Get Cooking Presents Edmonton Food Fight 5: The Taste Edition
It was fun, loud and hard on the feet.
“Food Fight” was conceived by three foodies – chef Eric Hanson, just back from a long leisurely jaunt around southeast Asia, Get Cooking cooking school owner/hospitality activist Kathryn Joel, and, showing a human side, Greenpeace anti-oilsands spokesperson Mike Hudema.
They are fans of the “gritty reality” TV cooking shows like Knife Fight or Cutthroat Kitchen. As they talked, they figured Edmontonians would pay to enjoy a good, intense, well-produced show-biz cooking competition featuring local chefs with strong personalities.
By the third Food Fight, the production was gaining credibility. Food Fight IV took place at the wildly successful Porkapalooza BBQ festival, attended by over 40,000 people at the east-end Borden Park.
Food Fight V happened last Sunday, July 19, staged in the Sip ‘N’ Savour tent at Taste of Edmonton in Churchill Square.
All the co ...
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Toto, we’re not just in Alberta anymore.
Metropolitan Edmonton’s medium-and-larger-sized companies are moving with breath-taking speed into markets outside continental North America.
Figures tracked by the Edmonton Economic Development Corporation tell the story.
Excluding national gas/oil producers (but including energy sector service providers), 500 to 600 regionally-based companies are now actively selling products and services in China.
Between 1,500 to 2,000 are selling in China and other countries outside Canada and the USA.
We are right in the middle of “globalizing” the attitude and business practices of our small-to-medium-sized companies.
About 10% of Edmonton’s smaller “export-compatible” companies are shipping containers off-shore by truck, train, boat and plane. Following the lead of Edmonton’s internationally active construction companies like PCL, Stantec and Clark Builders, service companies are sending consultants/projec ...
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A week ago (July 10, 2015) on Facebook, I complained of back pain that had gone on since early April, and asked if anybody would recommend a good chiropractor.
Well the suggestions poured in.
In the interests of sharing information, here’s a list of chiropractors, physiotherapists and a few other suggestions that were recommended by those who read the Facebook post.
Please do not consider this list to be any kind of endorsement from myself or Hicksbiz.com. It is merely a passing on of names of chiropractic doctors and physiotherapists as recommended by other Edmontonians from their own personal experience. This list will not be expanded. I don't want to it to become less credible through undetected manipulation.
Thanks to more visits with my physiotherapist Albert Chan at the Kinsmen Physiotherapy Clinic, and following his stretching instructions daily, I am relieved to find my own strained back is slowly beginning to heal.
Chiropractors - in alphabetical order by last name: ...
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Share Restaurant, Westin Hotel
10135 100 St.
780-493-3636
thewestinedmonton.com/Edmonton-restaurant
Mon. to Thurs. 6:30 a.m. to 10 a.m./ 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Fri. 6 a.m. to 10 a.m./ 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Sat. 7 a.m. to 11 a.m./5 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Sun. 7 a.m. to 12 p.m./5 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Food: 4.5 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Service: 4 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two excluding drinks and tip: basic, $80; loaded, $130
Graham Hicks
780 707 6379
graham.hicks@hicksbiz.com
www.hicksbiz.com
@hicksonsix
Winning the 2015 Gold Medal Plates Canadian Culinary Championships was no fluke.
Westin Edmonton Executive Chef Ryan O’Flynn may have catapulted to culinary fame — first by winning the regional Gold Medal Plates competition last fall, then beating far-better-known Toronto/Montreal/Vancouver chefs to take the national Gold Medal competition in Kelowna last February.
But he was always, from the outset, an extraordinary culinary artist.
The Westin Edmonton is ce ...
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A few more details to add to my Hicks on Biz column about 100 years of the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald in Edmonton, published July 10, 2015.
When the Hotel Macdonald re-opned after its massive restoration by CP Hotels, it's had a strong line-up of general managers, who all made their mark as community leaders in Edmonton.
The list includes:
Tony Cary-Bernard - 1990 to 1997 (over saw the reopening in 1991). Currently General Manager of the Westin Resort & Spas, Whistler, B.C.
Kevin Toth - 1997 to 1999 - re-assigned to be General Manager of the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, currently President, Fox Harb'r Golf Resort & Spa, Fox Harbour, Nova Scota
Danny Crowell - 1999-2005 - currently General Manager, Harrison Hot Springs Resort & Spa, Harrison Hot Springs, B.C.
