Posts Tagged ‘restaurants’
6 items.
Getting a new toothbrush is always so exciting. Amy’s has some kind of forcefield on it or something. It’s really fancy. Mine is simpler but her teeth cost more than mine so it sort of makes sense.
4 Comments
Last night we went to see Chris Tomlin in concert at the Queensway Cathedral. The show was all right and, while it was neat ot see so many people really getting into a worship time, I don’t think that kind of thing is for me. Lesson learned!
Sidebar: The word “cathedral” brings to my mind the idea of a huge, vaulted ceiling, probably made of wood with giant stained glass windows and maybe some intricate carving with gold leaf somewhere about the place. What we actually got was a large, barn-like building with uncomfortable seating and very, very poor sightlines from the balcony and anywhere that wasn’t the first ten or so rows of pews on the lower level. There are ten giant columns placed in such a way that no section of seating has unimpeded views. The ceiling was of mid-grade acoustical ceiling tile and the whole thing looked a bit run down. Note to self: while glass panels in railings certainly help with sight lines, they get grubby in a big hurry what with small children leaving handprints all over.
The show started at 7.30, doors opened at 6.30 and we got to the area at about 5.45 having picked up someone en route. The Etobicoke IKEA is directly across the street and has a restaurant so we figured we’d eat there, park in their lot and walk over for the show. On the surface, this seems like an okay plan as IKEA Burlington has decent enough food and we figured it would be roughly comparable.
The line up was actually relatively short which we took to be a good sign. The pre-packaged sandwiches and wraps looked much as such items usually do (like they were prepared months ago and are occasionally run through the dishwasher to clean the dust off the cellophane) so we decided to try the roasted chicken. The portion sizes are actually kind of ridiculous. I got what appeared to be a quarter-turkey piece while Amy’s was somewhat smaller. For $6.99 one receives a piece of chicken and choice of side. I got french fries and Amy had mashed potatoes.
The chicken was dry. Very dry. It was a Sahara of flavourless protein in a greasy and shiny skin shell. I considered going the route of the commercial where the woman pours a jug of water onto her guests’ plates. This chicken could have been used to sop up major oil spills and had enough left over capacity to bring sea level back down to an acceptable height and save all those people in low-lying areas (New Orleans, Holland, etc.). The french fries seem to have been made in Sweden at some point in the past year or two and shipped, flat-packed in brown cardboard boxes to minimize waste then put back together with tiny Allen keys and thrown into the chafing dish to warm them. Amy’s mashed potatoes were the only redeeming foodstuff ordered. They were a significantly higher percentage of ‘good’ compared to actually good potatoes than the french fries were to good french fries.
One of the people who were with us got some coleslaw which, for some ineffable reason, had a giant piece of broccoli in it. It was apparently the only piece of broccoli in the entire dish. I don’t immediately associate broccoli with coleslaw so my theory is that either it fell in from some other bowl or dish or (and I find this more likely) the ‘slaw started out with a significant amount of broccoli and everybody in the line ahead of us looked at it and thought, “Oh my! I have never tried broccoli in mayonnaise dressing before, I bet it’s wonderful,” and took a heaping helping.
There were no forks to be had when we came through the line. I ate the first part of my chicken with a soup spoon, carving it much as an 8th century king would have done, except he would have had a knife of some kind (of which there were none, either). I was tempted to make a sally down to the cutlery section of the IKEA Marketplace and just take some forks from their stock but I was saved from rash action by the arrival of freshly cleaned forks (still no knives, oddly. Perhaps they’ve had people storm the serving area with cries of YOU CALL THIS CHICKEN? YOU CALL THESE FRIES? HAVE AT YOU *stab* *stab* *stab*).
Amy went to get refills on pop ($1 for a bottomless glass is actually a pretty good deal) and asked me what I wanted. I said “Surprise me” so she brought me back a combination of lingonberry juice and Sprite or 7up or whatever. It was remarkably tasty and she thought she was playing a prank so looks like the tables were turned! On the whole, IKEA food is much like IKEA furniture. Inexpensive, made of particle board and, while looking very nice, not as good as something you could make for yourself, even if you had no skills whatsoever in cookery/carpentry.
