Seoul Korean Restaurant (Calgary): 4 Stars

4336 MacLeod Trail SW
Calgary, AB T2G 0A4

(403) 243-7970

This is a fantastic Korean place on Mcleoud Trail South at 43 Ave (right next to the World Health Club). It's not a glamorous location by any means, but the food is great. The stone bowl and the spicy soup with beef and clear noodles (Yookgaejang) are a must. One problem is that they don't have vents above every table (for the do-it-yourself BBQ) so I imagine it can get a bit smoky.

Breakfast Buffet at the Pradera Cafe And Lounge (Edmonton): 2 Stars

Pradera Cafe and Lounge
10135 – 100 St, Westin Edmonton, Edmonton, AB T5J 0N7 · 780-493-8994

Lauren and I tried out the Pradera Cafe and Lounge at the Westin Hotel for breakfast on Sunday. We didn't expect it to cost $28! However, since we were already there and we were hungry, we figured what the heck, let's try it. The buffet isn't terrible; in fact it's pretty decent. There's a nice selection of the usual kinds of things - eggs benedict, bacon and sausage, salads, dessert, a design-your-own omelette station... They even had steak, which is not exactly something I'd have for breakfast, but I suppose it's meant to justify the cost. That's the big problem with this buffet. Did I mention it was $28 per person? The combination of ambiance - Lauren described it as a "hotel lobby atmosphere" - and the cost just doesn't make it worthwhile. You can get a perfectly decent breakfast elsewhere for less than half the price. If you want to really treat yourself, go to the Harvest Room at the Hotel MacDonald instead. It too is very expensive (although actually a bit cheaper I believe) , but in the case of the Hotel Macdonald breakfast buffet everything - the food, the beautiful room with its vaulted ceilings, the incredibly attentive service - makes it worthwhile to indulge every so often.

New Asian Village [Buffet] (Edmonton): 4 Stars

New Asian Village
9308 34 Avenue NW
Edmonton, AB T6E 5X8
(780) 463-9997


Lauren and I went out to New Asian Village for a buffet lunch today in the south-east Edmonton community of Mill Woods. By virtue of the name, I thought it would be a chinese restaurant, but it turned out to be indian food, and very good at that. It's located in an unassuming strip mall, but the decor inside is quite nice, with some elaborately carved wood tables and chairs. The buffet was better than most I've seen, with the usual naan bread, butter chicken and tandoori chicken favourites, but also with various other masalas and curries and so on, as well as a few puddings and fresh melon and honeydew for dessert and some salads. All in all it was a good spread. We ordered some Chai tea, which really wasn't especially great, too bitter for me which I would pass on next time. Still, I would certainly go there again and recommend you try it out next time you're in the neighbourhood.

Louisiana Purchase (Edmonton): 5 Stars

10320 111th Street NW, Edmonton AB
780-420-6779
http://www.louisianapurchase.ca/index.html

I've tried cajun food only a few times prior to visiting the Louisiana Purchase, on the corner of 111th Street and 103rd Avenue, just north of Jasper, and up to this point I had never been particularly impressed. It always seemed to involve some kind of rubbery, tasteless, over-spiced mishmash of barely-recognizable ingredients. However, some good reviews of this place popped up online and Lauren and I thought we'd give it a try. This place has a most charming atmosphere. The jazz music playing in the background isn't too loud, unlike so many restaurants where the goal seems to be to drown out any possibility of conversation in favour of outright shouting matches, either that or sullen silent capitulation. The decor is simple but very pleasant with two red-brick walls and otherwise a surprisingly attractive look - the remaining walls are painted a deep purple with lime-green accents. There are the obligatory jazz/new orleans posters on the walls as well as a niche lined with shelves full of exotic hot sauces. I don't know if one can just come up and partake of them at will though. Lauren ordered the Shrimp Etoufee, which as the name implies is a skewer of shrimp on a bed of noodles covered up (or strangled as it were) with a thick cilantro and lime butter sauce. I had the Chicken Lafitte, a grilled chicken breast topped with a delicious herb cream cheese and a slice of smoked salmon and drizzled with a red roasted bell better sauce over saffron rice. You can choose your sides - there's the saffron rice and pasta, and I think one more option that I can't recall. Our dishes were quite expensive at $17.95, but we were pleasantly surprised to discover that we could order half-sizes for a much more reasonable $9 each and still have a filling meal. Since we were in the mood to indulge a bit, we also tried the chicoree coffee and latte. The coffee was ok, and the latte was really great. I hadn't had chicoree since I'd lived in Europe as a teenager and it was so good that I plan to try to find some for home. It was tastier than a coffee latte! We also shared a slice of pecan pie for dessert. Now usually pecan pie is a somewhat dry and austere concoction and I was somewhat reluctant to try it, but Lauren is a big fan so I gave in, and it was a good thing I did. It was delicious! It was fresh and moist with lots of fresh pecans on top. It was one of the best pies I had ever had. The plate was drizzled with some delicious sauces. I detected a bit of lime in one of them and the other one appeared to be mainly cranberry. All in all Louisiana Purchase was a hit and I think it will become a regular hangout which is about the biggest compliment I can make.

