[Dine-Out] Calgary: Escoba Bistro & Wine Bar February 17, 2013

I think Escoba has one of the better value charcuterie boards in Calgary. I love coming here just for a light meal. The bf and I usually share a charcuterie plate and a cheese plate, have some drinks, and have a relaxing night out. I also love the window seating the restaurants offer. In the summer time (or whenever its nice out), the windows are open and it’s just a great feeling!

Cheese Plate $18

For the cheese plate, $18 gets you a selection of five cheeses or $14 for three cheeses. In hindsight, since the charcuterie board also comes with some cheeses, the selection of three would’ve been sufficient. If you’re getting both boards, make sure to ask the server not to double up on the cheeses (unless you want to, of course). So making sure whatever cheeses come on the charcuterie board aren’t the same ones on your cheese board.

I’m awesome with cheeses (I pretty much only eat brie), so I can’t tell you what they are. But I think they usually have the same selection of 5 anyways. One will be a blue, one will be a brie, one will be a cheddar…so on, so on. I love the fruit preserve it comes with. I slathered it all over my garlic baguette.

Charcuterie Plate  $24

This is probably one of the most reasonably priced charcuterie boards ever. I love all the variety that comes on it and for not that expensive either! In the back right is a grilled chorizo sausage, going clockwise, there are some olives, prosciutto, pickled green beans, some sort of veined cheese, garlic flatbread. Going on the inside, the yellow-y mound in the middle is hummus, to its left – smoked duck and to its right – salmon gravlax. I think I’m especially enamoured with the grilled chorizo sausage – it’s nice to have something warm on what’s usually a cold appetizer.

ESCOBA BISTRO AND WINE BAR
624 8 Avenue Southwest
Calgary, AB T2P 1G4
(403) 543-8911

[Dine-Out] Calgary: Winebar Kensington February 21, 2012

Goodness, I love long weekends. Long weekend = lots of eating out.

We finally got around to trying Winebar Kensington. We’ve stopped by a couple of times with the intentions of eating there, but they were always full. Surprisingly, we got in on Saturday night, no wait, and we even got a table (no bar!).

I’m so glad we actually got to eat there that day…because…they had SQUID INK!! I love squid ink anything. Restaurants in Calgary need to have it on their menu more. It. Is. So. Good. If I wasn’t so lazy, I’d make it myself.

We ordered 2 specials. I got the salt seared sole with squid ink risotto. The dish was served with a basil butter sauce (you can see its buttery goodness pooling at the bottom of the plate). This dish was amazing~

SQUID INK SQUID INK SQUID INK

The table next to us was complaining that the fish was too salty. But it was cooked on a salt block. So of course its going to be salty.

Oh. My. God. I still can’t get over how good the risotto was. I could eat a bowl of that stuff. Delicious. If you ever come across it, you have to try it. Don’t be put off by its carbon-black colour. You won’t regret it.  I actually regret sharing my dish with my bf, and I’ll tell you why after.

The bf got another chalkboard special: the braised rabbit leg. It came with sauteed tomato & zucchini and a rabbit ravioli.

Très Disappointing

This dish was such a let down. The sauce was mediocre, the ravioli was mediocre, but the rabbit leg…was…blech. The leg was really dry and had absolutely zero rabbit taste. As  average as the ravioli was, it at least tasted like rabbit. The leg…tasted like…turkey. It tasted like a dry, left-in-the-oven-too-long, turkey leg.

So, we originally had ordered the dish separately (sole for me, rabbit for bf) BUT for some reason, the sole came out WAAAYYY before the rabbit. Like a good 15 minutes. And well, I didn’t want to start eating without the bf but I also didn’t want my food to get cold. So being the good person that I am, I offered to split my plate with him, and he could split his with me (although I don’t particularly love rabbit, and I love squid ink). What a mistake. Haha, it could well become the worst decision of my life.

I don’t understand how one dish could be so far and above better than the other. I also don’t understand why our food came out 15 minutes apart. It’s not like we ordered a charcuterie board and other starter plates to share or anything. We specifically said when we ordered, sole for me, rabbit for him. Baffling.

Anyways, to sum it all up: squid ink = good, rabbit = bad. The rabbit was $23.00 too while the sole was only $17.00. We could have ordered TWO soles, filled our bellies with goodness, and would have had $6.00 extra!

