Food Notes for March 23, 2009

• A new Funky Pickle Pizza is opening downtown at 10243 Jasper Avenue – it looks just about ready to open!
• I passed by a new coffee shop called Hardwood Cafe on Jasper Avenue and 110 Street – I can’t find any information about it though.
• The Bistro at both Sobeys Urban Fresh locations will be offering live music on Fridays and Saturdays from 5-9pm starting in April.
• Marianne and Charles of Loosen Your Belt and Eat Around Edmonton visited the new coffee bar at the downtown Italian Centre (10878 95 Street). I’ll have to check it out soon – hopefully when the sidewalks are a little more dry.
• A profile on Sonny Sung, Corporate Executive Chef of Sorrentino’s in Vue Weekly was informative – I can see how he scaled the ranks to lead one of Edmonton’s largest home grown chains: “I own the job, I don’t do the job. If something goes wrong, there has to be a reason. You figure out what’s wrong and you fix it.”
• Liane Faulder will be on a CBC drive-home radio show every other Friday called “Eating in Edmonton”.
• If you’re interested in becoming a vendor at an Alberta Farmers’ Market, think about attending a Brown Bag Presentation on March 26 at the Business Link.
• Foodie Suz posted about her renovated kitchen this week, and introduced a website called Use Real Butter that is profiling kitchens of food bloggers – cool insight into a variety of beautiful cooking spaces!
• Restaurant Widow, a food blogger out of Columbus, posed an interesting question this week – “Are women really treated different in restaurants? And why?”
• More on Scanwiches this week – Gizmodo went behind-the-scenes of the website to discover how their pristine photos are taken, and via Grub Street, another Scanwich site apparently came first.
• Via Urban Diner, a piece about a new high-tech restaurant in London called Inamo Restaurant. It features interactive touch-screen tables where patrons can order food, play games, and even order a cab!
• It’s the Eater edition of Food Notes! First up, Alberta Avenue must be an up-and-coming area, because they’re getting their very own Taco del Mar (9405 118th Avenue)!

Yet another Taco del Mar…

• A second outpost of Boualouang is in the works just down the street from its first storefront (10569 97 Street) in Chinatown.

 It looks a lot larger than the first restaurant

• The best news of all: Starbucks in the Empire Building (10080 Jasper Ave) has an oven, which will start offering breakfast goodies in May.

“The heat is on May 5, 2009”