Life in Cowtown

Welcome back dear readers, and I hope you had a fabulous long weekend! I sure did, and although I didn’t do anything especially exciting, I enjoyed every lazy, sunny minute of it.

This is another case where I’m blogging about a dinner quite some time after it happened. Why? Absolutely no reason short of being too lazy to write it up. I went to Alloy with friends and found it quite good, but just shy of fabulous.  Sadly the lighting in the restaurant was pleasantly dim – great for ambience but crappy for photos, so I apologize in advance for the lack of quality here.

Alloy opened up to all sorts of fanfare sometime last year, and got great reviews right out of the gate. After giving them a chance to settle in, two friends and I visited them sometime in the winter.

The décor was quite stylish without being overly cold or pretentious, and they are geniuses with the lighting. Brighter toward the hostess area, dimmer in the restaurant, the golden ambience of indirect light is still memorable.

The service was excellent throughout, which is not surprising since we knew our waitress. Nevertheless she was very knowledgeable and assuredly steered us through the menu.

Here we come to the downer part of the night – the cocktails. Apparently on the night we were there, the regular bartender was not. Whoever was filling in did not have the same expertise with the cocktails, a fact that we found out after we gently questioned the quality of our libations. I’m not sure if Alloy now has redundancies in place to replace the bartender if he can’t make it, but that night our cocktails ranged from bearable to awful. And since we heard amazing things about the drinks we were understandably disappointed. And that lost the restaurant money since we stopped at one. The Moscow Mule cocktail was made with ginger yes, but assuredly too much of it, to the point where the bitter notes in ginger were in the forefront, and the Pinku cocktail tasted like cough syrup. It was truly awful.

Rather than a typical bread basket, was hummus with naan and olives was brought to the table, and the hummus itself was strangely bland. It sorely needed a hint of lemon juice, a breath of garlic or even some sea salt on top. Perfectly smooth, with good olive oil on top, it was creamy and bland. The olives however, were fantastic.  Firm, slightly spicy, perfectly fresh they were everything mushy bland overly salty olives are not. The naan was very good also, soft and flavorful.

For our entrees we went with the beef short rib for myself, and I really need to wean myself off this dish, since if it’s on the menu I’ll inevitably order it. The short rib was excellent to the point of ridiculous. Out of our three entrees it was declared the table favorite. Melt-in-your-mouth tender, savoury, rich and wonderful it was a perfect winter evening dish. I also realized why people like polenta for the first time in my life, so kudos for that.

Another friend had the double cut pork chop. Since I only had one bite, I can declare it very good but not as good as my short rib.

My other friend went with a fish special, which was a gorgeous plating of halibut. While dramatic, the whole dish was a bit bland, with none of the flavors standing out or really offsetting the fish. That was the table consensus, not just me, so it was likely really on the unstimulating side.

I personally declined dessert, but my dining partners ordered two, a trio of panna cotta, and a trio of sorbet. Both were delightful, with the edge going to the trio of sorbet. I frequently underestimate sorbet, thinking it will be a lovely palate cleanser but nothing to write home about, but this trio of sorbet was spectacular. Slowly melting over a pile of diced fruit the dish was a perfect mix of refreshing, sweet and unexpected, making it a lovely ending to a great meal.

 

4.2/5
Alloy
220  42 Ave SE
(403) 287-9255

I actually sat on this review for hmmmm…. a couple of months? Simply because now that my words are actually being read, I feel some responsibility to distance myself a bit from the immediacy of the experience in the interest of being as fair as can be, while only visiting a place once. Not much responsibility mind you, but some. Point is, I had a very mediocre dinner with a friend here, and am unlikely to return simply because my budget does not run to revisiting restaurants that don’t rock my world.

Without further ado – there was still snow around when a girlfriend and I drove here one dark night and found a well lit restaurant with an appealing concept – Vietnamese fusion. I love me some Vietnamese food with a loving love, so I was convinced that there’s a way to take those flavors we all know and love and mix them in novel ways for our enjoyment. I also read plenty of innovative chefs doing crazy things with Vietnamese food so I was really excited about the trip.

The restaurant was pretty nice – gorgeous curved ceiling over the bar, very well done lighting, elegant woven mats and upscale place settings. All the staff was beyond friendly and knowledgeable when discussing the menu. I was steered toward the caramelized chicken and my friend was determined to try the savoury crepe (stuffed with prawns, mung beans, hickama(?), bean sprouts and green onion). The first alarm bells went off at the spelling of jicama – while pronounced hickama it’s certainly not spelled that way, and someone should’ve looked at the menu before printing it out.

We started out with two appetizers, the spring rolls (simply because I couldn’t picture giving them up for all the fusion in the world), and coquilles St. Jacques provencale – a French twist on a French dish, I suppose. The spring rolls were on the thin side, and were quite passable, although certainly no better than the spring rolls in our favorite Vietnamese joint. The coquilles St. Jacques rated about a 4/5. The scallops were cooked perfectly, so kudos to the kitchen there, and the sauce was lovely if uninspiring, but it was not the best sauce for the dish. Somehow the basil and the smoky-ness didn’t go with the flavor of the scallops and I hardly cook scallops, so I can’t suggest how I’d do it. Lemony cream sauce probably….

Moving on. We got our entrees and that’s where things derailed for us. My friends crepe was huge and absolutely flavorless. If you look at the list of veggies again, mung beans, jicama, sprouts, you’ll likely guess that they need a pretty strong flavor base somewhere to balance them out. And it was utterly lacking. No salt, garlic, sauce or anything to enliven the bland, watery mess of a dish, whose only hint of a redeeming quality was the crispy outside. The dipping sauce provided was too watery to make any difference, and rolled off the veggies leaving a faint sweet flavor in its path. After picking at all the outside crispy bits, she ate all the prawns and called it a night.

