Food Notes for September 30, 2013

Thanks to those who voted this blog as “Best Food Blog” on Vue Weekly’s Best of 2013! Crazy to think Only Here for the Food is nearly seven years old – thanks for reading! Mack and I were also thrilled that What the Truck?! was voted the “Best Pop-Up Event” – with some help, we’ll do our best to keep that streak alive! On to this week’s food notes:

• Dishcrawl’s first ever Battledish is this Saturday, October 5, 2013. I’m looking forward to tasting six dishes being put forward by Downtown area chefs for their chance to win diners’ votes. Tickets are going fast, but here’s a tip – enter the code “yegbattle” for free admission!
• The Sturgeon Valley Food and Wine Festival is taking place October 5, 2013 at The Enjoy Centre. I attended the inaugural event last year, and found it to be a nice alternative to the larger Rocky Mountain Wine & Food Festival.
• Creole Envie is hosting a Live Local dinner on October 20, 2013. The menu looks great! Tickets are $60 each.
• Nomiya has opened a second location in southwest Edmonton, at 11160 Ellerslie Road.
• Phil has a pretty exhaustive review of the dishes at Tavern 1903.
• Mack wrote about the first meeting of the Edmonton Food Council, which took place last week.
• If you have a bit of time, consider completing this online survey which will be used to investigate “food deserts” in Edmonton.
• Barilla Pasta is backtracking this week after their Chairman made comments about his unwillingness to cast a gay family in their advertisements, instead, favouring what he views as a “classic family.” Let these Twitter responses speak for themselves.
• This is a little late, but I loved this series of NYT videos featuring five of their food reviewers, as they speak out on everything from trade secrets to overused adjectives.
• Mack wasn’t the champion this time at Cookie Love’s Cookie Eating Classic, held at the 124 Street Market on Thursday, but he had fun squaring off against other media personalities! Congratulations to CISN’s Chris Sheetz for taking home the title, by eating 9 cookies in 4 minutes.

Mack was disappointed in his effort (for the record – 3.5 cookies in 2 minutes)

• I had a great time at the Edmonton kick off of Alberta Culture Days on 104 Street on Friday. The weather held out for the al fresco event, though I think many appreciated the hot, buttered popcorn the Downtown Edmonton Community League was distributing!

Larissa and I handed out free popcorn

• Mack and I met up with some friends at Café Amore for dinner on Saturday. The room was full as usual, but service didn’t fall by the wayside – I love the personal touch of being greeted at the door and genuinely thanked on the way out. Oh, and the food’s great too.

Truffle chicken pasta

Pasta pescatore