Johanne Johnson - 2005-2009 - currently Human Resources Manager, Nuna Logistics, Edmonton, AB
Don Fennerty - 2009-2013 - current General Manager, Fairmont Empress Hotel, Victoria, B.C.
Garrett Turta - 2013-present& ...
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Last week’s 100th Anniversary Gala of the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald with 136 invited guests was an elegant, but subdued affair.
Which was appropriate. The 198-room heritage hotel, the most prominent and enduring historic building in Edmonton has been a mirror of the turbulent economic history of this region since it opened for business on July 5, 1915.
The original owner and builder was the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, which pushed the second trans-Canada railroad across the railway bridge now north of the Beverly Bridge into downtown Edmonton in 1909.
The optimism! The excitement! The land boom! Most of Edmonton’s still-standing heritage buildings were built between 1911 and 1914. The city’s population near tripled, from 25,000 in 1911 to a peak of 72,500 in early 1914.
No sooner had Grand Trunk run the rails into the city, when it announced the finest hotel in the west would be built in the heart of the booming city, with a magnificent view of the North Saskatchewan.
The rail ...
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Urbano Pizza Co.
10220 103 St.
780-705-1885
urbanopizzaco.com
11 a.m. to 9 p.m. weekdays
11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturdays
Closed Sundays
Food: 4 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Service: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Two 11-inch pizzas: $11.95 each
You are so busy, it doesn’t hit you until the aircraft lifts off. Yes! Your holiday is actually underway!
I had a similar realization, a chill down the spine as it were, sitting at one (of two) street-side patio tables outside the new Urbano Pizza Co.
The early evening July sun was easing off, yet the downtown 103 Street was still bathed in light and warmth.
Just a block north, in clear view, the new arena, girder by girder, is fast realizing its fabulous promise.
A couple of storefronts away, the cranes were hauling up the exterior wall panels for another new condo tower. Days later, Connor McDavid scored five goals in a scrimmage at the Oilers development camp.
It hit home. In just over a year, Rogers Place will be open for bu ...
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In the business world, reason always trumps passion.
Doesn’t matter how much you love your new business idea or invention, so many factors must be carefully assessed before any financial plunge: The market, the competition, availability of capital and investor interest, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
But isn’t the final key to a successful startup also about passion?
How can the entrepreneur work 24/7, against seemingly insurmountable odds, with no paycheque for months on end … without passion?
How could successful entrepreneur Bob Holm have created the Strawman All-Natural Bison Farm and Mother’s Market (Edmonton’s first two-day-a-week indoor farmer’s market) without passion?
Holm may look like a pint-sized biker, but he’s a bright, self-educated, experienced businessman. Having foreseen the global crash of 2008, he converted his considerable St. Albert real estate holdings into cash during the halcyon business day ...
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NongBu Korean Eatery
8115 104 St.
780-989-0997
www.facebook.com/NongBuKorean
Mon. to Sat. 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Closed Sundays
Food: 3 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Service: 2.5 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two excluding drinks and tip: Basic, $30; loaded, $60
Graham Hicks
780 707 6379
graham.hicks@hicksbiz.com
www.hicksbiz.com
@hicksonsix
NongBu Korean Eatery represents an ironic, yet entirely logical, evolution of ethnic-based restaurants.
Until recently, most ethnic restaurants served Canadianized versions of ethnic dishes or simple “village” fare reflecting the food from back home ... 30 years ago. Hence Korean restaurants in town have traditionally featured bulgogi, kimchi and bibimbap.
But for the next generation that has stayed in the hospitality biz, village and Canadianized dishes weren’t enough. Many studied food trends in their ethnic homelands or in Vegas/ New York to see what fusion was up to.
And now there’s a counter-revoluti ...
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It was the TELUS publicity machine at its finest.
Every heavy hitter in the city, from Mayor Don Iveson to Premier Rachel Notley, had been summoned. Huge video screens stretched across the Westin Ballroom.
When TELUS executive chairman Darren Entwistle, with his movie star looks and sonorous voice, made his entrance, the music reached rock band decibels. All that was missing was a cloud of dry ice.
Make no mistake. TELUS wanted to make last week’s announcement of its first big-city fibre-optic roll-out in Edmonton as big a deal as humanly possible.
Indeed, it is a big, big deal.
TELUS will be the first telecommunications company in North America to make fibre-optic available to every household in a major city, the first to wire an entire city to Internet speeds and connectivity.
“It’s not a question whether TELUS can afford the billion dollar investment to fully wire your city and then others,” says Canadian telecommunications analyst Mark Goldberg from Toronto. ...
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