Category: Weekly Dish columns from The Edmonton Sun
Weekly Dish columns from The Edmonton Sun
NAIT’s Culinary School outlets
Ernest’s Dining Room, Fresh Express, Retail Meat Market
Food: 4 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 4 of 5 Suns
Service: 4 of 5 Suns
Ernest’s
11762-106 St.
780 471-8676
www.nait.ca/54678.htm
There’s a culinary secret in this town.
The secret has been revealed time after time. Yet a secret it continues to be.
At NAIT, the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, one can eat like a king at peasant prices, have champagne tastes on a beer budget.
A three-course “table d’hote” dinner in Ernest’s fine-dining room costs $35 per person and comes with an additional “amuse bouche” (a mini-appetizer unto itself) and a between-course sorbet to “cleanse the palate.”
At Fresh Express, a fragrant, light, made-from-scratch fish ‘n’ chips rings in at $6.75.
At the NAIT Retail Meat Store, beautiful cuts of fresh meat, from rib roast to rouladen, can be had at two-thirds the cost elsewher ...
Read the rest of entry »
Just how much is food and dining out a part of our lives? Consider: Of the 240 packages in The Edmonton Sun/ATCO Christmas Charity Auction, running until 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 31, at least a third of them involve food.
Here’s the Weekly Dish’s food guide to hundreds of Edmonton restaurants who have donated to the Charity Auction. The number in brackets refers to the auction package number in the auction listings in today’s Sun print edition or at www.christmascharityauction.ca.
Steaks: Three of the city’s finest steakhouses – LUX (10), Ruth’s Chris (12) and Von’s (15) – are in the first 15 packages. LUX executive chef and Sun columnist Paul Shufelt is giving his guests cooking lessons, Ruth’s Chris is famous for its corn-fed steaks, Von’s kitchen is now supervised by extraordinarily creative chef Shane Chartrand. Don’t forget the Outback Steakhouse (107), hosting dinner with CHED’s Dan Tencer & Andrew Grose.
Fine dining: Thes ...
Read the rest of entry »
Tavern 1903 at Alberta Hotel
9802 Jasper Ave.
780 424 0152
www.tavern1903.com
Food: 4 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 4 of 5 Suns
Service: 4 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two (not including drinks or tip): Basic, $50, loaded, $80.
Tavern 1903 is not a tavern.
Tavern 1903 is a restaurant with a great bar. Tavern 1903 breathes history like the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald breathes history.
Tavern 1903 is the best food & drink thing to happen at the east end of Jasper Avenue since the Hardware Grill.
Which makes sense. Tavern 1903 is a second project for Hardware Grill owner/chef Larry Stewart and his wife Melinda.
But whereas the Hardware Grill is the city’s top dog for formal (i.e. expensive) dining, Tavern 1903 is offering Hardware Grill quality in a casual setting, at Earl’s/Joey’s prices.
Tavern 1903 is so named because half — to the right as you enter — is a replica of the tavern in the original Alberta Hotel. The other half — to the left &mda ...
Read the rest of entry »
Belgravia Hub
7609 115 St. (one block west of the Belgravia LRT stop)
780 756 3344
www.belhub.com
(evenings only)
Food: 4 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Service: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two (not including drinks or tip): Basic, $40; loaded, $80.
Lively, up-tempo, energetic dining in the downtown, 124th Street or Whyte Avenue restaurant precincts is all fine and dandy. But sometimes — often — you want a little break, a little quiet, a little peaceful dining far from the madding crowd.
Which is why Belgravia Hub, one block west of the Belgravia LRT stop at the corner of 76 Avenue and 115 Street, and blocks south of the University of Alberta, will be with us for a very long time.
It’s a small, comforting yet elegant restaurant perfectly in tune with its neighbourly surroundings, framed with tall elms, side by side with what you’d think would be the competition of the Gracious Goods Café.
The surrounding community — all residential &mdas ...
Read the rest of entry »
Koutouki on 124th Street
10719-124 St.
www.koutouki.ca
780 452 5383
Food: 4 of 5 stars
Ambience: 3.5 of 5 stars
Service: 4 of 5 stars
Dinner for two (excluding beverages and tip): Mezethes style, $50; full meal deal, $90
Koutouki on 124 Street is more-or-less Edmonton’s original Koutouki Taverna.
Koutouki patriarch Yianni Psalios had opened, sold or closed a bunch of other Greek restaurants before settling on the name and a location that’s now owned and operated by his daughter and son-in-law Dina and Chris St. Denis.
The very first Koutouki was actually across the street, a tiny restaurant sandwiched in beside the Roxy Theatre. Since the original, six Koutoukis have come and gone. “You know how it goes,” Yianni once said, “When the economy is growing, I open restaurants. When the economy shrinks, I close.”
While the ever-restless Yianni opens and closes (his latest, Yianni’s Backyard at 5524 Calgary Trail, has just opened) Dina and Ch ...
