Calgary for Brunch

The week after I returned from Europe, my boyfriend came to visit. It was his first time in Calgary, and when asked what he wanted to do/see, he simply replied, "Eat steak." While we unfortunately didn't end up checking out any of the steak recommendations from my fellow Chowhounders, I had the foresight to ask about a few good brunch places as well.


The day after he came in, we headed out to Nellie's. Now this is one of those places that Chowhounders generally tell you to avoid, but with seven locations, you must admit that it has really established itself in the city.

He got a Western omelette while I ordered the Sunday Lite Brunch, hoping that there'd be more banana bread than fruit and yogurt.

Unfortunately, I was wrong. The banana bread was good; thick slices that were still a little warm with a yummy crust. I finished most of the fruit, but had only a couple spoons of yogurt. As someone who likes plain yogurt, it was much too sweet for me.

Galaxie Diner was one of the recommendations in a Chowhound thread, so we made it to one of its sister restaurants, the Belmont Diner in Marda Loop. It was a little pricey, despite its promise of "bottomless" coffee and hashbrowns, and "endless" toast (who needs that many carbs anyway?) The table next to us got one of their specialty dishes, which looked good, but we just opted for basic breakfasts (eggs, meat, toast, hashbrowns) which were not really anything to write home about, and their hashbrowns were a little salty.

Finally, the morning before he boarded his plane home to Winnipeg, I took him to Diner Deluxe.

Despite the fact that it was a Thursday, we still had a bit of a wait before we got our table, an attestation to how popular/good the place is (and how slack Calgarians' jobs are?)

I got a vegetable omelette (although they call it something much more long-winded), while he got the potato pancake that you admired at the beginning of the post. (Now just in case you thought he was just trying to get in touch with his Jewish side, he ordered *pork* sausages. Tsk!)


The breakfast was very filling, though I'd secretly wished he hadn't ordered the potato pancake because I was totally eyeing it. There were lots more interesting items on the Diner Deluxe menu, and I would love to go back.

Compared to our regular brunch spots in Montreal (Burgers & Benedicts, Oxford Café, Moe's, Eggspectations, and Astra Deli... once) the places in Calgary were generally more expensive and less accessible on foot. However, it's nice to know that there are places we can go should we decide to call Calgary home (and a lot of places we haven't tried!)

Nellie's in Kensington
1414 Kensington Rd NW
Calgary AB T2N 3P9
(403) 270-0173


Belmont Diner
2008 33 Ave SW
Calgary AB T2T 1Z4
403) 242-6782


Diner Deluxe
804 Edmonton Tr NE
Calgary AB T2E 3J6
(403) 276-5499

Read More...

Eisbein mit Sauerkraut!

I did eat local food while I was on the cruise. In Helsinki, I went on the "Finnish Food and Highlights" excursion and was treated to bites of smoked perch, smoked "roj" (A Finnish fish that I can't spell), pickled herring, gravlax made with tar-flavoured syrup, reindeer sausage, spicy rhubarb jam, smoky pear jam, smoked cheese, and gingerbread cookies in a quaint little restaurant called Savu on an island called Tervasaari. It was neat, and there were a lot of interesting flavours in each of the little samples, but since it was just a little bite of everything it was hardly anything to write home about.


We also got free lunches during our two-day St. Petersburg tour. They both started with a cute little salad, rye bread, and soup (though we got borscht on only one of the days) and ended with a dessert with one rarely-seen ingredient (gelatin and animal cracker, respectively). There was also always a glass of champagne and a shot of vodka on the table, but I never tucked into the vodka for fear of paying extra and also looking like an alcoholic around my family and my mom's friends (though a South African lady I was sitting with poured a bit of vodka into her vanilla ice cream and said it was good - what a smart woman.)

And of course, the live entertainment:


Despite the accordions and this guy's lovely baritone, however, my most memorable meal was when we were left to our own devices in Rostock, Germany.

Rostock is a little tourist town attached to the port of Warnemünde, where they built a new cruise terminal not too long ago. Ships from all over Europe sail there so that people can get off and take a three-hour train ride to Berlin. However, if you're cheap like me (and the rest of my family) and don't want to spend $300+ and three hours, then you can walk around Warnemünde-Rostock and realize that you're in for a treat. It seems like a lot of Germans already make their getaway there, and it's just waiting for the rest of the world to discover it.

