[Dine-Out] Calgary: Ric’s Grill {Big Taste 2013} March 4, 2013

I’ve been having a great time with the Big Taste. Always excited for this event.

Thought I’d post this before the event ends. DON’T BOTHER WITH RIC’S GRILL.

Such a mediocre restaurant. There are so many better participating restaurants to try that this one is definitely not worth your time, money, or stomach room.

I really should’ve listened to my gut (hahaha) and not bothered with this place. I always look at the menu and think about going for dinner. And every time I would decide that it wasn’t worth going to. The prices aren’t great and the menu isn’t even that exciting. But I thought, hey, for $35 – why not give it a try?

I mean, the quantity of food isn’t bad for $35, but the quality? That’s another story. And, man, the servers there do not dress appropriately. Also, service wasn’t the greatest. We had to wait upwards of 20 minutes to even get our bill, pay, and leave.

First – the bread. It totally reminds me of the bread you get when you go to Old Spaghetti Factory. Where they charge you $10 for a 3 course pasta meal. Yeah. That one.

Bah

These weren’t half bad. Toasted coconut prawns. After eating the first one did it occur to me that I don’t like coconut on my food. Haha, oops.

Toasted Coconut Prawns

The escargot weren’t half bad either. Canned variety? They came out super hot. Super greasy and cheesy. Again, reminds me of something you could get at Old Spaghetti…

Escargot Stuffed Mushrooms

For his main, the bf got the Salmon Florentine. “Grilled wild salmon topped with prawns, tomatoes and fresh basil in brandy cream sauce. Served with basmati rice pilaf & seasonal vegetables”. Shocking – no fresh basil anywhere. Instead of the rice pilaf, he got a double serving of vegetables.

Salmon Florentine

I got the 6 oz Sterling Silver Filet Mignon served with chef’s roasted potatoes, seasonal vegetables & cognac cream sauce. The beef wasn’t good. You would like it’d be good since Ric’s is a steakhouse. And, it was wrapped in bacon. Buuuut, not good beef. It had a not pleasing texture. Also, I got the chef’s roasted potatoes, which the server described as “covered in an artichoke cream sauce”. Nope. No sauce. No hint of artichoke. No hint of cream. Pretty much I just got a side of potato hash that you could get anywhere at brunch. Also the bok choy was bitter. Like super bitter. Bitter to the point that I complained and got a new side of veggies.

Filet Mignon Wrapped in Bacon

For dessert I got the vanilla bean creme brûlée. Pretty sure it was just vanilla extract. There was none of the vanilla specks you would expect to get from actual vanilla bean. Also the texture of the brûlée was more of an egg custard texture. I didn’t mind it.

Vanilla Bean Creme Brûlée

The bf got the goat cheese cheesecake with fresh berry compote.

Goooat

Pretty much this was the reason that swayed me to come. I mean I <3 goat cheese cheesecake. I had an awesome one at Open Range over the holiday and thought I’d see if this one would stack up. Not much goat cheese flavour, but overall not too too bad.

Again, the food isn’t bad per se…but it’s not good either. Very run of the mil. Nothing fancy. Pretty much like a more expensive Moxie’s but even less exciting. If that’s possible.

RIC’S GRILL
1436 8th Street Southwest
Calgary, AB T2R 1R7
(403) 269-7427

[Quick Bite] Calgary: Jojo’s BBQ February 12, 2013

Food truck numero three: Jojo’s BBQ.

Golden Corn Fritters ($6)

Didn’t even know I like corn fritters. But yup, they are delicious.

Smoked Sliced Brisket Sandwich ($8) with straight up fries ($3)

Griddle Mac N’ Cheese ($8)

BBQTINE ($6)

Can’t remember if the BBQTINE comes with the meat on top or if I got that for extra monies. I’m pretty positive I had to pay extra for the meat.

Anyways, this was food for three people in case you’re wondering how I’m such a big fatty. This was surprisingly good. Considering Jojo’s was probably one of the last food trucks I would’ve wanted to try (not generally a big fan of BBQ).

The portions are quite decent for the price too.

JOJO’S BBQ
Roaming Food Truck

[Quick Bite] Calgary: Fries & Dolls February 10, 2013

Since Calgary is slowly warming up again, I thought I’d post my experiences with the food trucks in time for when they start rolling back out onto the streets.

First up: Fries & Dolls. Ah – the bright pink truck that was featured on Eat St., so how do they measure up? Delicious. I mean it’s kind of hard to mess up fries. What’s not to love about a cup of well-seasoned, steamy hot fries?