Edmonton Breakfast

I love going out for breakfast and I've recently discovered that Edmonton has some fantastic breakfast places. My favourites so far are as follows:

• Urban Diner (12427-102 Ave. 780 488-7274 ): Located in Glenora, a cool and trendy little neighbourhood West of downtown just north of Jasper at 124th Street, the Urban diner offers a cozy and pleasant breakfast experience. The French Toast is warm, and tasty. The egg and bacon breakfast is very fresh and enjoyable, and the coffee is quite good. The space is open and friendly, but not too loud. After breakfast, this is my favourite neighbourhood to explore on foot. There are lots of interesting shops and nice houses to look at.
  
• Blue Plate Diner(10145 104 Street NW. 780 429-0740): Located right in the heart of downtown in Edmonton's old warehouse district, the Blue Plate Diner probably has the highest quality food of all of the breakfast places I've tried out so far.
  It's housed in one of the historic warehouses that line 104th street, with a large wide-open dining room and brick walls. It gets a bit noisy, but otherwise it's one of my top places to enjoy breakfast in Edmonton.
• Hotel MacDonald (Harvest Room, 10065 100 Street NW 780 424-5181): The Fairmont Hotel MacDonald is one of those grand old CPR hotels. It looks like a castle from the outside, with a beautiful location overlooking the river valley. There are two dining rooms as far as I can tell. The main dining room hosts the lavish and very expensive Sunday brunch, whereas the Harvest room hosts a smaller and more intimate buffet breakfast that is actually somewhat afforable at $17 per person. That includes a great spread of cereals, including a soft muesli porridge, lots of fresh fruit, pancakes, the best scrambled eggs I've ever had, fritatas, bacon, sausage, delectable little croissants as well as some desserts, various cold cuts, and as much coffee and orange juice as you like. This more modest of the two dining rooms still has high ceilings, archways, and your breakfast is accompanied by the soft tinckling of classical piano. For a truly indulgent and utterly relaxing weekend breakfast, this is definitely the place.
• Silk Hat (10251 Jasper Avenue NW 870 425-1920): Silk Hat is an old fashioned 1950's-style diner. There's a long row of booths running along the restaurant. The staff are friendly and the portions are huge. It's not quite the same quality of food as some of the other places I've written about, but it's still good, and the coffee is the best! It's also quite cheap.
  

Yiannis on Whyte (Edmonton): 4 Stars

10444 82 Avenue NW
Edmonton, AB T6E 2A2
(780) 433-6768

Lauren and I went out to Yannis on her first weekend living in Edmonton. I had driven by Whyte Av on my way to her place and I thought it looked like a great place to relax and hang out on a sunny late summer afternoon. We wandered around Whyte av for a while jsu enjoying the liveliness of the street, then we passed this loud restaurant with a belly dancer undulating her way from table to table. The place looked like a lot of fun, so we sauntered in. We ordered the Saganaki, which is my favourite greek appetizer. It's a hot plate with cheese on it that they pour a bit of ouzo on and light on fire briefly before blowing it out and serving. It's hot and salty and really good! The waitress did not perform the obligatory exclamation of Opa! when she served it though, which was too bad. Still, the Sakanaki was great. We also ordered a plate of typical greek appertizers to share. The were fantastic. Once the belly dancer had finished making her rounds from table to table, the place settled down a bit, and we were able to talk. Yiannis is a fantastic restaurant on Whyte av. It's lively, the food is good, and it's easy to make it part of an evening on Whyte av - maybe watch a movie, or just walk around and people-watch.