Read the rest of entry »
State & Main Kitchen|Bar
Southgate Shopping Centre (southwest corner)
5015 111 St.
587 524 3251
http://www.stateandmain.ca/edmonton
Food: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 3 of 5 Suns
Service: 3 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two (not including drinks or tip): Basic, $25; Loaded, $60.
Just like Earl’s spawned Joey Tomatoes, Original Joe’s has spawned a new restaurant chain, State & Main.
Edmonton’s first State & Main recently opened on the south-west corner of Southgate Shopping Centre with no direct access to the mall itself. A State & Main has been open in Spruce Grove since mid-summer.
The corporate strategy is obvious.
Calgary headquartered, Original Joe’s has been very successful — some seven locations in Edmonton alone — as a bar with good food. This column gave the 109th Street Original Joe’s a four out of five Suns rating back in February.
State & Main has the same menu as Original Joe’s, transferred to an all-ages ...
Read the rest of entry »
Bistro India
780 482 1700
www.bistroindia.ca
10203 116 St.
Food: 4 of 5 Suns
Ambience: porch, 4 of 5 Suns; indoor, 3 of 5 Suns
Service: 4 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two (excluding beverage and tip): basic, $35; loaded, $60
It’s a gamble.
You’ve driven by the restaurant 100 times, it looks interesting.
But you’ve had no word-of-mouth report, it’s never been featured by Yelp or Urbanspoon.
On a quiet stretch of 116 St. but a block north of Jasper Avenue is an older, sprawling residential home turned restaurant.
It seems to be where restaurants go to die. Gilligan’s, Dr. Zhivago, Blue Lotus and Way of Life have all occupied the space.
For three years it has been Bistro India, featuring the lesser-known cuisine of the southern half of the great subcontinent.
Curiosity got the better of me. In we went.
Fortunately, it was an inspired choice.
Bistro India has excellent food, Indian but subtly different from the many Indian restaurants now dotti ...
Read the rest of entry »
RGE RD
10643 123 St.
780 447 4577
www.rgerd.ca
Food: 5 of 5 suns
Ambience: 4 of 5 suns
Service: 4 of 5 suns
Dinner for two (excluding beverage and tip): basic, $50; loaded, $100
———
This was not your mother’s liver – the flat yucky stuff with weird holes in it.
This was one of the most delicious meats you have ever tasted.
Thanks to the fresh-as-possible policy at RGE RD (the abbreviation for rural roads running north-south) the feature in the day’s “Questionable Bits” meat selection was fresh liver.
RGE RD, the new restaurant by master chef Blair Lebsack, buys a whole cow – the two sides and everything edible inbetween – once a week from a local organic beef producer.
The liver was from a cow butchered just two days before, fed nothing but good ol’grass and maybe some unsprayed barley for finishing.
Intrigued, I took the bait. If Blair could pull this one off …
The small liver slices were tri ...
Read the rest of entry »
RoseBowl Pizza/Rouge Resto-Lounge - 10111 117 St. 780 482 5152, rougelounge.ca
Pizza: 4 of 5; Ambience 2.5 of 5; Service: 3.5 of 5
Average pizza prices: Appetizer size pizzas, $10; medium, $15; large $20
Little Ceasars, Domino’s, Panago & Famoso.
Funky Pickle, Papa John’s, Boston & Parkallen.
Deep dish, flatbread, white and red.
Pizza, pizza, everywhere. And no evidence that the trend will ever slow down.
On the contrary, pizza, at least the contemporary, thin-crust, name-your-topping pizza, is more popular than ever.
Thanks, Famoso!
Today’s Weekly Dish reviews of three very different pizzerias, united by a love of unleavened pizza dough, cheese, usually tomato or tomato sauce and an infinite variety of toppings, quickly baked in hot ovens.
Rosso Pizzeria in the Bridge District (109 Street south of the High Level), is modern, ultra-cool, the ultimate in Euro-chic and very, very good.
The classic Italian-Canadian pizza is summed up by Ragazzi Pizzera, ...
Read the rest of entry »
Are Albertans becoming choosier in what they eat and what they drink? Are significant numbers of us shopping at farmers’ markets as well as Superstore or Costco? At the big supermarkets, are organic and deli sections thriving?
Are independent butcher shops like Acme or specialty cheese shops like the new Cavern on 104th Street becoming more popular?
When you go to the shiny new huge-choice liquor stores and confront literally 1,000 brands of red wine, are you adventurous, learning about different grapes … or do you grab the usual Apothic Red?
To be blunt, are you willing to pay more, significantly more, for quality?
The subject arose at a multi-course dinner presented at Joseph Rustom’s Parkallen Restaurant by Big Rock Brewery last week, celebrating the launch of Big Rock’s Rosmarinus Aromatic Ale.
“Craft” beers, loosely defined as beers made by small, independent and traditional breweries, are a classic test of this quality versus quantity idea.
...
Read the rest of entry »