• Many of my food blogging cohorts have already sounded the Fork Fest horn, but I figured I’d echo their sentiment: $20 or $35 will get you a great pre-fixe meal at one of the city’s fabulous independent eateries under the umbrella of Original Fare. Check out the menu selections here.
• I had the opportunity to interview Miles Quon of The Lingnan a few weeks ago before Family Restaurant started to air – my article was published in Vue on Thursday. I watched the second episode, which contained nary a coherent storyline. I am hoping the rest of the season doesn’t develop like this.
• Liane Faulder published a great article this past week – the start of many “that will see local chefs lead Bistro through their favourite food haunts.” Kevin Ostapek, of Flavours Bistro was up first. Even better, Liane and Kevin travelled with a photographer, which meant there was a small online gallery associated with their trek – I always love seeing more visual representations.
• The Journal also featured Eric Ng’s veggie donair in a piece about “fake food” on Saturday. Great to see Eric’s efforts recognized in mainstream media – I attended the world premiere of his creation back in November.
• Ted Tsenekos, the owner of It’s All Greek to Me on Rice Howard Way, passed away last Sunday. My condolences to his family.
• I passed by Sabzy Cafe (10416 82nd Ave) on Friday, personally noting for the first time that it was open, and lo and behold, a review came out in the Journal on Saturday. The family-run Persian restaurant focuses on fresh, healthy fare (including quinoa, the current “it” food of the moment), and got a thumbs up from the reviewer.
• Culina’s temporary website is finally up, complete with links to their menus! I love the font and the coloured text on black, and the fact that the phrase “Culina Family of Restaurants” disguises the corporate nature of the establishments to some degree.
• Poul Mark of Transcend Coffee wrote an intriguing blog post last week, musing about the “anti-wine model” that must be applied to premium coffee stores – instead of making a high-end product more accessible to the average consumer, premium coffee must convince customers to pay more for a fairly common (and cheaply obtained) product.
• On a related note (from Mack), the St. Albert Gazette wrote about both Transcend and St. City Roasters, two locally-based coffee roasters. It’s a good introductory article that discusses some of the techniques they employ, but essentially, the conclusion is that home baristas will never be able to duplicate a fine espresso at home (at least not without intense training and months of practice).
• More on coffee: via the Starbucks Gossip Blog, an article in Advertising Age that published the results of an online survey that says 60% of Americans have decreased their fancy coffee consumption in the last six months.
• Diane Twittered her experience at a cooking/demonstration class called Culinary Date Night at Servus Credit Union Place in St. Albert this weekend – it’s $115 per couple, but might be an interesting alternative for a special occasion dinner.
• I’ve been poking around Dollarama every now and then to see what they have in their food aisle (being the cheapskate I am), and it always surprises me with some of the “brand name” goods they offer. This last trip saw Uncle Ben’s rice, Wheat Thins (organic, nonetheless), and Honeycomb cereal. The following, however, I was skeptical about:

Poutine sauce in a can is frightening enough, so “poutine” sauce? Makes you wonder…

• I registered for the upcoming Food: Today, Tomorrow, Together Conference running January 29-30 this past week. I hope to get some blogging in during the conference, so watch for posts at the end of the month! If you can’t make it to the entire event, there is a public keynote by Carol Off, author of Bitter Chocolate, on Friday evening.
• From Vue Weekly: Culina Highlands is now open for lunch, Tuesday to Saturday, 11am-2pm. I hope their new website debuts soon!
• From City Palate: there’s a new bakery in town called Prairie Mill Bread Co. (14253 23 Avenue, 780-436-0920). They recently opened their first location in Edmonton after finding success in Calgary.
• Liane was back this week from a brief hiatus, and covered Edmonton’s burgeoning scene of meal assembly studios. I had no idea there were nine in the city.
• Food Network Canada’s third season of Family Restaurant, this time featuring the Quons of Lingnan and Chicken for Lunch fame, began on January 8. The 10-episode run got off to a good start, with the frenetic energy of the family on display.
• Mack tipped me off to some interesting discussion on Connect2Edmonton about the upcoming Downtown Dining Week, an annual event that encourages patrons to dine in the core by offering set-meals at a “discounted” rate. I have to agree with IanO – Edmonton’s independents do themselves a disservice by offering two competing dining weeks (something I’ve said in the past) – why not combine Downtown Dining Week and Original Fare’s Fork Fest?
• I saw commercials advertising Boston Pizza‘s new “10 for $10” feature on television this week (dine-in only from Sunday to Thursday, until February 8). I wonder which will be the next non-fast food chain to push value-for-dollar meals?
• Speaking of advertising, I love the current Tim Hortons campaign, which pushes their coffee into the spotlight. Like Starbucks should be doing (instead of say, diverging to tea), the spots focus on the 20 minute freshness of each pot – simple, but effective.

