The Marc
9940-106 St.
780-429-2828
Mon. to Fri - 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. (Friday to 10:30 p.m.)
Sat. 5 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.
Closed Sundays
Food: 4 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Service: 4.5 of 5 Suns
The Marc is as much about service as it is about food.
It's the comfortable, gracious welcome of Patrick and Doris Saurette, who know most of their customers by name, who have trained their serving staff in the fine art of being attentive, friendly and knowledgeable without being overbearing.
It's a restaurant not defined by a million-dollar décor or a sweeping view, but by the ability of its people to never appear rushed, no matter how full, to make every customer feel special.
In fact, I am not fond of The Marc's physical space. On the main floor of a commercial tower, it's office-space rectangular, bland and white. But it does have a lovely fair-weather patio.
Add to the service and pacing a simple but excellent menu that deeply understands wha ...
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Alberta Premier Rachel Notley made history last Sunday with her carbon tax climate change announcements.
Depending on your point of view, Sunday was either a day of mourning or a day of rejoicing.
Sunday either marked the start of a long, slow economic decline that will see Alberta end up like Saskatchewan before Brad Wall. Or Alberta finally saw the light on climate change. Enlightened government policies will dramatically lower the province’s overall greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions AND still leave Alberta as a low-cost, low-emissions exporter of oil and gas.
Let’s have a little fun here, and present these two points of view – the progressive and conservative – as purely as possible.
THE PROGRESSIVE VIEWPOINT
Finally, a government is in power that cares about the people of Alberta, not just the business of Alberta!
The carbon tax is long overdue, is accepted by industry, and sends a signal to the world that we are sensitive to climate change and are determined to be a ...
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A Taverna
12118-90 St. NW
780-471-1717
Tues. to Thurs – 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Fri. and Sat. – 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Sun. – 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Closed Mondays
Food: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 3 of 5 Suns
Service: 4 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two excluding drinks and tip: Basic, $40; loaded, $90
A gaping hole was left in Edmonton’s ethnic dining scene a few years back, when Jack and Maria Nobre closed Spago Portuguese Restaurant (after some 20 years) to retire to Portugal.
This is not to slight Sabor downtown, one of the city’s most elegant restaurants. But Sabor’s Portuguese dishes are very contemporary. For years there’s been no “traditional” Portuguese restaurant of note.
A Taverna fills the gap. In the traditional ethnic restaurant territory on or near 118 Avenue east of 97 Street, chef Elza Silva stays faithful to her mother’s Portuguese recipes while her husband Fernando Silvado handles the front end of the restaurant ...
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Breath-taking changes are afoot – the times they are a changin’.
Ride-sharing service Uber and the Airbnb home-stay app are the most visible of the new ways of exchanging goods and services, thanks to crazy new technologies made possible, in just the last few years, as wireless Internet, laptops and smartphones are filled with sophisticated, easy-to-use software.
Part of the new world is its “disintermediary” notion. For increasing numbers of sectors within the retail economy, the “old” intermediary – i.e. taxis – are no longer needed. Software and the Internet enable individuals to reach out directly to other individuals to provide goods and services more efficiently and at lower cost.
Even more profound is the self-regulating nature of the new person-to-person online exchange programs. Until these new technologies came along, government regulation (of taxicabs, for instance) was seen as essential for safety and security.
Today, “officia ...
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Kazoku Ramen
16518 100 Ave.
780-483-0448
www.kazokurman.ca
11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Six days a week, closed Tuesdays
Food: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 2 of 5 Suns
Service: 3.5 of 5 Suns
It’s all the rage amongst Edmonton’s many food bloggers.
Here a ramen, there a ramen, everywhere a ramen, ramen.
Ramen is nothing more than Japanese-style noodle soup. Your momma could open a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup, dress it up with oriental accessories and proclaim it ramen.
Ramen is the Japanese equivalent to Vietnamese pho noodle soup, and likely has as many variations as pho. Done properly and according to family recipes as at Pho Du, Pho Hoan Pasteur or the King Noodle House, pho produces an intensely individual and delicious meaty meal in a bowl.
Ramen in Edmonton has never experienced the popularity of pho. Suddenly it’s in the in-thing.
Which sent us out, on a blustery November evening, to try the recently opened Kazoku Ramen and then comparison shoppi ...
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At last, a credible, achievable, made-in-Alberta plan to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has surfaced.
Capital Power’s ALTE Shift proposal would cut all Alberta power-plant emissions by 19% within three years, by 40% within 10 years.
