The British Chippy

First off, I have to say this: I really shouldn’t have built up such “high expectations” of this place in my head as much as I did.

As I said to The Hubbs on our drive just outside of town, post-passport application & post-lunch, I hate to say that the place was disappointing, but it was. Hugely so, and I was rather sad to even make that admission.

I guess what I was hoping for was a little place like Alberta King of Subs — a small place for locals to eat with functional seating and good, simple, comfort food. In this case, for relocated Brits to go for a good dose of proper fish and chips. Or, in my case, a good steak & kidney pie.. with chips.

*sigh*

No such luck at The British Chippy.

Really!

HIGH hopes dashed away with my first bite of unsalted/unseasoned Brit chips. The texture of the chips and the colour were what I could consider pretty spot on. The taste… not so much. Overall, they boil down to being french fried potatoes that were pretty tasty, once salted and vinegared, or dunked into curry sauce. Speaking of the curry sauce, I have no idea if it’s homemade or it’s just an instant packet that they use. No clue, but it was decent enough for my liking and expectations.

The mushy peas on the other hand… I will say this: they were in fact mushy and they were in fact green. Very, very green… but so tasteless. Not at all seasoned or salted. I realize that their whole philosophy about food is “Combining a passion for organic healthy food with ‘Home-Style’ cooking.” and that “Our mushy peas are freshly made without any colouring or preservatives”, which would essentially mean that it doesn’t come in the traditional form of marrowfat peas in a can, but really, NO salt or pepper? NO butter or seasonings? NO flavour, at all? Even The Hubbs, who’s had mushy peas before in London(!), gave me the most bizzarre face when he tried them. Nothing other than green, mushy, peas.

The Hubbs’ order of haddock, while pretty impressive to see, missed the mark on taste. It was okay, but he wouldn’t drive as far south as we did today in order to have fish & chips, even if we were on the south side of the city to begin with. For him, even the chips weren’t that great. His first choice is still Pelican Pier. Even the fish & chips at Joey’s Only, for him, were better. I think it has something to do with the bottomless quantity of tartar sauce available to him. The British Chippy asks if you want tartar sauce with your fish, while very tasty, you only get a small ramekin-full.

Which leaves us with my steak & kidney pie. I just have one thing to say about it — I’m still on the lookout for a killer steak & kidney pie. I won’t bother going into my recurring disappointments with this dish.

So what did I get from today that was at least good? An Irn Bru, a ramekin of curry sauce with decent enough Brit chips for my likings and a taste of a pretty good tartar sauce. For $30. Ouch.

Dim Sum!

I’ve discovered that I should not be in charge of ordering food when going for Dimsum when there are none of the traditional carts going around.

TPOT in Harvest Hills does the new-fangled (so to speak) paper & pencil ordering system. In some respects, this is great because then you can see exactly what they have on offer. I miss the old-skool cart method. Not many restaurants seem to do that anymore.

A couple of drawbacks with the checksheet method is that it doesn’t tell you how large the portions are for each order. The front side of the checklist you can make a pretty good guess as to them being standard sized portions (ie: 3-4 dumplings per steamer, a saucer full of braised bits, etc), but when it comes to the backside of the sheet where all the “chef specials” are located, there’s no clue. I suppose if I hadn’t been so residually stoned from last night, I would have noticed that the pricetag for those dishes were in the $9+ range and so they were probably standard meal-sized dishes. The other troublesome issue is that when you have a table of eight people and you send the order around for everyone check over, if desired, they can add their fave dishes to the list as well before handing it off to the waitress. This is the way you inadvertantly come out with a rather ridiculous number of dishes, like say… 39 items.

Oups.

Of note: 16 of the 39 dishes were double orders and 7 were singles. So (16×2)+7=39. Not that anyone really needs me to write out the math.

Food… so much food!

The picture above is actually missing a quite a few of the dishes that had yet to arrive and a couple of the dishes were already packed away for take home after realizing the error of our ways.