My caramelized chicken was not much better. It was a rather dry breast with a poorly balanced caramelized sauce with too many bitter flavors. It was served on veggies without a hint of seasoning and a mound of plain white rice. Since the only flavors were from the chicken, namely salty, sweet and burnt, the dish was not a satisfying entrée. The meat had too much flavor and the rest had none.

On that note we declined dessert and decided that while fusion cuisine is excellent when done well, it is a poor substitute for the primal satisfaction of a real bowl of hot Vietnamese soup or noodles when done poorly. Given the rather high prices at the restaurant we expected the quality to match. In our experience – it did not.

And if you’re wondering, see my restaurant rating scale here.

2.5/5

Colonial Fusion Cuisine
163 Quarry Park Blvd. SE
(403) 723-6669

I’ve been blessed with a new co-worker who loves to eat as much as I do. So three days this week instead of pondering how sad it is to work every day (very sad), we’ve taken the liberty of a long lunch to check out three restaurants that participated in Downtown Dining Week, offering a three course menu for 25.00. The list of participating restaurants was impressive, spanning not only most high-end places downtown, but also Mission, Bridgeland and Kensington. Some restaurants only did an evening menu, while others were a long hike from the office, but in the end we narrowed it down to three: Teatro (because even though it’s a venerable institution, we’ve never been), Saint Germain (because they’re very new), and Rush (because they just got voted Calgary’s best restaurant by Avenue Magazine). 

None of them disappointed, and here’s a quick recap of the three.

 Bread rolls at Teatro

Teatro opened up with a tomato confit with a prosciutto, basil pesto and pecorino pepato. It was a lovely dish and received top marks from my co-worker, and a bit less so from me. The tomatoes were soft and tomatoey, the prosciutto lovely and the cheese sharp, but the room temperature dish could’ve used more pizzazz. Like a garlic oil in the pesto or some garlic chives slivered on top, it seemed to lack an element of spice that would make it great.

The chorizo pappardelle with red peppers, parmesan and green onion was a wonderful dish. Comforting, balanced, the pappardelle was perfectly cooked, the chorizo was sharp, and the sauce was a perfect balance of salty, sweet and sour with none of the excess sourness of lesser tomato sauces. It was a glorious bowl of pasta.

The dessert tasting was a duo of some chocolate concoction and the most amazing chocolate crème brulee I’ve ever had. It was decadent, outstanding and flawless and a perfect end to a great meal. In fact it was so good, I kind of forgot to take the photo before I ate it. It was worth it, trust me.  Overall, Teatro is a restaurant that totally deserves its standing as one of the pillars of fine dining in Calgary, and it’d return here in a heartbeat for a nice dinner.

I’m sorry, I ate it…  : ( It was THAT good.

Saint Germain is the only restaurant that actually offered a choice between two appetizers, entrees and desserts, and my friend and I both wanted the same thing. So in the spirit of enjoying the lunch fully, (who needs variety), we had the same starters and mains and a different dessert each. We had a wonderful smokey lentil soup to start, and it was thick and hearty and good.

The prosaic fish and chips that we chose over merguez sausage and white beans were pretty good, but not original enough to win big points. The fish was flaky soft on the inside,  moist and steamy and enclosed in perfectly crisp batter, and the fries were thin and pretty good, not great. They could’ve used more salt and were a bit on the dry side. The dish came with two dipping sauces – one a tomato based sauce similar in texture to cocktail sauce, and some sort of mayo based concoction that was just addictive. Guess which one was gone first, veg or mayo?

The desserts were a white Provencal cake with lavender honey ice cream and a walnut tarte. The cake left us both indifferent – it was a plain, dryish white disk without much flavor and the ice cream didn’t seem to help, but the walnut tart was fantastic. Crumbly, crunchy, rich and nutty it was a close second to the crème brulee the day before. The prices here were totally affordable with the awesome sounding daily special (something along the lines of lamb and pickled onions and…) falling into the 12-15 dollar range, which makes this the most realistic place for an actual weekday lunch.

Meh

Yum

Rush fully deserves its current standing as the best restaurant in town. I am so often disappointed by newly hyped restaurants that I wasn’t sure I’d be impressed, but I was.

The apple and celery root soup was sublime – a creamy dreamy bowl of goodness with flakes of smoked ham hock that actually made us silent for a moment.

The braised short rib was not only fork tender and possessing a rich savoury flavor, but served over creamy polenta and the best braised greens I’ve ever had, it was a study in umami and comfort. It was a seriously solid dish, so rich and good that it made you reevaluate an ingredient you thought you knew. Dishes that make you do that deserve the highest praise in my books.

The dessert was a letdown, but mainly because I fell victim to my expectations. See when I hear the words lemon tart, my mind trained like Pavlov’s dog, automatically thinks of A Ladybug Bakery’s lemon tart. It’s a reflex that I can’t help, and frankly don’t want to, since it’s the best lemon tart on the planet and probably in the universe. So to get a lemon SQUARE (a very different animal) on my plate trying to sail under false pretenses was cause for intense disappointment and longing for the real deal. See when a town has a lemon tart THAT good, you might as well give up and either serve theirs, or carefully try and skirt the competition altogether.  Anyhow, the lemon square was kind of boring though the raspberry gelato was intensely flavored and sweet. It was the weakest dessert out of the three restaurants, but I’ll totally forgive them due to their mindblowing food.

Square - not tart

If your town has a dining week I totally urge you to partake and experience all those places you’re not sure are worth the money.

I’m going to go bond with P90X DVD now.