We ate brunch (I guess? The meal you eat when it’s far too wet to eat any kind of breakfast at one’s campsite and you must eat something somewhere or perish) at The Old Fish Factory in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia on Friday. I must admit to having some reservations about eating someplace whose name implies that they produce elderly fish on the premises but I decided to put that aside and trust to Fate.
Sidebar: I am writing this while sitting in the library and I just heard a little boy yell: “STELLA, DON’T EAT BOOKS,” to which (presumably) Stella replied “I was thinking!” Perhaps she, like so many, must gnaw on cellulose to spur the brain along. Also overheard: “The bathroom has a nice, big change table!” Regardless, let’s continue with the main event, here.
Amy and I have a similar aversion to putting fish in our stomachs first thing in the day. We went for a sushi lunch before consuming anything else and it did not go well. Fortunately they had a broader fare than the name above the door would indicate. It being terribly cold and damp out (maybe terribly is too strong a word. It’s about 17°C and about 300% humidity. Maybe terribly is not strong enough), I ordered a coffee to the amazement of all others present. My feeling was that it was the hot beverage most likely to include free refills of which I only had one. It was far from the best coffee I’ve ever had but certainly wasn’t the worst. It was warm and that was the main thing.
Amy ordered soup and sandwich and I got the pork steak sandwich. The soup was a sweet curried carrot affair. It was tasty but kind of unusual in texture. It was very definitely carrot soup, though. It was an orange commonly associated with exposure suits used by Air/Sea Search and Rescue workers. Her sandwich had nicely smoked ham, tomato (not smoked, fresh) and lettuce (slightly smoked). My steak sandwich was actually open-faced. It was more of a ‘steak on a piece of garlic bread’ than what I would call a sandwich but very tasty for all that. There was a sort of dill mustard that went with it and very good fries with malt vinegar.
Fries and other potato dishes are done really well out here, by and large. It probably has to do with the potatoes spending about 20 seconds on a truck rather than a couple of days. C&B had mushroom caps and split some kind of seafood platter which they seemed to enjoy. They had scallops which I think is sort of the tofu of seafood. They don’t have much flavour on their own merits but tend to soak up whatever they’re cooked near. I am planning to have bacon-wrapped scallops at some point (possibly tonight in Halifax) which is basically like eating a 2cm diameter plug of bacon without it stopping my heart right away.
For my mum’s birthday at the end of June, my dad took us all out to the very confusingly named King Street Trio on University in Waterloo. It’s been a favourite of my parents’ for years, actually since before it moved from King Street. It’s probably good that they changed the name in the way they did as University Avenue Trio sounds unwieldy at best.
I believe this was my fourth visit. I went for their weekend brunch with my immediate family shortly after it moved to University. Amy and I went on my former employer’s dime after working overnight for two days straight. A good friend of mine from college was married in Central America a few years ago and they held their reception at the restaurant shortly after their return.
Depending on when one is at the restaurant (particularly Friday and Saturday evenings), they have either a jazz pianist or trio (thus the name). Other times the ambiance is semi-formal (I saw people there with jeans but I don’t think I’d go in less than khakis and a collared shirt). The wait staff are very friendly and fairly attentive, though the kitchen did mess up the ordering of our order.
We weren’t really hungry enough for the main dishes (primarily meat based, lots of options, between about $18 and $35) so we decided to split a handful of appetizers. We tried the calamari, black bean & corn fritters, soup-of-the-day (cream of potato with bacon) and a sort of filo-wrapped brie on a lettuce bed. These were between $6 and $10. The soup was really excellent (though Amy has made better at home) and the baked brie was a whole lot of cheese. It was very tasty but it’s better suited for splitting between a group. The appetizers are also very filling. It would be pretty reasonable to eat an appetizer as a whole meal (particularly as the bread brought out at first is very filling and very good. It contains olives and they provide olive oil with spices to dip it). I wouldn’t order the corn/bean fritters again. I found them very dry and they held a tonne of heat so they were hard to eat. The calamari would have been better had it been the only thing I was eating. It was good but I was terribly full by the time I got to it.
