Lex Culinaria

Just in time for summer

I found a great little tool that lists all the farmer's markets in Edmonton (or anywhere else in Alberta if you ask it to) complete with hours of operation & a map to get you there. How easy does that make getting great local produce?

Check it out HERE.

2007 Vue Weekly Golden Fork Awards

It's time for Vue Weekly's 9th Annual Golden Fork Awards.

It'd be great to get some decent participation from Edmonton's dining out crowd to make the results meaningful and to reward those restaurants in Edmonton that are doing something well, as well as inspire those who need to pick up their game...

Check out the article, forward the ballot to everyone you know, and
then vote! http://www.vueweekly.com/articles/default.aspx?i=6218

Besides, there's a nice getaway in the Rockies as a prize as well as 10 runner-up prizes of restaurant gift certificates.

Results will be in the May 10th edition of Vue Weekly.

You must give answers in at least ten categories and include your  name, address and a daytime telephone number.

The categories are:

Best Dishes
Appetizers:
Soups:
Salads:
Breads:
Steaks:
Venison:
Sushi:
Tapas:
Pub Food:
Dim Sum:
Sandwiches:
Hamburgers:
French Fries:
Wraps:
Pizza:
Desserts:
Chicken Wings:
Best Sweets:
Snacks (pretzels, bagels):

Best Restaurants
Fine Dining:
Mid-Price:
Breakfast:
Bakery:
Coffee Shop:
Tea Shop:
Deli:
Bavarian:
Greek:
French:
Italian/Pasta:
Chinese:
Thai:
Japanese:
East Indian/Tandoori:
Mexican/Latin American:
Steakhouse:
Seafood:
Vegetarian:
African:
Juice Bar:
Continental:

Other Bests
New Restaurant:
Pre-theatre Dining:
Restaurant for Lovers:
Innovative Menu:
Wine List:
Beer List:
When you only have $10:
When going solo:
Late night/all night:
Weekend brunch:
Best service:
Sports Bar:
Best Patio:
Best Hotel Restaurant:
Ultimate Dining Experience:
Best Independent Wine Store:
Best for People-Watching:

Also include:
Name:
Address:
Daytime Phone:

Email your response to [email protected]

Entries must be received no later than May 4, 2007. One entry per person.

Check out a copy of Vuwe Weekily for the full contest rules & regulations.

Dining Out For Life

April 26th is Dining Out for Life night in Edmonton.

This is the second year for this event in Edmonton. On this day,participating restaurants will donate 25% of that day’s food sales to help those living with HIV/AIDS. Last year, $5,941.87 was raised to help those living with HIV/AIDS in Edmonton.

To date, there are 13 participating restaurants – please say you’re Dining Out For Life® when making reservations:

The Blue Pear
Blue Plate Diner
Chianti Café
The Crêperie
cul•ina
The Dish Bistro
Fresh Start Bakery
Jack’s Grill
Parkallen Restaurant
il Portico
Red Ox Inn
Upper Crust Café
Wild Tangerine

Check out the Dining Out for Life website (www.diningoutforlife.com) to see what other restaurants come on board or to recommend your favourite restaurant.

Funds raised will go directly to the Living Positive through Positive Living Society of Alberta.

Donations to the event are also accepted on-line at www.diningoutforlife.com or by calling
780.488.5768. If you only dine out once in April, make it Thursday, April 26.

Besides, it's our wedding anniversary that night so you have 2 reasons: Dine out for Life, and Dine out for Love! Cakes and I will be.

Ruth's Chris Steakhouse

In case you missed my review of Ruth's Chris steakhouse on Edmonton AM last week, here's the link. And here's a heck of a lot more detail about our experience there.

I wasn't really expecting great things from a chain restaurant. Especially one from the States. I mean. This is the country that gave us Chili's. I must say, I was pleasantly surprised.