So anyway, among Chinese people, the most famous German food is not bratwurst, currywurst (or any -wurst for that matter), nor is it beer. It is Eisbein, or pickled pig's knuckles. Miraculously, one of the deals that came with our Rostocker card (Basically an all-day pass for the train into town from Warnemünde, plus random tourist deals) was a discount at a restaurant that specialized in this dish. So, after trying to decipher poorly labelled and not-to-scale maps, we finally found Gaststätte Stralsunder.

Jens Girulat is the fourth generation owner of this joint and he is one of the sweetest men I've ever met. (PLUS he owns an Eisbeinmobile!) Despite some language barriers, we managed to hook everybody up with a "lady's" or "man's" portion of Eisbein plus whatever side dishes it would come with, and a pitcher of Rostocker Bock Dunkel (the Pilsener was too pansy, see)

After a bit of a wait (this is a family-operated restaurant, after all), the feasting began!

Jens put on a song to set the mood, and he also brought roasted potatoes and mashed peas for us to have with our eisbein. The eisbein was SO good. I didn't eat the skin, because it seemed all blubbery, but the meat was so moist, and it wasn't salty at all for something that's supposedly pickled.

Our meal ended with a spirit.

The "adults" at the table sipped at it, while my friend Alvin and I downed them like the shots that they were.

"What is this?" One of the adults asked Jens.
"Jagermeister," he replied.

It was almost time for us to go, when Jens guiltily admitted that he forgot to bring us the soup that was supposed to come with our meal, so we would have ice cream instead. The wait was so long that we thought that he must have run to the store and got it.

After the ice cream, we were all stuffed, so we paid for our meals (only €7.77 with the Rostock Welcome card, plus however much the beer cost) and Jens gave us free buttons, then played the harmonica as we left.

It was such a wonderful, filling meal, with a very sweet host. Screw Berlin, I would go back to Rostock just for it!

Ravintola Savu
Tervasaarenkaanas 3
00170 Helsinki
FINLAND
Tel: +358 9 7425 5574
Gaststätte Stralsunder
Wismarche Straße 22
18057 Rostock
GERMANY
Tel: 0381 4934900

Read More...

Cruisin'

Ahhh, cruises. It's like someone decided that the world just wasn't gluttonous enough and that we needed another temptation to push us over the edge. Seriously, you have to pay for every other service: Internet, spa, gratuities for housekeeping and wait staff, even drinks! But the food is plenty and free (except for popcorn, which is $1.50 a bag)


You have to give at least some credit to Carnival. I think they have put in some effort to make it easier to make healthier choices, and they made sure that the gym, the jogging track, and the pools are free too ;)

So what have they done? As you can see in the picture above, there were always a lot of fresh fruits available at the buffets, and fresh vegetables at the salad bar. There's also the "Spa Carnival" menu, where "items are lower in calories, sodium, cholesterol and fat. Salads are prepared with diet dressing. Desserts are prepared with Sweet'N Low or NutraSweet instead of sugar." Also, when they started rolling it out not too long ago, they emphasized that the menu was trans-fat free. I ordered off of the Spa Carnival menu once, but that was only because nothing on the menu sounded very appealing that day. I got a grilled chicken breast with mashed sweet potatoes and chickpeas (and you all know how I feel about the latter).

I've always hated these "special" menus though. During my food service rotation last semester, I was helping the hospital roll out Sodexo's Your Health Your Way program in the cafeteria and was charged with figuring out which wrap recipes met the guidelines, and if not, how to change them so that they would. It was a lot more fooling around with numbers and portion sizes than actual healthy eating. I'm sure it's the same with the Spa Carnival menu, and even then, looking at some of the items, it seemed that the criteria was a little slack. I've emailed Carnival about sending me what their criteria is (more on that later), so hopefully I'll hear from them.

What's worse, I think, is their salads with diet dressing and desserts with artificial sweeteners. I always cringed at the "Diet Orange Cake" or "Diet Banana Cake" that was on their menu. Just like diet pops, these are total cop-outs and don't teach anyone about healthy eating, and how healthy eating can be delicious. There is nothing wrong with asking for oil and vinegar on the side and just drizzling a little bit on yourself. Not only does this save on calories, but it also saves on the sodium and preservatives in a lot of commercial dressings. I've also always thought that artificial sweeteners are pretty gross tasting anyway; I think what would be more attractive would be creative fruit desserts, like a fruit, yogurt and granola parfait. Of course, there's nothing wrong with just ending a meal with a nice cup of coffee or tea.

