Food Notes for June 11, 2012

Thanks to everyone who braved the overcast conditions on Saturday and came out to What the Truck?! We were thankful that the rain held out for a solid three hours. If you didn’t make it out, consider coming to Truck Stop this Wednesday at McIntyre Park. On to this week’s food notes:

• Help Cally’s Teas (10151 Whyte Avenue) celebrate their grand reopening on June 16 from 10am-6pm. There will be tea samples, specials and treats.
• Press’d is holding a Customer Appreciation Day on June 16 from 11am-3pm at its Courtyard location (11214 Jasper Ave). All sandwiches are just $1! Also announced last week – Press’d is expanding with a location at 34 Avenue and Gateway Boulevard and another in Sherwood Park.
• Amber’s Brewery is looking for a new home – they will need to relocate as of July 1, 2012, because their rent in their current location will be increasing threefold.
• Good luck to Chris Delaney (of the forthcoming food truck Big City Sandwich), in being shortlisted to compete in Ace Bakery’s Canada-wide sandwich competition with his tequila lime chicken sandwich.
• Transcend’s Josh Hockin is in Vienna this week to compete in the World Barista Championships. Bring home the gold, Josh!
• There was a great piece in the Journal about Chef Nate Box – can you imagine if every neighbourhood in the city had their version of Elm Cafe?
• Make sure you check out Liane’s story about some of the up-and-coming eateries on Alberta Avenue.
• You still have some time to contribute your ideas to the City of Edmonton’s Food and Agriculture policy by filling out their online survey. The deadline is June 23, 2012.
• If St. Albert-based designer’s cutting boards getting picked up by Williams Sonoma isn’t a great local success, I don’t know what is.
• It looks like Toronto favourite Smoke’s Poutinerie will be setting up shop in downtown Edmonton some time soon!
• I still haven’t made it out to a Calgary food trucks event yet, but until then, I love being able to read about them! Eat Your City wrote about the city’s recent Eat Real YYC event.
• In case you missed it: Tourism Richmond announced the winner of their food blogger competition last week. Congratulations to Lindsay Anderson!
• In Montreal? Why not try Daniel Boulud’s new Maison Boulud? It’ll be interesting to see if DB will succeed in this market, given the failures in Vancouver.
• I know I’m a little behind, because I haven’t walked that way down Jasper in a while, but I noticed that De Dutch put up their signage.

De Dutch

• On Wednesday, the first ever outdoor Pecha Kucha in Edmonton was held at the Hawrelak Amphitheatre. It was the perfect opportunity to marry food trucks with the event, and I think it was a great success! It looked like others enjoyed the chance to have dinner outdoors as well.

The Act serves up a hungry crowd (Molly’s Eats was there too)

My pulled pork sandwich from The Act

• A great bonus from Pecha Kucha was a coupon good for a free pizza at any Famoso location in the city. On the tail end of some errands on Friday, we decided to have dinner at the South Edmonton Common branch. It was our first time there (we usually stick to the Oliver location), and I have to say, it wasn’t that impressive. The room seemed poorly laid out, and though we only had to wait about twenty minutes, had we known there were bar seats available, we would have snagged them. Their wine glass lampshades were in need of an obvious dusting as well. In the end, the pizza was okay, although it did have a little too much burnt residue on the crust for my liking. I guess we’ll be sticking with our neighbourhood location in the future.

Margherita

Sweet BBQ chicken