WINEBAR KENSINGTON
1131 Kensington Road Northwest
Calgary, AB T2N 3P4
(403) 457-1144

[Dine-Out] Calgary: Vin Room July 20, 2011

We were feeling a little peck-ish during the Lilac Festival and was looking everywhere with a patio to eat. Most places we wanted to eat were either jam-packed or simply not opened during the festivities. We finally decided on the VIN Room since they had a patio on the second floor that actually looked out on to fourth. We’ve actually eaten here once a long time ago, and didn’t recall any negative feeling towards the restaurant, so, what the heck!

Their menu is tapas inspired, focusing on a lot of small plates that are meant to be shared over a glass of wine. We were just hungry and wanted to be fed.

The bf loves sardines and ordered their grilled sardine for $5.00. It’s seasoned with maldon salt, olive oil, and lemon. This…was…okay…there’s nothing inspiring about it but it was cooked well and a decent enough snack.

Fishie~

He also ordered their grilled cheese. This was perhaps the most disappointing item we ordered. It’s just not what we expected, and there was nothing on the menu to indicate that you weren’t actually going to get a real sandwich. Pretty much we paid $10.00 for melted haloumi on toast. I would hardly think 3 pieces of bread and a handful or arugula would be worth much of anything. Also, not only was this a thoughtless dish, they didn’t even bother to cook it right – the toast was burnt. All three pieces. I mean come on, how hard is it to not burn toast?

Not impressed

I could've had 2 more sardines for the price of this crappy dish

Their stuffed bone marrow was good though, but I mean, it’s bone marrow…what’s not to like about fatty goodness? And at least they put a little more thought into this dish. The slaw it come with consisted of beets, apples, radishes, and parsley, all topped with a lemon vinaigrette. I love beets. This blew the crappy handful of arugula they called a salad out of the water.

Decently priced @ $5.00

I ordered the pan seared sablefish:

I ❤ Sablefish

Sablefish is a mild flavoured white fish. The texture of this fish is great, I would recommend everyone to try it, it’s all flaky and delicious! The fish came on top of a bed of carrots and tiny (emphasis on the tiny) bacon chunks cooked in a chili gastrique.

This was hands down the best dish (taste & value) we ordered that day. You get a decent sized chunk of fish, the fish was actually prepared well (they can cook fish but can’t toast bread?), and it actually seemed like a fair trade for my $12.00.

Yummy!

I don’t think we’ll be going back to the VIN Room anytime soon. The menu is way overpriced for such mediocre food. But if I were to be invited to have a meal there, I would definitely order the sablefish again~

VIN ROOM
2310-4th St SW
Calgary, AB T2S 1X2
(403) 457-5522

[Dine-Out] Montreal: Montreal Poutine June 9, 2011

You know, I went to Montreal almost 2 years ago, and at that time, it never even crossed my mind to create a food blog (even though I love eating so), so I never even jotted time the name of restaurants that we ate at. But, with the help of Google Maps, and a pretty awesome (if I can say so myself) memory, I tracked down a couple of the restaurants! I couldn’t find all of them because some were located in restaurant dense locations that I don’t think I could’ve narrowed down the location enough. However, some of the restaurants in The Village an Old Montreal didn’t take too long to find because they had unique store fronts or ways of plating their food. So here’s the first of a few that I hunted down!

This was a place where the bf and I had a snack while we were wandering around Old Montreal. Funny, it’s called Montreal Poutine, and we didn’t even have poutine. I could track down this particular restaurant because I recognized the patio, and the 2 restaurants across from it~

We’re spoiled in Calgary, only having to pay 5% GST, so it really hit our wallets hard when we had to dish out an additional 7.5% for PST (at that time it wasn’t HST yet~), and then still having to tip on top of that! So we tried to keep our eating out to a minimum and at not too expensive restaurants. Which is a shame, because we really should’ve tried Foie Gras in Quebec…

I remember that it was mid afternoon, so we had already had lunch and it wasn’t quite dinner time yet – we just wanted to sit down (I was probably complaining of sore feet) and have some drinks.

I got a sangria, and the bf got a beer (I think it was a Trois-Pistole – that’s all he would drink when we were in Montreal).

Lol, you can see an beer-pouring action shot in the back

And then we got a Warm Brie en Croûte to share:

Mmmm...cheese & bread...can it get more French than this?

It’s pretty much a whole Brie cheese warmed and then dipped in pistachios, and served with toasted baguettes. Annnnnd it was delicious!! What can go wrong with melted Brie?! Although, you can see some burnt bits on the top of the cheese and toast…but we’re not picky!! Not in French land anyways, the wait staff all seemed snooty and mean…really didn’t dare to complain…especially because we were obviously Anglophones (well, I was anyways~).

MONTREAL POUTINE
161 St-Paul Est
Montreal, QC H2Y 1G8
(514) 656-0935