Here’s what we ordered:

(1) Steamed Chicken Feet
(2) Steamed Spare Ribs in Black Bean Sauce
(2) Steamed Ground Beef Balls
(2) Shark Fin Dumplings
(2) Shrimp Dumpling
(2) Pork Dumplings with Crab Meat
(1) Satay Beef Tripe
(2) Steamed Chiu Chow Dumplings
(2) Steamed Sticky Rice in Lotus Leaf with Assorted Meat
(1) Rice Crepe with Ground Beef
(2) Rice Crepe with BBQ Pork
(2) Rice Crepe with Shrimp & Chive
(1) Pan Fried Turnip Cake
(2) Steamed BBQ Pork Buns
(1) Deep Fried Shrimp Dumplings
(2) Baked Egg Tarts
(2) Fried Ho Fan with Beef
(2) Deep Fried Squid Tentacles
(1) Deep Fried Golden Diced Tofu
(2) Deep Fried Eggplant with Shrimp Paste
(2) Alaskan Crab balls
(1) Rice crepe wrapped Chinese Doughnut with Shrimp Paste
(2) Deep Fried Sweet & Sour Duck Balls

Total Damage: $217.64 *cough*

Sooo… yea. That was our Sunday morning outing for tea.

There were a lot of leftovers to take home and each person/couple ended up with at least one box of their choosing.

As proof of our errors in judgement, the leftovers consisted of:
(2) Boxes of eggplant dishes (FULL SIZED!) were taken home and mixed with the black bean spare ribs
(2) Boxes were made of the extra noodles and mixed with the pan-fried turnip cakes
(2) Boxes were made of custard tarts + steamed BBQ pork buns + Sweet & Sour Duck balls
(1) Box of salt & pepper squiddy tentacles was taken home, as is, and the only thing that didn’t go home with anyone was the leftover chicken feet ^_^;

Mental note: Seriously, don’t do anything that involves decision making when stoned.

Pasta hangover is totally worth it

Last night was a blast.

Up until this point, I don’t think I’ve actually posted pics of what the dinner looks like. I keep forgetting to take pictures of the hotel itself — At this time of year, they have the whole place decked out in Christmas gear and they always have at least two kid-sized gingerbread houses you can go inside and have your picture taken. Maybe I’ll remember next year.

This year, the place was jammed packed. In past years the restaurant was at most half full when we’ve dined, so this was ultimately a huge surprise.

New to this year’s lineup was a salad bar chef station. Similar to the pasta bar, but with salad. I’m told the offerings there were pretty darn good — 3 kinds of greens, choice of dressings, lots of cold stuff like meats & cheeses, cukes, tomatoes, olives and red peppers plus hot’n’fresh cooked mushrooms and bacon to order.

The antipasti selection was fantastic as always, though smaller than I recall in past years but this could be because they split everything up into separate stations — lots of thinly sliced grilled veggies (eggplant is always my fave), smoked salmon, mussels and calamari.

The cold salad bar had four offerings, if I remember correctly — chickpea salad, a weird looking shredded carrot-looking salad, potato salad and artichoke salad.

There was also a cheese board, a deli meat platter (I could call it a charcuterie tray, but it wasn’t THAT fancy), and a huge table of bread choices.

The Pasta buffet Chef station where you chose what ingredients you wanted had its traditional offerings — chicken, sausage, mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, shrimp, scallops, mussels, mixed veg, fresh salmon. The pasta choices were only linguine, penne, rotini this year and the sauces were the traditional red, white, rose, pesto, garlic, oil. The Chef makes it right in front of you fresh, fresh, fresh!

As much as I’d like to say I enjoyed the dessert bar, I hear it wasn’t as fantastic as past years. The spread was still huge, presentation was impressive, but somehow there was something not quite on the mark in a lot of the offerings. From what I can make out of The Hubbs’ picture taking, the choices this year were: Fresh fruit salad, orange tiramisu, berry pie, chocolate brownies, cheesecake, carrot cake squares, white chocolate panna cotta, tahitian vanilla bean creme caramel, chocolate & caramel mousse flutes, dark chocolate banana truffle cake, creme chantilly, strawberry coulis, strawberry mango trifle, exotic fruit mousse martini, chocolate fountain, pecan pie, individual berry mousse, date squares, plum terrine, creme brulee, warm apricot butter croissant pudding with [insert name] sauce.

Is it worth the carbo-loaded hangover the next day? As far as the pictures below, show absolutely!