The décor was well done and complete in a way that most restaurants (with a few notable exceptions) in Edmonton are not. It still felt a little "chainy" to me, but overall the dining room and the lounge have a sort of dark wood, gentlemen's club appeal, but without the lingering cigar smoke. Plus, women are allowed in.

I felt a little bad showing up for dinner on the opening night, knowing I was going to be reviewing them, and I was prepared to give them a little slack on things because of it, but they really didn't need too much slack.

They did manage to lose our reservation though, and we had to sit in the lounge, which is much more "gentleman's club-y" than the dining room. The lounge is not at all an unpleasant place to eat dinner, unfortunately we were seated at the singularly most horrible table. It's tucked away in the far back corner and is about 2 feet from a roaring fireplace which cause the side of my husband's face to turn red red after about 5 minutes, and 2 feet away on the other side from the waitress station at which there was a perpetual cluster of no less than 5 staff and noisy dishwasher. We eventually asked to be moved, but the waitress made it seem like it would be quite an ordeal for her. Mind you, she couldn't have been a day over 20, so perhaps she had not yet learnt the finer points of serving in a restaurant with main courses well over the $50 mark. 

The beverage menu is impressive, particularly the wine list. It's great to see a decent restaurant in Edmonton offering a range of great wines by the glass instead of forcing everyone to buy a whole bottle if they want something other than the crappy house wine. You can still buy good wines by the bottle if you want, you just don't have to.

A word of caution before we get to the menu and our meal choices. This restaurant, and its food, grew out of the culinary traditions of New Orleans. And some darn fine culinary traditions those are. One of those traditions, especially noticeable in the food at Ruth's Chris, is a deep and abiding love, nay reverence, for heavy cream and butter. Picture in your mind, the butteriest, creamiest meal you have ever had in your life, and then quadruple the amount of butter and cream involved. You might be getting close to the kind of butter usage I'm talking about here. Then again you might not be anywhere near it.

If you're a lover of rich food, go crazy. If you'd rather not consume the better part of a pound of butter in different guises throughout the course of your meal, heed my advice. You can, successfully dine at Ruth's Chris without eating buckets of butter and cream, but you need to make the right choices to do so. Don't get me wrong, the food it great, it's just that, if you hope to leave with the same size ass you went in with, you might have to plan your meal choices a little better than we did.

The starters range from about $15 to north of $20, depending on your choice. The two we ordered were prepared beautifully and were extremely tasty, but were also very heavy on the cream and butter. I had the New Orleans barbecued shrimp ($17) which, unless you're familiar with that particular dish from New Orleans, will surprise you. It's not barbecued the way you are thinking. It is broiled in a seasoned butter and white wine sauce. Don't worry. That's how it's supposed to be. And believe me, it is out of this world. If you order this you'll notice how the waiter discretely brings you a little spoon. It's because the sauce is that good. I have always had a soft spot for New Orleans barbecued shrimp, ever since I learnt how to make it (and subsequently ate a lot of it) in New Orleans. Ruth's Chris version absolutely kicks the ass of any I have had so far, even my own. But be warned. It is very, very buttery, so, if you're going to have this for a starter, I would recommend ordering your steak sans butter and having a salad for a side instead of one of the many creamy, buttery rich side dishes.

Cakes had the Oysters Rockefeller, which were also great, but heavy on the rich as well and very large and filling.

For a main course, I had the smallest steak on offer: An 8-ounce petit fillet for $39. It was positively beautiful. Tender, and perfectly cooked. And it should be! Ruth's Chris doesn't use regular old cooking apparatus for their steaks, but a custom made thingamajig (Apparently the founder, Ruth Fertel was an extremely accomplished scientist) that cooks the meat at 1800F!! Apparently this thingamajig (it is too a technical culinary term) is calibrated so that each steak for each order will cook in exactly the same amount of time taking into account that they may be different cuts, weights and requirements for doneness. I think that's pretty special.