I love me so potatoes

I ordered the Farrah (garlic, parsley and freshly grated Grana Padano parmesan). I had really wanted to try the special of the day – it was some sort of sweet & salty combination with sweet potato fries and marshmallows or something…maybe, or maybe I could be making that up. I don’t remember because I didn’t get to eat it

FRIES & DOLLS
Roaming Food Truck

[Dine-Out] Seattle: The Crab Pot September 28, 2012

So, The Crab Pot is probably a giant tourist trap and all the Seattle foodies probably wouldn’t go near it with a ten-foot pole…but…we just had to go. We are tourists after all.

Store Front

While I realize this isn’t a Michelin star restaurant or anything, but seriously? I do expect clean napkins…

Mmm…lovely saucy finger prints that aren’t ours…appetizing…

Received the dirtiest look from our waitress when I asked for a clean napkin roll. I don’t think I was being overly fussy or anything, I even asked nicely. Would you have asked for a clean napkin roll?

Complimentary bread

Don’t waste your precious stomach space eating this bread. It is definitely nothing compared to what is to come. Hard and crunchy and stale.

Patiently awaiting our mountain of seafood…

We ordered The Pacific Clambake as opposed to the Alaskan because we wanted oysters.

Mmm…about to the mallet to good use

The Pacific Clambake comes with clams, mussels, dungeness crab, snow crab, oysters, shrimp, halibut, salmon, andouille sausage, corn on the cob, and red potatoes. The only difference between this and The Alaskan is that it doesn’t come with King Crab (but it is $6 less).

Close Up!

The crab was actually quite fresh (as it should be). Most of the shells (clams, mussels, and oysters) had fallen out of their shells so it was really just a wild scramble for getting what you wanted to eat (I don’t like mussels as much). Bahahaha, left all of those for the bf because he can’t tell them apart.

Salmon & Halibut Skewer

Did not like the skewer at all. The fish was overcooked and waaay over seasoned.

Mission Accomplished.

THE CRAB POT
1301 Alaskan Way
Seattle, WA 98101
(206) 624-1890

[Dine-Out] Seattle: Skillet Diner September 27, 2012

We were actually looking for the Skillet food truck…but I guess my research skills are only subpar sinnnce we arrived at the brick-and-mortar diner. But it satisfied my need to have the oh-so famous bacon jam.

BACON JAM TIME

The diner was beautifully decorated. Airy and lots of natural light. Mason jars for water glass and kitchen towels for napkin. Lovely.

Interesting painting…

I got “the ultimate grilled cheese”:

With a side of the seasonal soup (can’t remember what it was though)

The grilled cheese  consisted of brie, cheddar, and american cheese sandwiched between two thick slabs of brioche. Grilled to perfection, look at the golden colour on that baby.

Look at it.

On a side note – if I could make all sandwiches on brioche I would. Love that stuff. And of course, I got the added bacon jam for two dollas.

The bf got the burger:

Of course, being Canadians, we had to sub the fries for some poutine (3 dollas)

Man, good thing I got the side of soup instead of fries. We could not even finish this behemoth portion of poutine. While the poutine was delicious in all its gravy, poutine-y goodness, we definitely felt like we had a brick in our stomachs after this. Sub the poutine with caution and make sure you have a good buddy to help you attack it.

Anyways, the burger. All of Skillet’s beef is locally raised at Painted Hills. The bf gave me a bite, it was delicious. I just tried the beef though, me and blue cheese  = no bueno. Bf loved it, the combination of bacon jam, arugula, cambozola, and beef was perfection.

SKILLET DINER
1400 East Union Street
Seattle, Washington 98122
(206) 512-2000

[Dine-Out] Calgary: Ox & Angela (Big Taste 2012) August 23, 2012

Ok…I’m pretty sure this is the last of my Big Taste posts. A Big Taste lunch @ Ox & Angela. I absolutely adore this restaurant, I’ve been to a dinner with a group of friends here once. The food was to die for. Big Taste 2012 marked the first time that Ox & Angela was offering a lunch menu.

The meal started off to a great start, bread, olive oil, and two delicious type of salts.

Olive Oil + Bread = Addictive

I take back what I said in my last post, this is the best. salad. ever. Look at all that glorious cheese:

Om nom nom nom

This simple salad consisted only of 3 ingredients: frisee, cabrales, and toasted walnuts. I never thought something so simple would be so good. It was dressed with the perfect amount of sherry vinegar, not too saucy at all.

The bf got the soup:

Anything with a poached egg = thumbs up

The soup was good too, but personally I liked my salad more. The bf definitely liked his soup more though. It’s a garbanzo beans, spinach, and a perfectly cooked poached egg. When you break the egg, the creamy goodness of the yolk just makes the soup that much better.

For the main course, the bf got the Bocadillio:

A Super Fancy Grilled Cheese

A traditional bocadillio isn’t made with sliced bread, so this is pretty much a just an awesome grilled sandwich with chorizo, arugula, dried tomato, aioli, and manchego cheese. I love the presentation, very rustic! The bf loved his sandwich, the only complaint was = not enough meat.

