XIX (Nineteen)
5940 Mullen Way (Rabbit Hill Road, north of Henday Drive)
780-395-1119
Dinenineteen.com
Food: 4.5 of 5 stars
Ambiance: 3.5 of 5 stars
Service: 3.5 of 5 stars
Dinner for two (without beverages): Basic, $60; fully loaded, $100
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It’s an inside joke, folks, and a bit of clever marketing.
What kind of restaurant calls itself XIX, or, in the vernacular, Nineteen?
Lucky 19? Oriental numerology? A winning blackjack hand? Is there a casino in the ‘hood?
The 19th hole. Of course!
It’s a casual golf reference to the gathering of friends for food and beverage after 18 holes of golf.
XIX is inextricably linked to the Blackhawk Golf Course. Chef Andrew Fung ran Blackhawk’s dining room since it opened.
His partner in XIX, Al Prokop, built Blackhawk, and remains majority owner of the members-only course located between Devon and the city’s southwest boundary.
Some se ...
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Welcome to the Hicks on Biz Guide to Living Frugally.
Canadians are now carrying record levels of household debt, owing $1.64 for every $1 in income.
I’m sure Edmontonians are more sensible than most of our fellow citizens.
But if you can’t even pay a fifth of your credit card debt this month (at 20% annual interest in the unpaid balance), get your act together, impose a little financial discipline and STOP SPENDING! You may have champagne tastes. But, buddy, you only have a beer budget.
Apart from moving into cheaper apartment, turning in the BMW for a used Cavalier and cancelling that Club Med holiday, here are a few small cutback tips that add up to thousands of dollars not spent annually.
Coffee: Drip versus cartridge versus Starbucks
These new coffee cartridge machines are all the rage.
Excuse me. Coffee cartridges cost 50 cents each. Home-drip coffee, even premium brands, rings in at under two cents a cup.
A 737 gram tin of Safeway Edwards coffee (darned ...
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Viphalay Laos and Thai Restaurant
10523-99 Ave.
780-756-8188
www.viphalay.com
Food: 3 of 5 stars
Ambience: 3.5 of 5 stars
Service: 3 of 5 stars
Dinner for two (without beverages): Basic, $30; fully loaded, $50
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Sweet.
Everything about Viphalay Laos and Thai Restaurant was sweet.
The Tom Yum soup – the classic Thai spicy sweet ‘n’ sour soup – was not particularly sour, but very sweet and ultra-spicy.
The Laph diced chicken salad was defined by its chopped sweet onion.
The “Puht Kieh Mow MaMa,” or drunken noodles, was too darned sweet.
The “Chu Chi Bah”- red seafood curry, far and away the best dish of the evening – still, was very sweet.
Sweet, here and there, is just fine.
But in every dish as the dominating taste?
It’s just too much, and severely detracted from the other attributes of Viphalay’s cuisine. It’s tough to e ...
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It’s one of the most intriguing, and unusual, business propositions ever to come out of this city.
Waste RE-Solutions Edmonton, a new city-owned business, has the same challenges and doubts as surround any other brand-new company … except for the six extra zeros in its start-up costs.
Over the last 25 years, as much by circumstance as by design, Edmonton has emerged with one of the most advanced and sophisticated waste management systems in the world.
At the Edmonton Waste Management Centre (EWMC), everything possible is recycled or composted in multiple public and private partnerships. We recycle everything in our blue bags, deconstruct ancient TVs and computers, have the world’s biggest composter, recycle construction and demolition waste, and, in 2013, will open the world’s first industrial scale municipal-waste-to-biofuel project. The $80 million Enerkem plant will somehow convert garbage that can’t be composted or recycled into methanol fuel.
Soon to come at the E ...
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Reviewing 80 restaurants and food shops in one Weekly Dish column is a tad unwieldy.
But let's give it a go, because that's how many have donated dinners, lunches, brunches, gift certificates and food products to the ATCO/Edmonton Sun Christmas Charity Auction happening through Thursday. Is there any restaurant of repute in all Greater Edmonton that has not made a donation?
If packages interest you, head to www.campusauctionmarket.com, register online (it's very easy) and bid away. No computer handy? Call 780-421-XMAS (9627) from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday, then 9 a.m. to the auction's closing at 7 p.m. Thursday. An auction volunteer will place bids on your behalf. It's all for the United Way, Sign of Hope, Christmas Bureau and The Stollery.
Let's start with those of you planning a big event, at work, with your family or your club members. (The package number is in brackets beside the description.)
The Delta Centre Suite Hotel hosts a reception for 25 in its ballroom foyer (Pkg. 18). ...