Whatever you do, don't touch your plate! The 500F your plate is heated to may seem barely warm in light of the temperature at which the steak was cooked, but I assure you it is plenty hot to singe your fingers! The plate is served to you hot in order to keep your steak hot through the meal. Another brilliant idea. There's nothing worse than taking your time to enjoy your meal only to find it's gotten unpleasantly cold by the time you get to the end. I did find that the extra heat made the last few mouthfuls a touch more cooked than I would have liked, but as I'm a rare steak kind of girl, I can deal with that.

I thought my fillet steak was great, but that's the cut I usually prefer. A fillet steak is known for its tenderness more so than its flavour, so if flavour is what you're after, I'd try the Cowboy Ribeye. We didn't try it but it won hands down according to the diners at the next table and it looked gorgeous, if startlingly huge.

Another word to the wise about the steaks, which range in size from 8 to 24 ounces: They all come served positively swimming in sizzling butter. You can ask for no butter (which I would recommend), or extra butter if you want, although I have a hard time understanding how anyone could possibly need more butter unless they are planning on taking it home to make a dozen pies for Christmas. My steak was sitting in a pool of at least 1/3 cup of butter and the flavour rather overpowered the delicate flavour of the fillet.

I wondered what Ruth's Chris would do to appease the angry mob who complained (before the restaurant opened) that it served only USDA beef, which you can imagine is a cardinal sin in a city like Edmonton where 90% of the vehicles on the road sport "I Heart Alberta Beef" stickers. As a nod in the direction of these peculiarly Albertan sensibilities, amongst the many USDA cuts of beef offered, there is one Alberta beef selection. The menu invites diners to order both and make the comparison. A risky proposition in these parts. I've got to say, I didn't think the USDA beef was any different from Alberta beef I've had around town. I am, however, slightly offended by the prospect of shipping meat for so long a distance where there is a fresh and ample supply right here. It seems a waste of resources really and not very responsible to the local economy or the environment.

Cakes had the stuffed chicken. Of course I tried some - that's been part of the deal ever since we got married! I have never tasted chicken so flavourful and tender at the same time. It was absolutely perfect. The large breast, with leg attached, comes stuffed with the perfect amount of savoury cheese and herbs. I am not exaggerating when I say I've never had a tastier piece of chicken- with gorgeous crispy brown skin and the tender-moist interior that the chicken. I suspect it was heavily basted with butter. Even if it wasn't it, like the steak, came in a sea of butter, which wasn't necessary at all.

Because the main courses at Ruth's Chris are a la carte, you must order your side dishes separately at $8 each. This adds up when you consider the average steak there runs between $45 and $50. There are eight to ten potato selections and a similar number of vegetable selections. Each dish would probably serve four people, but we ordered two between us. We decided to go with the selections marked as the Ruth's Chris specialties: Scalloped potatoes and creamed spinach. They were both good, but way too creamy and cheesy and buttery (the potatoes were positively swimming in a cream sauce and topped with a half inch of solid melted cheese!), especially on top of everything else. I really do recommend that you try to choose one of the lighter sides, or a salad if you'd prefer not to be uncomfortable by the end of the meal.

We were feeling so full and unpleasantly gorged by the end of the meal that neither of us wanted desert, which is like saying hell has indeed frozen over. But, we rallied long enough to take one for the team. I had the crème brulee and Cakes had the bread pudding. They were both excellent, if basic, examples of their respective genres. The bread pudding was exactly as I remember the bread pudding I learnt to make in New Orleans, right down to the delightfully boozy sauce. And the crème brulee, which must have been made with 40% milk fat cream, was wonderfully textured and beautifully paired with tart berries. But at the end of this particular meal it was just far too much. Next time I'd probably try the sorbet instead. That is if I had room.

The final bill was pretty pricey - just shy of $200 for three courses including tip, but without any wine.  This is a restaurant worth trying, but I'd save it for special occasions when you've saved up enough dollars and weight watchers points to justify it! It would make an ideal restaurant for entertaining clients or celebrating special occasions, but it's probably not an everyday sort of place.