…starting the year with dated food notes, to make them easier to distinguish when archived.

• Sabor Divino (109, 10220 103 Street), the new Portuguese restaurant on the Boardwalk is now open.
• According to the link Mack sent me, The Cupcake Bakeshoppe & Cafe (17298 Stony Plain Road) will be “changing [their] name and appearance.” Keep an eye out on  their website for details.
• Pita the Great (3, 10141 34 Avenue) has now become Alsalam Bakery & Restaurant.
• Something I totally missed from about a month ago – Good Earth Produce closed their two locations in early December. I was wondering what happened after I passed it a few weeks back and saw the windows at their downtown location papered up.
• Julie van Rosendaal’s last “day in her kitchen” post came a few days ago, but it seems she will continue, to the delight of her readers (and to her husband’s dismay, heh).
• Jennifer Causey, the woman behind simply breakfast, a beautiful “art of breakfast” photo blog, has decided to end her blog. She will continue to post here, expanding beyond her morning meal.
• An interesting read from the NYT about the five stages in which an ingredient passes through to become mainstream.
• I couldn’t find a solid 2009 trends article that I liked, but this one from Epicurious is a quick read, and echoes most of the “common sense” projections one would guess.
• I tried the new London Fog TAZO Tea Latte (a grande for $4.15) this weekend – it tasted like a creamier, sweeter version of a tea latte I had at Vancouver’s Blenz, with an aftertaste I can never seem to shake when it comes to Earl Grey tea.

“Tea Time” at Starbucks

• Mack and I met Tom at Bourbon Street for lunch last week, and ended up at Moxie’s. I haven’t been to the chain in a while, so most of the menu seemed new to me. I ordered the Tandoori Chicken Pizza ($13.99) – the crust was a tad too hard and the chicken a touch dry, but I liked the mildly spicy curry sauce used. The boys ordered the Big Life Fish & Chips ($12.99), and both liked it. My biggest disappointment was with the service that afternoon – our server completely disappeared after taking our order. Our food finally arrived after an over thirty minute wait; I expected at least a cursory “thanks for being patient” check-in from the waiter. I guess that was too much to ask for.

Tandoori Chicken Pizza

Big Life Fish & Chips

• My latest Vue Weekly article, a profile on the man behind Origin India, Arvind Sawhney, was published last week. It’s also important to know that the restaurant offers wine pairings with their food. I reviewed the restaurant (albeit the buffet and not the recommended a la carte) back in October.
• Courtney of Take it and Like it reviewed her recent experience at the fairly new Kai Asian Grill – it seems to be on par with other casual upscale chains in the city.
• From Mack: Wildflower Grill made it onto Where Magazine’s annual tally of the 10 best new restaurants in Canada. See the entire list here.
• The “oldest wine festival in Calgary” is coming to Edmonton – Winefest, on February 28 at the Shaw Conference Centre.
• Walter Schwabe, one of Mack’s colleagues, launched the fusedlogic Food Bank Challenge last week. The goal is to have one million pictures of one million Food Bank donations by next December.
• Information about the Food Security Conference on January 29-31, organized by the Edmonton Food Security Network, was released this week – the schedule of sessions looks great!
• On a related note, the theme of International Week 2009 is food: “Hungry for change: Transcending Feast, Famine and Frenzy”. It should be a good event, as usual.
• According to Canwest, the latest incarnation of Family Restaurant, a reality-show that focuses on a family-run establishment, will debut on January 8. As I mentioned a few months back, the family behind The Lingnan and Chicken for Lunch will be showcased.
• On the topic of Food Network, I have to say that the cheesy Food Network Holiday Special, that saw a number of Canada’s celebrity chefs “get together” to cook got to me. It was staged, but still cool to see them interact. Also, I may finally be jumping on the Top Chef bandwagon. Foodie Suz wrote about her love for the show earlier this week; I’ve caught a few episodes of the season here and there (my interest being more on the side of the NY location than the competition itself), but the individual personalities involved, and the cooking challenges have been quite enthralling.
• Starbucks will be debuting a new line of tea lattes in January. What happened to the coffee focus?
• For all the accolades given for positive accomplishments, how about a negative one: Eater just rounded up its search for the worst food porn on the internet. Take a look and judge for yourself.
• If you’ve ever called someone “beefy”, here’s the perfect gift for them – meat-scented spray from Burger King.
• I bought a cute little jar of Chicken Curry spice mixture from a coworker last week, with all proceeds going to an orphanage near Mumbai. Using the mixture, I of course decided to deviate from the recipe attached and use rotisserie chicken (instead of uncooked meat) to cut down on the cooking time, and added a can of diced tomatoes. As a result, the curry flavour was weaker than it was probably supposed to be, and the chicken was unfortunately dry. Guess I need to be reminded to follow instructions closely.