I got the trout:

I <3 Fish

The perfectly seared trout (look at how crispy that skin looks) came with another fresh, refreshing salad. The citrus and fried capers were a wonderful addition in terms of taste AND texture.

The main course came with patatas bravas for the table:

Delicious Fried Potatoes Covered in a Smoked Paprika Ketchup

I can eat a entire pot of these.

The dessert was Tarta Santiago:

Cake of Saint James

This is a traditional Spanish cake made with ground almonds, eggs, and sugar. This particular one had a hint of orange in it and was dusted with powdered sugar. This was okay, I personally don’t like almond flavours or orange flavours….so…Tarta Santiago is not my thing.

OX & ANGELA
528 17th Avenue Southwest
Calgary, AB T2S 0A9
(403) 457-1432

[Dine-Out] Calgary: Bistro 2210 (Big Taste 2012) August 22, 2012

I love going to Bistro 2210 during the Big Taste – this restaurant always offer so many choices. This is probably the only restaurant where the bf and I both ordered something off of the Big Taste menu.

Crab Croquettes

This was a super popular item, pretty much every table had an order of the croquettes.

Crabby Goodness~

Look at how much crab were in these croquettes! They sure don’t skimp on these panko crusted goodies. The sauce that comes with them is a sriracha aioli. Love.

The bf got the Terrine:

Game & Pork

The terrine was served with toasted baguettes, wee little pickles, and a cranberry mustard.

For my main, I got the Steak Frites:

Alberta flatiron beef

This was such a huge plate of food. The house cut fries came with maitre d’butter. I loved the broccolini, it was such a nice touch!

The bf got the Boudin Blanc:

Sausage again!

A veal sausage with pomme puree and and apple & currant sauce. Again with the apples

For dessert I got the Pots de crème:

Deeelicious~

Yum – vanilla custard with caramel, chantilly cream, and a pear compote.

Crepes au Mascarpone

The bf finished his meal with a warm mascarpone filled crepe topped with berry coulis.

Bistro 2210 honestly never disappoints. One of my favourite places in Calgary to eat for sure.

BISTRO 2210
2210 4 Street Southwest
Calgary, AB T2S 1W9
(403) 228-4528

[Dine-Out] Calgary: Bonterra Trattoria (Big Taste 2012) August 21, 2012

Big Taste @ Bonterra:

Bread sticks

Every time I go to Bonterra, I get this uneasy feeling that I’m actually not supposed to be eating the breadsticks. I don’t know, does anyone else get that? That just seem like they’re for decorative purposes…

So on this big taste, we were going to do the order 1 Big Taste menu and then 1 entree thing but the server bullied us into ordering another appetizer. He was saying that what we were ordering would not be enough food and recommended that we order another appetizer. Boy, was he ever wrong. I ended up packing up half of my entree and ate it for lunch the next day. I don’t like being bullied into ordering more food than needed…

So we ordered the calamari off the main menu:

Calamari

I usually love calamari that’s not fried, but this dish was…odd. The flavours did not compliment each other at all, and my palate was just confused by the whole thing. I let the bf polish most of this plate off. The server said that this was their most popular appetizer too…well, it’s not in the menu anymore, so it can’t have been that popular.

Big Taste Appetizer

The appetizer that came with the Big Taste Menu was Crudo di Agnello. It was a lamb loin crudo served with shaved apples, walnuts, sopressata, cucumbers, and sun-choke chips. Now, this was good, and this is coming from someone that usually doesn’t like lamb. The accompaniments on this dish was perfect for the lamb, I especially liked the shaved apples.

This is the entree that the bf ordered off their regular menu:

Rigatoni Bolognese $18

The bf ordered the rigatoni bolognese (meal size). THIS. WAS. SO. BIG. It might not look it, but it was so much food that even the bf had to pack up half of it to go. This pasta dish consisted of beef, veal, and pork baked with the rigatoni, asiago, and grana padano. Pure meaty goodness.

The Big Taste entree was the Trota Saltimbocca:

The most delicious trout I’ve had to date

This was probably the best main I had through out the whole Big Taste event. The trout was the biggest slab of fish I’ve ever had a restaurant serve me. It came with crispy fingerlings (love) and bitter greens. The whole dish was then topped with pine nuts, ricotta salata, and a lemon saffron vinaigrette. The pine nuts added such a lovely nutty aroma to the whole dish. And the ricotta? Heavenly. Just look at how much ricotta was on this dish. Just look. Seriously, I die.

The Big Taste dessert was a chocolate dessert, and of course, since I’m not a big fan of chocolate I had to order a dessert of my own (even though I couldn’t even finish my food….don’t judge). And its Bonterra, this restaurant has the best desserts ever. There was no way I wasn’t ordering a dessert.