Give it a whirl, and tell me what you think.

Lex Culinaria on CBC 740 AM

Check out Edmonton AM every second Wednesday morning as I review local restaurants for everyone's favourite CBC host Ron Wilson.

Did you miss my reviews of Blue Pear and Flavours Modern Bistro? You can check them out on the Edmonton AM website.

Next review at 7:20 this Wednesday on AM 740.

Wild Tangerine Mobile Cusine

Main Floor, Manulife Place

Okay. So I have been putting off writing this review since…oh, I don't know, April? May? And I keep writing and rewriting it in my head to see if it comes out any differently. But now it's more than half way through July and I can not avoid it any longer.

I don't like Wild Tangerine Mobile Cuisine.

At all.

There.

I said it.

As you know, I love Wild Tangerine (the original). Unfortunately Judy and Wilson Wu have totally missed the mark on the new store. Wild Tangerine Mobile Cuisine is all about marketing and commoditization of lifestyle - sadly, it's apparent that good food didn't really factor into many of the business choices they made in forging ahead with Wild Tangerine Mobile Cuisine (WTMC).

Wilson and Judy appear to have, without much thought at all, jumped on the "good food to-go for busy professionals" bandwagon that is currently careening out of control in North America. Even in Edmonton "portable food" is all the rage, with "make-a-meal" type venues (some good, some not so good) and fancy-schmancy takeaway ventures (think Soul Soup in Rice Howard Way or Culina's TV Dinners") are popping up everywhere! And with good reason, because, let's face it we Albertans have even less time than your average schmo as the economy here is a frigging juggernaut. Witness my lack of blogging for the last several weeks! Sheesh. I could use a vacation….But I digress.

Wild Tangerine Mobile Cuisine is all about the "Concept" and not about the food. The menu's not great and they appear to have no actual cooking facilities other than a toaster and a couple of convection microwaves, which - ugh. Have you ever tried spring rolls cooked in a convection microwave? Trust me. Nothing good can come of it. Maybe that's because they took over a retail space with a great location but which was not set up with the proper vent system to operate a restaurant with...oh, I don't know…maybe some stoves? And oven?  Like I said: WTMC is all about the Concept (Great location! Great décor!), not about the food (micro waved spring rolls = unnaturally, unpleasantly chewy and tasteless).

Wait. Did I walk in to the salon by mistake? Nope. I guess not. In addition to the misguided comestibles WTMC sells (for Pete's sake!) hand cream and other "aromatherapy lifestyle products".

Even without the poncy hand cream, WTMC suffers from what, in my view is a common and fatal flaw of restaurants (especially in Edmonton) - It doesn't know what it wants to be. Is it an ice cream parlour? Is it a b-grade "Asian-inspired" fast food place? Is it a frozen soup store (seriously folks - there's like 3 stand up freezers full of frozen soup!) Is it an overpriced salad bar (8$ for a salad I could buy in a bag at Safeway and a couple microwaved spring rolls? Really?)? Is it an Aveda Concept Store? Is it a bulk granola shop?

The décor is great, but that's about all that's great. The product selection is arbitrary at best and totally misguided at worst. Food clearly plays second or even fourth fiddle to "Concept"  and "Attitude" and "Flashy". Which, I don't know about you, but I generally go to a restaurant for the food, not the "Concept" or the "Flashy".

If I were you, I'd head straight to Sunterra in Commerce Place or one of the restaurants in Rice Howard Way rather than head to WTMC because, as any Albertan might say, WTMC is "Big hat, no cattle".

Rating: Food - 2/7 stars, Service - 4/7 stars, Decor - 6/7 stars

Wild Boar & Beer

Those of you from Edmonton, get your tickets for Slow Food Edmonton’s 2nd annual Wild Boar and Beer BBQ - featuring local food, live music, door prizes and Alley Kat Brewery’s beer. 

