Meat, recently opened in Edmonton's Old Strathcona district in Alberta, Canada, is one of the best, fully thought-through restaurants I’ve had the pleasure of entering.
It’s full of contradictions. Yet, from the initial impression, to décor, to food and menu, it’s one delicious whole.
Whoever has heard of a BBQ smokehouse parading as a tea room!
This slightly dainty, new-age establishment is serving up mounds of mouth-watering beef brisket, pulled pork and smoked chicken! It’s the opposite to the stereotypic “y’all chow down now, y’hear?” smokehouse. In fact, there’s not a smokehouse cliché to be seen.
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Had successive Albertal governments stuck to their guns and kept growing the Alberta Heritage Fund from energy royalties rather than simply spending the cash, the Heritage Fund today would be worth north of $100 billion, easily able to contribute a steady - say $10 billion a year – stream of revenue into general government revenues while continuing to grow. Instead, it's stuck at $17 billion.
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So, quite suddenly, Alberta’s (lower-end) job market has been thrown into turmoil by the federal government’s toughening up of its Temporary Foreign Workers Program.
It’s been long known that the program has/had serious flaws: An unscrupulous hotelier, for instance, bringing in a foreign worker in a waiter category, then transferring him/her to housekeeping at (lower) waiter wages.
Even in worker-short Alberta, the Alberta Federation of Labour says companies are hiring foreign workers (at lower wages) when Albertans are available.
Still, it was surprising how the feds, despite glaring labour shortages in Western Canada, were so abrupt in changing the current system. Major, major abuse of the Temporary Foreign Workers’ program must have been happening for Employment Minister Jason Kenney to move so quickly.
How Alberta brings its jobs-to-workers ratio back into balance is beyond the scope of this column.
Obviously the politicians have to do something. The country will suf ...
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Tasty Tomato Italian Eatery
14233 Stony Plain Road
780-452-3594
www.tastytomato.ca
Open evenings, with lunch Thursday and Friday.
Closed Sundays
Food: 3 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 3 of 5 Suns
Service: 3 of 5 stars
If it ain’t broke, why fix it?
I can’t bear witness, as last week was my first visit to the Tasty Tomato Italian Eatery.
But by all reports, not much has changed in 20 years, other than Angelo and Mirella Amendola are older, and son Joe is now a full partner in the family-run restaurant.
To which Angelo would shrug his shoulders and say, why change?
The restaurant is full on weekends and obviously has a loyal clientele that spans generations.
Tasty Tomato has a comfy ‘80s feel. It’s not the least bit trendy, but is in no need of a makeover.
Which also describes the menu — as classic Canadian-Italian as you’ll find, with 18 pasta selections, veal and chicken entrees, starter tomato salads, calamari, eggplant, escargot and brusc ...
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Yianni’s Backyard Estiatorion (Restaurant)
5524 Calgary Trail South
780-758-6161
Yiannistaverna.ca
Seven days a week, lunch and dinner
Food: 4 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 4 of 5 Suns
Service: 4 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two, just food – basic $40, loaded $70
Graham Hicks
780-707-6379
Yianni Psalios is such a larger-than-life character, such a dominating personality within the 12-plus restaurants he’s owned and operated over three decades, that we forget he’s one fine chef.
He’s owned restaurants big and small, always Greek, always under the Koutouki or Yianni’s banner.
This time around, while daughter and son-in-law Dina and Chris St. Denis run Koutouki 124th Street, and son Theo operates the Koutouki Little Village food truck, the patriarch has gone back to small.
Yianni’s Backyard is a 50-seater on Calgary Trail for ease of address, but on the corner of a tree-lined avenue. Along its side, a fenced and secluded patio is a slice of shady ...
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What we are watching in Alberta, Canada, under interim Premier Dave Hancock is quite unique, yet will never be fully reported.
Hancock is a self-described “policy wonk.”
He’s never had a big political ego. His interest in government centers on policy. “It’s where,” he says cheerfully, “I do my best work!”
Thrust by circumstances into the premier’s role, until a new party leader/premier is elected September 6, Hancock is having a great time behind the scenes. He’s tackling long deferred policy initiatives, left simmering on the back-burner while the Conservative government was preoccupied with its internal political drama.
Alberta’s “innovation” system serves as an example.
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It’s speed-dating with food.
Seventeen restaurants, 22 food producers/farmers/ranchers, 18 wineries/breweries.
All in one vast banquet hall, the Delta South Ballroom.
Last week’s Indulgence event in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, arms the ticket holder with a program/guide, one wine glass and a cute plate clip for the wine glass, the theory being plate and wine can be held in one hand at the stand-up event, whilst eating and drinking with the other.
For 15 years, Indulgence — “a Canadian epic of food and wine” — has been a fund-and-friend raiser for the women’s volunteer Junior League of Edmonton organization.
It’s a big, let’s-get-acquainted evening, connecting chefs, farmers and discerning eaters. And it’s popular! This year, the 400 tickets sold out within hours.
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Two years ago, Hicks on Biz decried a recommendation from the city’s Renewable Energy Task Force, urging city council to allocate $83 million over five years to subsidize homeowners installing alternative energy sources – mostly solar panels.
I am all for alternative energy – providing, to use Edmonton Economic Development boss Brad Ferguson’s now-famous dictum – it’s “cleaner, greener, safer, faster and cheaper” than what we have now.
The greenies, I argued, should chill, sit back and let market forces do their work.
Here’s the great news.
All by itself, without using tax dollars, solar panel systems (with conventional electricity backup) have reached “grid parity” in terms of cost.
Over the life of your mortgage, using a good solar power system, you should end up paying less than what you now pay for “grid” power - the current coal-generated electricity flowing down EPCOR’s transmission lines from Wabamun into the city, into your neighbourhood and into your house.
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Reflecting immigration to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Asian ethnic cuisine has rolled over the Rockies in chronological waves to Edmonton.
First was Chinese, then East Indian and Vietnamese. Today, Indian and Vietnamese restaurants are in every neighbourhood, but Thai is where the action is … and now Korean is coming on strong.
Korean food has reached a popularity tipping point. In our family, it’s on the list for weekend Asian take-out.
Saturday early evening called for a quick take-out feast in the backyard before the gang took off in different directions. For my Filipina wife, two Eurasian daughters, Vietnamese almost-daughter, this white guy and various Caucasian boyfriends, Korean was the cooking of choice.
And, as it happens, Mama Lee’s Kitchen take-out had opened up nearby just a few months ago, on 51 Avenue east of Southgate Mall.
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A cluster of high-tech “ag-bio” (agricultural bio-technology) companies are emerging in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, global leaders in the science of pulling specialized natural compounds out of raw natural materials, then selling the highly-valued extracts, often to global giants, as vital ingredients for cosmetics, food or pharmaceutical products.
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