Sawmill (Edmonton): 2 Stars

11560 104 Avenue NW
Edmonton, AB T5K 2S5
(780) 429-2816
http://www.sawmillrestaurant.com/


I took Lauren out to the Sawmill restaurant to celebrate her finishing her masters thesis after a quick Web search for good steak restaurants in Edmonton. We were thinking of just going to the Keg, but figured we'd try a place we'd never been to before. There was supposed to be a large salad buffet which also included oysters and shrimp. The first big mistake we made was just ordering that buffet, for about $10 each, without having a look at it first. I piled up my plate with oysters which were inedible. The shrimp were whole with their heads still attached and their beady little black eyeballs (?) poking out from their antenna. The cheese wasn't very good either, and there was no soup, not different kinds of bread buns as you might find at the Smuggler's Inn in Calgary, which is kind of the restaurant I was using as a comparison. The salads were rather limp, and while they weren't awful, they weren't great either.

As entrees we ordered streak. I think I had a 7 ounce sirloin and Lauren had an 8 ounce striploin. The steak was pretty good, and so was the baked potato (they have other choices for sides, but really, why would you pick something over a baked potato!). There were anemic microwaved vegetables from a bag of frozen vegetables on the side as well. All in all the prices are not cheap at the Sawmill, the decor is slightly below average, and the salad bar is awful, so I'd suggest going to the Keg, or Earl's or some place like instead of the Sawmill. I certainly won't be going there again, that's for sure.

Tropika (Edmonton): 4 Stars

6004 104 Street NW
Edmonton, AB T6H 2K3
(780) 439-6699

I visited Tropika in Edmonton a few weeks ago. It's on Calgary Trail at 60th ave. Generally I've found the food in Calgary to be better than Edmonton, but Tropika is really great. There appear to be menu items from all over asia - Chinese, Malaysian, Thai... We ordered Malaysian-style fried chicken, grilled eggplant, and singapore noodles, together with some steamed rice. All of the food was fresh and excellent. So far this is my favourite place to eat in Edmonton.

Hy's Steakhouse: 2 Stars

316 - 4th Avenue SW Calgary, Alberta T2P 0H8
Ph: (403) 263-2222 Fax: (403) 264-3539

Hy's is one of those venerable steak places in Calgary that's been here forever, along with Ceazar's. I finally tried it out toward the end of July with my friend Beth. I had a striploin steak, and Beth had the same thing with Hy's sauce. Beth said the sauce wasn't so great, too ketchupy, and the cuts of steak were just un-inspired. It wasn't terrible, but it certainly didn't justify the high price. And the decor at Hy's is just not my thing, with its British men's club look and stained glass windows. It struck me as being kind of stuffy and strange. I wouldn't have cared if the food were amazing, but it wasn't, and the overall experience was a bit disappointing. Mind you, it was the day after the Stampede was over, so it's possible that their supplies of good beef were running low and that the staff was exhausted, so I'll go back some day and perhaps revise this review then.

Coyote's Deli and Grill, Banff: 4 Stars

Coyote's Deli & Grill. 206 Caribou Street. (403) 762-3963, Banff

It's been a while since I've posted any reviews, and I don't have time for anything elaborate, but about a month ago or so I went to the Coyote's Deli and Grill for breakfast. It was one of the very best breakfast's I've had! Breakfast places tend to always be kind of the same (for example, Mellissa's in Banff is just average), but this place really stands out. The eggs and chorizo sausage breakfast I had was great. The juice is fresh-squeezed, and the pancakes were really nice, much better than at most other breakfast joints.