Torta al Formaggio $9

This is a white chocolate cheesecake with a brown butter crust. It was served with lemon zabaglione and topped with a pine nut crunch. I think I’m falling in love with pine nuts.

The Big Taste dessert was a Budino di Cioccolato:

Budino di Cioccolato

A budino is pretty much a pudding, so this is a dark chocolate and walnut pudding served with chilled Mascarpone zabaglione and Grappa date puree. Alcohol & chocolate? So not my cup of tea.

Bonterra Trattoria
1016 – 8 Street Southwest
Calgary, AB T2P 1K2
(403) 262-8480

[Dine-Out] Calgary: The King & I January 13, 2012

So, I usually don’t post a blog right away after I eat but…I had such a bad experience at The King & I that I just…can’t wait to post…

This place is so ridiculously expensive for the calibre of food they are serving. I seriously felt so ripped off by this place.

The only thing that was remotely enjoyable was the Phuket Fisherman Soup. It’s a spicy fish broth soup that comes with some protein in it. We ordered one order for $8.50 and they split it into two dinky little bowls for us…each of us got one piece of squid, one shrimp, and one clam. The broth was okay and the seafood was okay but nothing spectacular. It definitely was not indicative of the quality of food we were about to get served though.

$8.50

We also got an order of chicken puffs. They were described as thin pancakes stuffed with ground chicken, potatoes, carrots, and peas. I thought they would be kind of like samosas but…they were definitely not as good as samosas. First of all, there was definitely no chicken in this, it was ALL potato. False advertising. The sweet and sour chili sauce was sickly sweet.

$11.00 - soooo expensive, I can get samosas for $0.50 each in the NW that taste like heaven in my mouth

This Neua Nam Dang was the most disappointing dish of my life. I compare this meal to the time I went to Sushi Tokyo and got served super vinegary rice (worst meal ever). The menu described this as “beef stir-fried with specially prepared house chili sauce served on a bed of tempura vegetables”.

THIS WAS TWENTY DOLLARS!!! We were so hungry by this point that we started eating, this is probably 75% of the dish.

I can’t believe I paid $20 for this plate of tasteless crap. The “specially prepared house chili sauce” tasted and looked exactly like the sauce that came with the chicken puffs. And that tasted like that sweet and sour sauce you can buy in a jar from Superstore. The beef was overcooked, the “bed” of tempura vegetables consisted of MAX 8 pieces, and those were cut to the size of a nickel.

I don’t usually ever order any type of “stir-fry” at restaurants besides Chinese restaurants. First of all, any other type of asian cuisine is super expensive where compared to Chinese restaurants, and if I wanted a crappy Chinese stir-fry, I would just go to a Chinese restaurant. I would be paying like $6-8 dollar less for a bigger portion, better made stir-fry. I still can’t believe I had to pay $20 for that plate of junk.

I’ve decided on a couple of things that will help me gauge how good a restaurant’s food will be. First of all, it’s highly unlikely that you will get phenomenal food in a very large restaurant. I’m pretty sure that The King & I could fit like 50 tables in their space. That’s waaaayy too big, they’re just trying to cater to volume, not quality.

Second, if you’re in a ethnic restaurant and you see ZERO customers of that ethnicity…it’s probably not very authentic. The King & I was just serving waves and waves of elderly, non-Thai people…should have clued in…

I definitely would not recommend this place. Rose Garden Thai on Stephen Ave and Delicious Thai in Kensington is far, far, far better. Like, no competition, in quality AND price. But most importantly, quality.

THE KING & I
822 11 Avenue Southwest
Calgary, AB T2R 0E5
(403) 264-7241

[Dine-Out] Calgary: 4th Avenue Cafe November 10, 2011

We had dinner at the 4th Avenue Cafe below the International Hotel the other night.

I got the oven baked potato and cheese crusted cod. At first I thought it came with an actual baked potato because of the way it was worded in the menu. But apparently, it doesn’t, and the wait staff knew that it was misleading, but no one has decided to change the way it is worded…

Potato & Cheese Cod

It looked really good when it arrived at the table (despite the disappointment from the lack of baked potato), but after a couple of bites in, it got really salty.

Look How Pretty

The bf got the “gourmet” lobster mac and cheese, this was beyond salty. I had one bite and that was all I could take of it. Note the classy butter packets.

Lobster Mac & Cheese

I found the food to be way too salty. I don’t mean to be overly harsh but  I don’t think I’ll be going back there to eat…ever…there are just way too many good restaurants around to waste a meal on salty, crappily cooked food.

4th Avenue Cafe
220 4 Avenue Southwest
Calgary, AB T2P 0H5
(403) 265-9600