Capital Power has submitted ALTE Shift to Premier Rachel Notley’s climate change panel. Notley plans to make a definitive statement in the next week or two on Alberta’s GHG reduction strategy, presumably to gain political capital before heading to Paris for the upcoming global climate-change gathering.
Capital Power’s proposal works for the environment, the customer, the investor and the government.
ALTE Shift proposes all Alberta’s older coal-burning power plants – the biggest GHG emitters in the province – be shut down within five years. Four coal-burning units due for shut down by 2019 would be moved up to 2017. Those due for retirement after 2019 would be closed five years ahead of time.
...
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El Cortez Mexican Kitchen • Tequila Bar
8230 Gateway Blvd.
780-760-0200
www.elcortezcantina.com
Tues. to Fri. 4 p.m. to late
Sat. 11 a.m. to late
Sun. 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.
closed Mondays
Food: 4 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 4.5 of 5 Suns
Service: 3 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two excluding drinks and tip: Basic, $25; loaded, $80
It’s more than food at the El Cortez Mexican Kitchen Tequila Bar.
You may think you’ve stumbled into a shoot-‘em-up spaghetti western set as you enter the splashy restaurant/bar on the edge of Old Strathcona. You half expect a young Clint Eastwood to be standing at the bar, downing tequila by the bottle.
But look a little closer at El Cortez’s murals and artwork. It’s as much Salvador Dali as Mexicano. Peering down on our table from the wall was a modern sea serpent with a light fixture doubling as its eye. Beside the bar was a larger-than-life mural of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
The whole thing reflects the pop-sophistication o ...
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A Christmas Carol
Citadel Theatre,
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
To Dec. 23, 2015
Review by GRAHAM HICKS
How is it possible, after seeing a show on 16 consecutive opening nights, that one is still reduced to tears and gentle sobs of happiness/joy/sadness, at least 10 times through the evening?
Because it's A Christmas Carol, darn it! And not just any Christmas Carol but an adaptation for the stage by Tom Wood that is as classic as the brilliant book on which it is based.
It still must mystify its creators, Wood and director Bob Baker, that they produced such a gem of a production that it has hardly needed any tweaking since that original opening night on the Citadel's Maclab Stage in 1999.
Here's Christmas Carol, 2015, as popular if not more so than ever.
And if there are any rumours out there declaring this to be the last year Christmas Carol will be done at the Citadel, they are unequivocally, absolutely and utterly untrue, says Citadel General Manager Penny Ritco.
Why does thi ...
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Quit blaming Ralph!
How do you like these headlines of late?
From Calgary Herald columnist Naomi Lakritz, published across Canada: “Ralph Klein not NDP Alberta Premier Rachel Notley to blame for budget woes.”
Or from Ricardo Acuna, executive director of the Parkland Institute, in a guest column in the Calgary Herald: “Klein’s policies got us into this mess.”
They argue it’s all ex-Premier Ralph Klein’s fault that the current ND government must plunge back in debt to keep our economy from going to hell in a hand bucket.
Ralph’s zealous cost-cutting from 1993 to 2006 landed us in our current pickle – Ralph slashed hospital beds, fired nurses and teachers!
Roads weren’t built! Hospitals and schools weren’t built!
We are, according to Acuna, “still working to recover” from Ralph’s axe.
Get over it!
Ralph’s serious deficit-slaying days were from 1993 to 1997. Twenty years ago!
For goodness sake, ...
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For three weeks, with Garner Andrews (Sonic FM), J’Lyn Nye (CHED), Gillian Foote (The Bear), Chris Sheetz (CISN), Matt DeBeurs (CISN), Matt Chalut (The Bounce), Liann Cameron (The Bounce), Ashley Sexsmith (Kula Klips), publicist Donna Zazulak, Wendy Mueller, Deb Jakubec (Canadian Diabetes Association) nd Chris Reeve (Edmonton Child Magazine), I have stayed within a carefully designed, 1,800 calories-a-day nutrition program with all the food (three meals and two snacks a day) coming from the Fresh Fit Foods’ kitchen.
As part of the Media Challenge, thanks to Fresh Fit’s sister company World Health, we have all had three sessions per week with a personal trainer. I’ve been exercising an hour a day, six days a week, be it in the gym (resistance), running or biking (cardio) or yoga (stretching).
It’s safe to say the results and the attitude adjustments have been an eye-opener.
Those endless messages about eating a big breakfast, avoiding sugar and deep-fried food, eating lea ...
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