[Dine-Out] Calgary: Redwater Grille September 30, 2011

The bf and I had dinner at the Bow Valley RedWater Grille a while back because I had a gift card to use up!

The meal started off with some complementary bread. As you can see, they don’t serve you fancy bakery bread, it’s pretty much just white bread but in a baguette shape instead of a loaf shape. The butter had some herbs in it though.

Butterball

We started off with the Calamari. The sauce is a green apple and lemon aioli. Hahaha, speaking of aioli, I overheard a conversation today where the guy was pronouncing it “alloy”, and his companions were all confused as to why there would be alloy in food.

The menu online says this is $9.00, but they totally charged us $10.00

This was actually quite well done, the oil was nice and the batter wasn’t too heavy.

I prefer the type of calamari with squid legs though~

For the main I had the Forno Roasted Red Spring Salmon. The dish came with herb roasted baby potatoes, asparagus, and chill garlic butter. I asked for mine without the butter though. I don’t get when main dishes come out for a massive knob of butter, why does anyone need to eat that much butter with their protein?

$24.00

Meh, your average fish & potatoes. Nothing special about this, nothing bad either…the fish wasn’t dry or anything, but it wasn’t fantastic.

The bf got the Crab Capellini:

$18.00

This was super delicious, but I think the recipe probably went something like this: equal part butter and equal part pasta.

Yum, I love soft-shell crab!

Even though the food was quite good, I don’t think we will be going back there anytime soon.

Why you ask? Is it because of the price? Nope, even though it is a little on the expensive side.

It is….

because….

…

…

…of this:

Soooo much oil

Above was what my salmon dish looked like sans food. I don’t even know how there could be sooooo much oil. Imagine how much there would have been with the ball of butter!

Empty Pasta Dish

This was the bf’s empty dish. I understand that a lot of restaurants cook their pasta with lots of butter so it tastes yummy, but there was probably a good 2 tablespoons of oil pooling at the bottom of the bowl. That’s just not very appetizer to look it. Imagine how much oil you probably actually digested…

I also don’t understand how they managed to do the fried dish (calamari) with little to no oil left on the plate…but this much oil for our main courses…baffling!

RED WATER GRILLE
181 250 6th Ave SW
Calgary, AB T2P 3H7
(403) 265-3837

[Dine-Out] Calgary: Fuji Yama Japanese Restaurant August 26, 2011

Grabbed a quick dinner at Fuji Yama with a friend. I’ve actually never eaten in here before, the location of the restaurant never appealed to me. It’s in a stand alone building, next to a car rental place and a basement dim sum place. The interior of the restaurant is actually quite nicely decorated & spacious. Soooo….I guess I was wrong…

-____-”

We ordered the Ika Sugatayaki to start:

Grilled Squid for $8.95

The squid was quite good, it had a really nice smokey flavour.

And then we ordered a few rolls to share. I don’t recall what the name of these rolls were because they’re not posted on their website (what the what?!). I’m such an awful food blogger, I know.

This is a soft shell crab roll topped with mangoes and black tobiko:

Soft Shell Crab Roll

I was pleasantly surprised when this came out. As you can see from the pictures, the soft shell crab is actually quite meaty. Other places where I’ve had soft shell crab rolls always try to skimp and stick the skinny legs in. You can actually taste the crab in this roll, look at it! The meat is like half the roll. And they are generous with the tobiko too! Thumbs up!!

We also tried their Dragon Roll (I think), that’s the one on the left topped with avocado and tobiko. The roll itself is stuffed with unagi. Mmm…I love unagi, even though it’s not a sustainable fish. I shall try to eat less of it…

The ones on the right consists of two different rolls even though they look the same. One was rolled with salmon and cream cheese, and the other one had Japanese basil rolled into it. I actually didn’t like the one with the basil in it, it gave the roll an odd taste. Would not recommend.

Rolls Rolls Rolls

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, I was in Seattle all last week! But, the upside of that is I’ll have lots of Seattle posts to put up!!

FUJI YAMA JAPANESE RESTAURANT
118 5 Avenue Southeast
Calgary, AB T2G 5E3
(403) 266-1068

[Dine-Out] Calgary: Brasserie Kensington July 18, 2011

Brasserie Kensington opened a while ago down in (obviously) Kensington. This is great news for me because it’s another reasonably priced restaurant with food I actually want to try near where I live! I don’t even remember what was in that space before hand…hmmm….nope, can’t remember. Brasserie Kensington is a cute little place on top of Winebar Kensington – a place which I have still not been to, definitely need to fix that soon!

I love the atmosphere of the place:

Very Modern with a Semi-Open Kitchen

The bf ordered the Wild Boar Burger for $16.75:

"Hog Wild"

The burger came topped with gruyère, arugula aioli, and a grainy mustard. He loved this burger. The patty was cooked to perfection, and the boar taste was very prominent. For an additional $3.00 he got his fries upgraded to the parmesan pomme frites with white truffle oil. I wonder how much extra it would be to upgrade to their foie gras poutine (a definite must-try)?

Fries = Perfection; I ❤ Skinny Fries

I got the Tempura Soft Shell Crab with Summer Apple Slaw for $14.50:

Soft Shell Crab

This was good, the apple slaw complemented the fried crab perfectly. And the aioli that comes with the dish was absolutely delicious, they’re a little skimpy on it though. I’m sure I could’ve gotten more if I asked though.

The food is fantastic here, and there are many things on their menu that I want to try so I will definitely come back.

However, there was something that irked me this particular time and it kind of diminished the dining experience for me. If you look on their menu – the soft shell crab is listed under the “SHELLS” section:

Screen-Cap

And the menu in the restaurant is exactly the same as this. It says that – all shells are served with pomme frites. The soft shell crab is listed under shells – so you would think that it would also come with fries. There’s nothing that indicates otherwise. I realize that some people might say that it says it comes with a slaw – but it never clearly says that it’s served with a slaw instead of fries. There’s no space before the crab that would indicate that the above “all served with pomme frites” statement does not apply to the crab. So, the menu in itself is confusing. When I inquired about the fries, the server replied in a very snobby manner that only the shells come with fries. Ummm…last time I checked, a crab is a shellfish. It has a shell, a pretty damn big one in fact.

The point is, I didn’t mind that my meal didn’t come with fries (I really didn’t need the carbs for my dinner), but the way the server chose to deal with my question was very off-putting. There’s  no need to make your customer feel uncomfortable about asking questions regarding your menu. Not only that, she answered in a way that made it seem it was stupid for asking the question. Her attitude was completely unnecessary since it’s their menu that was obviously misleading.

It’s a good thing that the food is good here, because shitty server attitude is the kind of thing that I would not return to a lesser restaurant for.

BRASSERIE KENSINGTON
1131 Kensington Rd NW
Calgary, AB T2N 4P4
(403) 457-4148