Slow Food is an international movement dedicated to the revival of the kitchen and the table as centres of pleasure, culture and community; to the invigoration and proliferation of regional, seasonal culinary traditions; and to living a slower and more harmonious rhythm of life. It's an international movement headquartered in Bra, Italy. Slow Food now has over 800 members across Canada.

The event will feature the following local food products:

• spit-roasted Hog Wild Specialties’ wild boar from Mayerthorpe
• freshly picked Edgar Farms’ asparagus spears from Innisfail
• gourmet baby potatoes from Edmonton’s Little Potato Company
• cold-pressed canola oil from Highwood Crossing Farm in Aldersyde
• Edmonton-grown radishes and spinach from Peas on Earth
• Tree Stone Bakery’s elegant artisan breads (Edmonton)
• exquisite chef-made mustards from Calgary’s Brassica mustards
• beer cakes from Sutton Place Hotel (Edmonton)
• freshly roasted Java Jive coffee (Edmonton)
• custom-made gelato from Pinocchio ice cream (Edmonton)
• Alley Kat's award-winning craft beers

When: June 18, 2006 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Where: Alley Kat Brewery (9929-60 Avenue)

How Much?: Tickets are $40/adult, $15/18 and under, free/under 10 accompanied by an adult.

Tickets can be purchased at Greenwoods’ Bookshoppe (7925-104 Street), Call the Kettle Black (12523-102 Avenue, High Street), Alley Kat Brewery, and on-line at www.slowfoodedmonton.ca.

Wild Earth Bakery and Coffee

(On 99 Street just down from the IGA)

It seemed like the "experienced baker wanted" sign hung in the window of the un-opened Wild Earth Bakery for ages. Apparently Norm Joly, Wild Earth's owner was waiting for the right baker. Seems he found what he was looking for.

Wild Earth opened last week and from all appearances on the Sunday morning Cakes and I visited, things were all running smoothly. The place was positively packed. As I've often said, Edmonton lacks enough good coffee/cafe type places where you can pop in on a weekend morning, read a paper, have a decent coffee and just chill. I'm glad to say that Wild Earth fits the bill perfectly. And I guess that shouldn't be a huge surprise, as Norm is not a stranger to the food business in Edmonton: he owns the IGA on 99th Street, just a few doors down from bakery.

Cakes and I both had a latte, which was good by Edmonton standards but not necessarily world standards. Maybe I'm just clinging too furiously to memories of coffes in Melbourne...where even cheap lattes from dodgy corner stores have a beautiful crema around the edge of the milk froth and a much deeper, richer taste...

But I digress.

Cakes and I had worked up quite an appetite as we'd gone for an hour-long stroll through Mill Creek Ravine. He ordered and devoured a feta & dill scone (which I sampled of course) and it was fan-bloody-tastic. I had an apple and cranberry muffin which was loaded with fruit, moist and not overly sweet, in a word - muffin perfection.

We also cleverly (or not so cleverly if you take into account the calories...) purchased a selection of the six other items pictured above for sampling at our leisure at home. I was astounded that the six items cost us only around $8. What a bargain!

My favourite of the six was definitely the raspberry danish. Not too sweet, beutifully creamy custard cream and the pastry was flaky but still very moist. Cakes favourite (surprise!) was the apple strudel which was incredibly apple-y and again not overly sweet.

We didn't really like the trail-mix cookie, which was quite cake-y and dry. I definitely prefer my cookies chewy and moist. The filling in the mixed berry tart was way too sweet for my liking - like jam with sugar added - it was, however, packed with intense berry flavour. Pastry was nice and moist but there was way too much of it. with the result that, it looked like a tartlet but tasted rather alot like a thick slab of pastry topped with a dollop of oversweet jam. I probably won't be buying that one again.