Mrs. Susannah John’s Chicken Curry mixture 

• I raided my emergency food drawer at work, on a particularly hungry afternoon. This ended up in my first encounter with microwavable Kraft Dinner in a cup. Thankfully, the sauce thickened up a bit after the following photo was taken, but I’m not sure I will buy it again – the styrofoam-like cup didn’t seem to be able to stand the heat of the microwave.

Microwavable Kraft Dinner

• The franchised Sbarro replaced the family-run Italian fast food  outlet (whose name escapes me) in Edmonton City Centre a few months ago. I tried their lasagna ($4.79), but it just wasn’t the same (or as inexpensive) as what I had been used to.

Lasagna from Sbarro

• I’m always happy when restaurant websites actually have content on them. So much so that it’s definitely something to note – welcome, Silk Hat, to the blogosphere!
• The Journal reviewed the random Rice Bowl Express (8926 149 Street) on the weekend.
• There was recent chatter on Chowhound about the whether or not the west end Julio’s Barrios has closed. Based on their website, and the listed locations, it looks like it is.
• Via Loosen Your Belt and Eat Around Edmonton, I learned that the space that was formerly Cafe Select on the southside will become a second Original Joe’s outpost.
• On the topic of blogs, I’ve noticed that the last few local food blogs that have come up are authored by duos. I wonder if this is a trend on the writing side of things – to offer multiple perspectives while splitting a time-consuming task.
• Sobeys is pushing consumers to think about having lobster in place of turkey at Christmas this year. I have to say, seafood just doesn’t convey the holidays to me as much as poultry.
• I’m pretty hard on most chain restaurants (particularly those selling the “upscale casual” idea), but some do escape my wrath. Milestones (1708 99 Street), for example, does a decent brunch, which I have written about in the past. Mack and I took his Grandma there prior to a movie this weekend. The menu has changed slightly since I had been there before, but the Prime Rib Hash ($12.95) looked good to me: slow roasted and thinly sliced prime rib tossed with crispy potatoes, bell peppers, sweet onion, roasted corn in our specialty hash seasoning, then topped with two poached eggs, real hollandaise, roma tomatoes and grilled herb toast. While it was all right, I probably should have gone with the no-fail Strawberry French Toast, which Mack’s Grandma ordered, as the kitchen was light on the prime rib, and the sauce flavouring the tomatoes was much too sweet.

Prime Rib Hash – so much food!

Strawberry French Toast

Grilled Shrimp California Benedict

• Mack and I also stopped by the Vue Weekly Christmas party on Saturday, where we met Hanne and Carlo from Supper In Stereo (Hanne is also a fellow writer in the Dish section). It’s always lovely to finally meet people you’ve been reading online for some time.

The spread (half eaten) at Vue’s shindig

• Mark your calendars: Fork Fest (Original Fare‘s version of “dine out week”) is scheduled for January 19-22 and 26-29.
• The Journal reported that Le Table de Renoir is temporarily closed because the owner is going through a divorce. It should be back up and running in January.
• Also in the Journal, a positive review for Bistecca, the new Sorrentino-run steakhouse.
• The 12-year old “food critic” from New York I mentioned two weeks ago in my Food Notes will be even more famous – Paramount Pictures has acquired the rights to his story to be adapted into a movie or a television show.
• How’s this for the intersection of food and politics: December 3 was supposed to be declared “Yelp Day” in San Francisco, in honor of the popular website, but once the Mayor’s office got wind that negative reviews of businesses that supported Proposition 8 had been taken down, the proclamation was pulled.
• I was on the look out for this year’s incarnation of Starbucks’ “It’s Red Again” campaign, but it turns out the coffee company has decided to go the charitable route this year, partnering with the now well-known (RED) campaign: “For every purchase of a (STARBUCKS)RED EXCLUSIVE beverage – Peppermint Mocha Twist, Gingersnap Latte and Espresso Truffle – at participating stores in the U.S. and Canada, Starbucks will contribute five cents to the Global Fund to invest in AIDS programs in Africa.”

The (Starbucks)RED sleeve

• May and I had a bite to eat at Ga Ya, prior to a show at the Timms Centre last week. I had been meaning to return at some point to try something other than the Bee Bim Bob (which I wrote about before), and the Chicken Teriyaki ($10.95) hit the spot. The meat was nicely flavoured with a house marinade sauce, and there was a fairly generous amount included.

Chicken Teriyaki

• Needing a fast dinner option in South Common before checking out the new Future Shop, Mack and I headed to Ikea, past all of the tempting housewares and seasonal items and up to the cafeteria. I’ve written about my love for their cheap food before, but I thought it was worth noting that their quiche is pretty darn good as well. Served with a bowl of soup (or salad), it’s a meal that won’t break the bank at $4.99.

Vegetable Quiche with Mushroom Soup (orange juice extra)