The Hubbs’ Pasta

My Pasta

One more for the tea time obsession…

Tea Time in Alberta — 54 Great Tea Houses From Grande Prairie to Waterton Lakes by Mary Oakwell

I am having trendy tea issues…

So my tea thang might be getting out of hand (like most of the things I inadvertantly obsess about on a random basis).

Waaaaay back when, I got a free sampling of Adagio Teas for linking them to my LJ blah blah blah.
I’ve only really now cracked them open. They are tasty, I’m going to have to try experimenting with how to drink them, as strange as that sounds: sugar, milk, lemon, honey, plain, etc.

Well, I went back to Adagio’s site and I think I might have to go and blow a small wad just cuz. (HAH! I said blow+wad… shhh!!):

So awesome.
So very cool.
So very showy & awe inspiring.

The Hubbs and I were talking about going to Victoria for the weekend after Thanksgiving, but we’ve decided instead to stay home. Again. If we had gone, we were going to go and fully experience The Empress Hotel’s Afternoon Tea.

The alternative to that was try afternoon tea at Murchie’s.

Ahhh yes.

I am going to become a tea whore.

Interesting food for thought…

I am eating carbs again. Like all sorts of starched up foods.

Apparently the Prevacid is doing good things for me. So yeah. Weird. o_O

Bread, pasta, rice, potatoes… I still can’t gorge by any stretch of the imagination (not that I ever did), but it’s nice to actually be able to eat something carby and not be terrified of the soon-to-be-screaming burning action 15 minutes later.

I do admit that my carbo-consumption has significantly dropped though. No more pasta nights at the Rimrock for this girly-girl… but at least I can eat 1/2 a croissant ^_^

Speaking of which, the Eiffel Tower does not make good croissants.
The City Bakery, thusfar, still rocks hardcore.

OMG LOL!!!

Okay, so I’m on some random mission.

I’m in search of a killer brunch menu in this city.

Thusfar I’ve yet to find anything that grabs my attention other than The Bison Mountain Bistro‘s in Banff.

Hel-lo.. eggs benny??

Anyhow, I’m amused.

There’s a place downtown called 1410 World Bier Haus that offers a decent looking weekend brunch menu.

Check out the last menu item, I thought I was going to cough up a lung laughing so hard:
Atkins Breakfast $7.99
Four eggs, two sausages and six pieces of bacon.

4 Year Anniversary Dindin

We went to The Bison Mountain Bistro.
This is what we ate.

Yuck.

I am fat and ugly… and it’s not technically fat, either.

I look like a freaking blow fish from the steroids.

Blech.

I just wanna get out of my own skin.

BTW — Dinner was tasty:
The butter chicken, I admit, I would not order again… way bland.
The fish curry was uber-tasty and I’d totally order it again, but there’s not a lot of fish
The lamb biryani was totally nummers
And the veggie korma is somewhat under debate still, it had a suprisingly wicked bite that came out and bit your ass after the fact.

Splurging.. having take-out tonight.

We got this flyer stuck to our door one day last week-ish that was advertising an Indian place in the NE called Taste of India.

The original thought was that because it’s in the NE, I could justifiably just call’em up as I leave work, then pick it up on my way home and we’d be all good. Shyeah, I no longer work :P

Anyhow, we’ve never tried this place so we’ve ordered take-out:

1 butter chicken @ $10.50 — tender boneless chicken marinated in our special sauce made in tandoor and cooked with butter & tomato sauce.
1 lamb biryani @ $10.99 — special rice cooked with lamb & veggies
1 veggie korma @ $8.50 — fresh veggies cooked in butter, garlic, ginger & cream
1 fish curry @ $12.95 — pieces of fish cooked in a yoghurt based curry sauce.

There’s also a $7-8 delivery charge because we’re outside the 5km free delivery zone. (I called the first time and was told by a woman $8, and when I called the second time to actually order and confirm the eight bucks, the guy at the other end said $7. He said he leaves it up to the driver, sometimes $7 sometimes $7.50 sometimes $8. I told him that as long as the maximum I was charged was $8 I didn’t much care either way.)

We rarely order for delivery, but the Hubbs has to work from home again tonight and there’s no way I’m gonna drive out to find this place. So we shall see how their prices + quality compare to our close-to-home Masala Express.