If there is a continuum at one end of which is a cupcake and at the other is a an oat bran muffin of the sort my mother used to make when she was dieting, I'd have to say The blueberry and lemon muffin is very, very close to the cupcake end - very close to a sweet white vanilla cake with some fruit in it. Which is great if you're a cupcake rather than muffin person, but I think I'd prefer my muffins to taste a bit less like dessert if I'm eating them for breakfast! I have to maintain at least some illusions for myself. I suspect that the apple cranberry muffin I loved and the blueberry/lemon one I didn't were probably made with the same batter. I just think the tart and plentiful fruit in the apple and cranberry one overcame the sweet cakey-batter better than did the blueberry and lemon.

The cheese stick was very cheesy, but perhaps a bit less than fresh as it was quite hard and tasteless. Probably wouldn't buy that again either.

All in all, not a bad showing for having been open only a handful of days. Drop in, say hi to Norm and grab a raspberry danish and a feta and dill scone and some coffee and just hang out for a while.

If first impressions are anything to go on, Norm and his "experienced baker" need to do a bit of corrective work oin some of the recipes, but if they do get it right, they'll be around for a while.

Indulgence Edmonton

Last night, my very good friend Joan took me off to Indulgence for a birthday pressie. Indulgence is a fundraiser put on by the Junior Leauge of Edmonton. It showcases local food producers and chefs as well as Canadian wines. It was fantastic - 2 hours of non stop wine tasting and small plates -and I bet I'll be going back next year. Some of the notable small plates included:

• a brilliant beef carpaccio on paper-thin flax seed crackers with a hemp oil aoili (from Ernest's Dining room at the Culinary school at NAIT);
• fantastic tender rosemary bbq chicken wings from my mate Ron at Sunworks Farm;
• duck egg fritatta and smoked duck from Culina and Green Eggs and Ham;
• fantastic homemade sausages and spy mustards from La Spiga;
• Zuchinni soup with sauteed leeks, duck confit and brouillade of duck eggs by Patrick Turcot (Executive Chef, Hotel Fairmont McDonald)

I can see myself trying to replicate some of these - especially the melt in your mouth carpaccio!

Luckily for me, Patrick Turcot has given me permission to test run and post about his recipe on Lex Culinaria so look for that coming up this weekend!

For those Edmontonians among you, make sure you grab a ticket next year. It is so worth it!

PS: Don't forget about the SUMMER BBQ/GRILLING CHALLENGE - It's up at the end of next week so get cooking and get your entries in! As an added incentive, there will be a random prize (BBQ themed) for the entry that my cat Fitzroy likes the best. I'm going to print out all the recipes, lay them on the floor in a circle and put Fitzy in the middle. The first recipe he sniffs or licks will win the prize. How's that for a contest!

The Red Ox Inn

9420 91 Street, Edmonton Alberta 780.465.5727

Last Wednesday, the staff at the Red Ox Inn were baffled I'm sure. For a tiny establishment - it only seats 25 or 30 people - there were an unbelievable amount of birthday sparklers required. Between 6:30 and 8:30, there were 5 couples celebrating 5 birthdays and 1 anniversary! Greedy individuals that Cakes and I are, we contributed one of the birthdays (mine!) and the anniversary. We had a great laugh with our fellow dining companions about the endless procession of sparklers. And everyone there is your fellow dining companion, owing to the tininess of the dining room. Normally, I would be a bit put off by that, by the prospect of such intimacy with total strangers while dining, but at the Red Ox, it's a perfectly collegial and homey experience. Besides, it gave me a great chance to perv at other people's plates.

The decor is understated and really well thought out in a way that most Edmonton restaurants, even some of the good ones, are not. Its crisp clean white walls are lined, almost on all sides, with gorgeous black leather banquettes. All this is, of course, only apparent once you've done your homework and secured a reservation, because tables in this joint go fast and if you turn up without a reservation, even on a Wednesday night, you probably won't get a seat.