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I recently dined with a senior City of Edmonton manager, part of the leadership group around City Manager Simon Farbrother that’s getting a great deal done.We talked about global energy/petro-chemical companies, how decisions are made about where multi-billion dollar plants will be built.“We’re part of the Pacific rim,” our manager said. “The guy making that decision is based in Shanghai or Beijing. He’s deciding if that plant should be built in China, somewhere else in Asia, Canada, the USA or Mexico. His only interest is the well-being of the company he works for.“He has hundreds of options – countries and states and cities are all offering economic incentives.“If we (Greater Edmonton) want to compete, we have to have the complete package – land fully serviced and ready to go, feedstock, infrastructure, labour, financing, tax incentives. In fact, we have to offer more. Their future consumers are all over there, not here.“How do we compete,” he said, pointing his fork at my nose, “ when we don’t have a singl ...
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Let us begin at the end.The ninth annual ATCO/Edmonton Sun Christmas Charity Auction, running in both the print and online editions of The Sun next Tuesday to Thursday, ends with four organizations dedicated to the betterment of our lives here in Northern Alberta: The funds raised go to the Stollery Children's Hospital, The United Way, Catholic Social Services through its Sign of Hope campaign and Edmonton's venerable Christmas Bureau.Yes, it's fun to bid on the expected 300-plus packages donated by companies and individuals who believe there's more to life and living than squeezing every cent of profit out of their bottom lines. It's fun to be in prolonged online bidding wars as the clock ticks down to the auction's end at 7 p.m. on Thursday Nov. 1. And everybody loves a bargain, if bargains are to be had.But that's not the point.The point is that the money, the cold, hard cash, will be distributed equally to those four magnificent organizations above.For the sick kids at the Stollery, for the 60,000 people ...
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Hardware Grill 9698 Jasper Avenue 780-423-0969 www.hardwaregrill.comFood: 4.75 of 5 starsAmbience: 4 of 5 starsService: 4 of 5 starsDinner for two (without beverages): Basic, $90; fully loaded, $150For 16 years, The Hardware Grill has dominated the city's restaurant landscape. It no longer posts its outstanding reviews, its awards or the local, provincial, national and international restaurant-of-the-year notifications. There are just so many.Others have briefly challenged this king of upscale dining. They have come and gone. Or settled back into a niche a degree or two below the Hardware Grill.Why did it take 18 months for the Weekly Dish to review the Hardware Grill? Partly because I wanted context, to have sampled most of the other aspirants to the Hardware's crown. And partly because the Weekly Dish tries to find the best of the ethnic eateries, the hole-in-the-walls and the best hot dogs, not just the best lobster-truffled this-or-that.But if you're going all-out — our bill was $137 for t ...
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Do Edmontonian invest, and if so, what do we invest in?I approached two of the city’s better-known financial advisors, CHED and Global Edmonton analyst Angus Watt of National Bank Financial and Ron Hiebert of Scotia-McLeod, host of CFCW’s weekly Making Money show, to ask these simple questions.(As always, think of “Edmontonians” as shorthand for Edmonton Sun readers, usually living in Alberta between Red Deer and Fort McMurray.)Right off the bat, we’re talking about a minority of you.About 70% of adult Albertans still live paycheque to paycheque, not saving enough to invest in anything besides your house. But 70% of you actually own a home, and, hopefully, are increasing your equity with every mortgage payment.But the time comes when the 30% have a tiny bit left over, after groceries, car and housing costs, the son’s hockey equipment and one holiday a year, to actually start making investments.Usually it’s in tax-deferred RRSPs (Registered Retirement Savings Plans — you don’t pay income tax until you make wit ...
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Dadeo New Orleans Diner & Bar 10548A Whyte Ave. 780-433-0930 www.dadeo.comFood: 3.75 of 5 starsAmbience: 4 of 5 starsService: 3.5 of 5 stars Dinner for two (without beverages): Basic, $30; fully loaded, $70Tucked in next to Avenue Guitars on Whyte Avenue, you've likely driven by Dadeo hundreds of times.Or walked by without noticing. The Cajun cookery is literally a hole in the wall. If you're not looking, you don't find.Which hasn't stopped Dadeo from becoming, by word-of-mouth alone, one of our city's most popular eateries.Word-of-mouth, over 21 years, has created a repeat clientele which sees the 60-seat, long and narrow classic diner full by 6:30 p.m. every evening of the week, except Wednesdays when it's closed.It's not hard to understand the attraction. The Cajun cooking is addictively good, the price is right, the staff are attentive and friendly, the atmosphere is charmingly casual, the decor the most unique in the city.To walk into Dadeo is to step back 50 years in time. This is no just-built fake '60 ...
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