cambridge roaster Monigram and London roaster Cafezia, which Brch then roasts in-house. 

Jordaan said the coming weeks will also see the return of Brch’s evening wine bar program, which was put on pause over the summer. One or two feature flatbreads will likely make their way onto the evening menu, but the Wyn side of Brch & Wyn will continue to emphasize shareable boards. 

“We’re really just going to focus on easy, cool charcuterie boards with local cheeses and meats that pair really well with the wines,” said Jordaan. 

To coincide with the relaunch, Jordaan said guests can expect a refresh of Wyn’s globe-spanning wine list, which previously included a handful of South African bottles as well as labels from Ontario winemakers like Hidden Bench and Cave Spring. 

Led by Keystone’s beverage director Jonny Kirwin, Wyn will continue to highlight top-notch wines that are not available at the LCBO.

“We’re really excited about the line-up that he [Kirwin] has got for this winter,” said Jordaan.

He noted that his team also plans to further develop the bar’s bottle shop program, offering a wider selection of wines for customers to buy and enjoy at home. 

“We’ve found a lot of success [with the wine bar], especially in the wintertime on the colder nights,” said Jordaan, “It's fun to just sit by those big windows and look out when the snow is falling with a nice big glass of red wine and some meat and cheese.”

In addition to opening up the chance to develop Brch & Wyn’s menu, Jordaan said that the winter closure of Ken’s Bru Garden has paved the way for Keystone to host pop-up events in its now-empty outdoor space. He hinted that we can expect to hear more about fun, cold-weather events happening at the Bru Garden site in the coming months.