The menu is lovely and succinct. Not too few choices, not too many. It gave me a sense of confidence in the chef's abilities to see that he was not trying to be a jack-of-all-trades, as is so often the case. Edmonton restauranteurs seem, from time to time, to forget that they do not need to produce 25 main dishes to find one that appeals to everyone, and are far better served carefully selecting a few that they do really well...and then spending the time perfecting them. Red Ox appears to have avoided this fault quite handily.

Cakes and I both had a hard time choosing. Everything on the menu sounded so good. Although we tend not to order starters in addition to mains, we couldn't help it once we saw the menu. Cakes had the grilled scallops, chive infused herb salad with carrot butter sauce and crisp potato chips. What appeared on his plate were five perfectly seared and brown scallops in just the right amount of sauce and some interesting accoutrements. He ate them so fast I didn't get a chance to try any, so you'll have to take his word for it that they were marvellous. I chose the warm goats cheese salad with cranberries and almonds. It was certainly delicious, if not necessarily challenging, with a generous round of breaded and fried goats cheese perched on top of baby spinach and topped with a great tangy port dressing.

For the main course, Cakes had the Marinated duck breast with Moroccan carrot sauce, house gnocchi, spaghetti squash gratin (again) and zesty caponata which came presented in a nifty looking, but not really ergonomically designed bowl which was a bit difficult to eat out of gracefully. The sides were lovely - particularly the caponata (a kind of salsa), which appeared to have some black olive in it. The gnocchi looked home made and the duck was gorgeous, although medium rare, which is apparently the thing to do with duck these days, although I must admit it still makes me a little nervous.

I had the saddle of rabbit stuffed with wild mushrooms on top of spaetzle and with a confusing side of edamame beans mixed with green beans and a couple of cooked carrots. All the veggies were cooked perfectly, but I thought the combination a bit odd and perhaps it suffered a little from the most deplorable (in my book anyway) condition I commonly refer to as "doesn't know quite what it wants to be". The rabbit was good, although my favourite part of it was the sauce and the mushroom stuffing. I was hoping for something a little more spectacular quite frankly, and the rabbit, although physically interesting, was not overly exciting in the taste or texture departments and perhaps a little dry.

Our dessert was definitely the highlight of the meal. We had the warm chocolate cake to share and the chocolarte sauce used was clearly made of little morte than melted chocolate and cream - which is the only way chocolate sauce should be made in my opinion. None of this Hershey's Syrup for me. Or for the Red Ox Inn, it would seem.

In all our bill for two starters, two mains, one desert and a half carafe of reasonably good shiraz was in the neighbourhood of $115, which is not outrageous. I don't think I'd go there palnning to spend as much again as it's not worth $115 in my opinion, but I'd certainly go there for a main and shared dessert - which would have run us more like $70. Will we go back again? Probably, but more for the atmosphere and stellar service than the food. Don't get me wrong. The food is quite good by Edmonton standards, and perhaps we didn't choose the right things to order, but it just wasn't quite as good as I'd been lead to believe by all the raves I've heard about it. It does have the aspect of a place run by people who love food - which is the chief requirement in a good restaurant - but maybe they need to shake up their game a little....

Rating:

Food - 5 stars, Service - 6 stars, Decor - 6 stars

Hours:

Open Tuesday - Saturday from 5 pm

Payment:

Credit cards, interac, cash

Atmosphere:

trendy casual

Cusine type:

ecclectic, homey modern

Price:

$125 for two courses for two with drinks and tip

Ratings Key:

1 Star - Horrific in every way
2 Stars - Simply awful
3 Stars - Average on a good day
4 Stars - Better than average, but only just
5 Stars - Pretty good, I’d go back
6 Stars - Yum, give me more!
7 Stars - Exceptional. outstanding. bliss

PS: Don't forget about the summer BBQ challenge - It's up at the end of next week so get cooking and get your entries in! As an added incentive, there will be a random prize (BBQ themed) for the entry that my cat Fitzroy likes the best. I'm going to print out all the recipes, lay them on the floor in a circle and put Fitzy in the middle. The first recipe he sniffs will win the prize. How's that for a contest!