Sabor Divino
10220 103 St.
780 757 1114
www.sabordivino.ca
Food: 4.5 of 5 stars
Ambience: 4 of 5 stars
Service: 3.5 of 5 stars
Dinner for two excluding drinks, tips and taxes: Basic, $80. Fully loaded, $110.
What a joy to return to Sabor Divino and find this restaurant has not only held up to its own impeccable standards, but continues to improve upon those standards — a first, first-class restaurant as it were.
In the downtown Boardwalk Building on 103 Street, Sabor Divino (Portuguese for “divine flavours”) has been practising the art of fine cooking for five years, on a contemporary Portuguese/Spanish base, but reaching far beyond.
It was one of the first restaurants to represent a new generation of culinary entrepreneurs. Co-owners chef Lino Oliviera and manager Christian Mena were skilled professionals who would have been successful at whatever they put their minds to. They are open to innovation, are leaders rather than followers, and are not afraid to char ...
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Yes, it was Saskatchewan’s day last week, when the Roughriders trounced the Hamilton Tiger Cats to win the 2013 Grey Cup, at home!
But the Miracle on the Prairies is far greater than Darian Durant, Kory Sheets, Weston Dressler and that amazing offensive line composed of beefy Saskatchewan farm boys.
The Roughrider triumph is symbolic of the turnaround in Saskatchewan’s economic fortunes, since Brad Wall’s Saskatchewan Party came to power in 2007.
Saskatchewan has gone from zero to hero — from a debt-riddled economic backwater to a province brimming with accomplishment — and the surface is scarcely scratched.
Government numbers offer a snapshot of economic fortune, and Saskatchewan’s are impressive.
The Saskatchewan government’s accumulated debt (excluding crown corporations) has shrunk from $13 billion in the late ‘80s to $4 billion today.
After 80 years — 80 years! — of a population stuck at 900,000, Saskatchewan has shot up ...
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Cactus Club Café (Downtown)
11130 Jasper Ave.
587 523 8030
http://www.cactusclubcafe.com
Food: 4.5 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Service: 4 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two (excluding beverages and tip), basic, $45; loaded, $75.
It’s the professionalism that’s so remarkable.
Everything at the Cactus Club Cafe — the new one on Jasper Avenue — is so well done.
It’s the chain concept taken to new heights.
The food is impeccable — everything is done just right.
They may be the same young ladies in the black cocktail dresses, but the servers are intensively trained for three weeks before they hit the floor.
Founder Richard Jaffray opened the first Cactus Club Café in Vancouver in 1988 with a concept that has remained constant to this day, especially in this, the 25th Cactus Club Cafe: To produce consistent, high-quality food at manageable prices.
Cactus Club was doing well in the food department. Then super-chef Rob Feenie set ...
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Bottleneck, what bottleneck?
If anybody has concerns about pipeline capacity from the oilsands out to the world, breathe easy.
In the last few weeks, the GO button has been pushed on four major new oilsands projects that will bring another 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) of bitumen on stream by 2017.
You think those dudes would invest the $10 billion or more it costs per mine, if they had the least doubt about getting their product to market? You think shareholders would approve?
Where there’s a will, there’s a way
Even without the Northern Gateway and Keystone XL pipeline projects, Canada’s two biggest pipeline builders will add another 2 million bpd capacity within three to four years. TransCanada and Enbridge are expanding existing American pipelines and converting existing natural gas pipelines to send bitumen/crude oil to Eastern Canada for refining, domestic consumption or export.
Other companies are sniffing out new pipeline opportunities from the oilsands northwest to ...
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Under The High Wheel
8135 102 St.
780 439 4442
www.underthehighwheel.com
Food: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 3 of 5 Suns
Service: 2.5 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two (excluding drinks, tip and taxes), basic, $40; loaded, $60.
The food is good, the room spotless, but the whole set-up is quite peculiar.
Under The High Wheel is a restaurant/café/bistro — take your pick, it can’t quite decide — on the ground floor of the new-age swishy “Roots on Whyte”, a brand-new three-storey building at the corner of Whyte Avenue and 102 Street. The landlord has bet on Edmonton being ready for an entire suite of organic markets, yoga studios, health foods, specialty massage and restaurants, all in one building. It’s all hippy-dippy and new-age mumbo-jumbo, but, like I said, the place is new, clean, spacious and enthusiastic about its offerings.
Under the High Wheel is a loft-like space on the ground floor, sharing one big room with Da Capo espresso and gelato.
The ...
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The American states of Washington and Colorado will soon embark on a societal experiment of mega-proportions.
Legalized “recreational” marijuana will be for sale – available in state-licensed stores.
All governments are watching, given pot will likely be legalized across Europe and North America in the foreseeable future. California, the pundits say, will vote in favour of legalization by 2016. As California goes, so goes the USA.
This is not a column about the pros and cons of smoking pot.
It’s about the tax revenues from legalization; whether the added tax income is worth the hassle of legalization.
Washington and Colorado residents voted for legalization, in part, because advocates have promised new marijuana taxes will pour money into cash-starved state coffers.
If Canadian governments, including Alberta, toy with pot legalization, it’d be to tax the bejeezus out of it, as they do alcohol.
Right now, pot growing (primarily in B.C. it is claimed) is the la ...
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Review of Clybourne Park,
Citadel Theatre, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Jan. 25 to Feb. 16, 2014
By GRAHAM HICKS
Much has been made of the racism aspect of Clybourne Park, the much awarded drama that has made its way to the Citadel's Shoctor Stage and plays through February 16, 2014.
Almost too much ... Because for all the discussion around the play, basically concluding that not much has changed in the 50 years between acts, Clybourne Park actually suggests much has changed. In the first act, the neighbourhood association is all white fighting to keep black folks out of the Chicago neighbourhood. In act two, set 50 years later in the same house, the neighbourhood association is represented by two black activisits, fighting to keep incoming white neighbours from tearing down old houses and "gentifying' Clybourne Park.
There's so much more to this show than an overly-trod-upon racism theme: There's the unusualness of the playwright placing the first act in 1959, the second act in the same h ...
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