The price and environment give King Street Trio a very special-event sort of restaurant. I don’t think I would put it in my regular rotation if we still lived in Waterloo.
working too hard will give you a heart attack
We went out for dinner last night (went out successfully, I might add, not the ‘walked into a restaurant and walked back out without eating’ of earlier in the week, a passtime that I cannot recommend as healthy for body or mind) and discussed this very topic. To buy a ‘bottomless’ cup of pop will run you close to $3. Iced tea can occasionally be $0.20 more yet. There are places that don’t do free refills and they tend to be closer to $2/glass. This is patently ludicrous in either case. Consider:
Pop (or soda for the northern US or coke for parts of the southern US, more on this further down the page) comes in something called a Bag-in-Box which is about as appetizing as it sounds. Essentially the raw syrup of your beverage arrives in a concentrated form and is mixed on-site with carbonated water (or uncarbonated for iced tea). A bit of fairly rough web searching results in a price of about $0.06 per glass for the syrup and perhaps $0.10 for the carbonated water (on the outside). Let’s just take it as read that pop is pretty much the widest margin product that is sold in restaurants.
I’m not sure if this is the mis-recalled experience of my fractured youth or the fevered imaginings of somebody who went to sleep at 2:30 this morning after watching Transformers 2 and Star Trek back to back while sitting in the driver’s seat of my car, but I think there was at one time the option of not paying for refills at restaurants. One would have the option of paying, say, $2 for a single glass and then upgrading it to bottomless for another dollar. We would like to see this brought back. I have a tendency to try to get my money’s worth out of my $3. I have been known to drin upwards of a litre of beverage over the course of a meal (particularly when the food is slow. I tend to just drink whatever’s handy until it’s gone so it is probably good that I don’t care much for beer). Amy, on the other hand, will drink two glasses, tops, and only if the food is particularly salty or spicy. This two-tiered system would not directly benefit the restaurant (making it unlikely to be implemented) but would make us feel frugal and thrifty and I think that is a valuable service that can be provided.
Now, with respect to pop vs. soda vs. coke. I had an argument online (and yes, I know what is said of arguing on the internet) with someone from Texas or Louisiana or one of those other humid and tetchy states. He was insisting that coke is a legitimate generic name for pop, much as Kleenex has become generic for facial tissue or band-aid for self-adhesive bandages. I maintain that this is a fallacy. Coke is definitely a type of pop but it is a particular branded flavour. If somebody asked me ‘what kind of coke do you want’ I would think them an idiot. There is but one Coke, albeit available in cherry, vanilla, lime, diet, caffeine free, diet caffeine free, diet lime and possibly others but ‘root beer’ is not one of the available options and to insist that it is brands you a dunce.
an empty room with all the windows smashed
We have something of a tradition of going out for dinner at least every other week or so. This is something we’ve done pretty much since we got married. We like to go on dates despite having been married for six and a half years. I have previously mentioned, we’ve made a policy of going to non-chain restaurants. For the first time, this pretty much backfired.
One of the reasons we like indie places is because the service is usually really, really good. Tonight was a pretty stunning exception. We tried three restaurants in St. Catharines and one in Jordan. In the first (a fairly upscale Italian place), there was straight-up nobody there. No one was sitting at any table, nobody was behind the bar. We could hear somebody rustling in the kitchen but nothing further was forthcoming so we left.
We went into an Asian place next. I have never actually seen anybody in this particular restaurant at any time. They’ve had a chalkboard out front with the words “New Menu” written on it for about a month and a half despite having only been open for about five months. The decor is really nice though the BLARING PRINCE MUSIC was a bit much. The single waiter (possibly manager) looked at us blankly for a moment and then motioned us to a table, presented us with menus (new ones apparently, though mine had hoisin sauce or something all over the back). There was nothing particularly appetizing so we left.
Attempt the third was to a pub to which we have gone before and really enjoyed. It is a seat-yourself sort of thing and the bartender (single waitstaff again) noticed us and said hello as we sat. Then continued to sit. And sat a bit more. We were there for a solid five minutes (and perhaps more) and he made two trips to the only other occupied table in the place without dropping us off a menu or two or even making a token ‘be with you in a moment’ so we left. He sort of waved menus at us as we left but our minds were already made up and one of the 200,000 words that describes me is ‘steadfast in meaningless decisions.’
We went and did a bit of shopping and decided to try a place a bit closer to home. Sat ourselves again after making eye contact with one of the waitstaff. Nothing at all for another five minutes. We began to wonder if perhaps we had died and were condemned to forever wander restaurants in search of a server with Whoopi Goldberg-esque medium powers. I am starting to think that Niagara’s reputation as a tourism based economy is unjustly founded.
i forget the same things you forget