Although the Spa Carnival menu is a first step (that does need changes), there are further changes that need to be made, especially in the fibre and sodium departments. I think I was only offered whole wheat rolls once with dinner, when they can easily be made an option every day. They had so many opportunities to up the fibre in everyone's diet—they could have had whole grain breads, bran muffins, and high-fibre cereals at breakfast, especially since muesli is so popular in Europe. In addition, they could have definitely had whole grain pastas and brown rice in their hot dishes.

A lot of the dishes were a little too salty as well. I think they'd be doing everyone a service by lowering the salt in their recipes, and if people wanted to, they can add their own salt at the table.

There is obviously a lot a cruise line can do to get people to eat healthier, especially since they essentially have a monopoly on those people's diets for that handful of days. I do understand you need to strike a balance between promoting health, providing tasty food, and keeping in mind that people are on vacation. So, with that in mind, unfortunately a lot of it is still left up to the guest. It's up to them to decide whether they're going to be strict with their eating, or whether they're going to let go a little. It's up to them to apply the same "healthy eating" rules they would going out anywhere—watch out for portion sizes, share if you have to, make special requests (half orders, dressing on the side), and *bonus!* extra sides of vegetables ARE free here.

So, how did I do? I must admit I did let myself go a little and order an appetizer, main course and dessert at almost every dinner, but I did load up on salad during the lunch buffet (sunflower seeds sprinkled on top of a salad are so yummy!), made frequent visits to the gym, and did a few walking tours.

I didn't gain a pound.

Read More...

Jess's London

Unfortunately, the kinds of tours my mom likes to join whenever we're on holidays doesn't really have the foodie in mind. So during our week-long land tour, while we went to such foodie hotspots as Paris and London, we were whisked to their Chinatown for almost every meal. While on the cruise, we figured why spend money on food when we could get it on the ship for free?

(Soup from one of our dinners in Paris)

We did get a "free day" in London though, so I got to spend time with my friend Jess, who spent most of the summer being a "Lady of Leisure" hanging out in her boyfriend T's flat. Jess was a great tour guide, making sure I got an opportunity to see a bunch of sights (mostly on the South Bank, which was a welcome change) while satisfying my foodie urges.

Our first stop was Ladurée for (what else?) macarons.

We each chose three flavours—I got caramel with salted butter (the best one; the caramel was not sickly sweet and sticky and the salt was a nice touch), raspberry, and red fruits (lots of filling, and since macarons are sold by weight, I ended up paying more than Jess). Although it was a little early for a sugar high, we munched on them as we walked, but I did save the raspberry for later and it did get a little crushed in my purse.


Why aren't macarons on the Omnivore's Hundred anyway?

Afterward, we strolled down by Covent Garden Market to find Maple Leaf, "London's Famous Canadian Pub". Jess regaled me with stories about how crazy the pub was for Canada Day, the big party held by the Canadian embassy at Trafalgar Square, "The centre of the Canadian expat population in London", and waiting for hours to get a donut from the Tim Horton's booth.



It was a little too early (some time between 10 and 11) to stop in for a pint and some poutine, and Jess is not much of a drinker anyway.

After strolling along the South Bank and taking in sights for most of the afternoon, we made it to one of Jess' favourite places just in time for lunch.



Seriously. How could Borough Market not be one of a person's favourite places in London? It was a bustling Saturday afternoon, and there was so much to see—fresh baked bread, ostrich burgers, organic produce, artisan wines and olive oils, duck confit in a can, exotic meats, the list goes on and on. It was tough to decide what I wanted to get for lunch.



Although a zebra steak or a kangaroo sandwich could've been yummy, I decided to go the safer route (and satisfy my tzatziki cravings) by having some free-range lamb souvlaki in a pita.



After Borough Market, we hung out a bit in T's flat, which is right in the neighbourhood. We would've stayed there until dinner, but we ended up going out once so I could get some new headphones for my iPod... the Apple Store (which I'm sure was like any Apple Store) was so busy and people were scattered at all the different stations, trying out various Apple products. We headed back to T's flat to chill out some more, and it wasn't long before it was time to head out for dinner and then finish the night off on the London Eye.



With a name like Master's Super Fish, it might be difficult for some to take the restaurant seriously, but reviews are always positive and some even say they may make the best fish and chips in London. The portions looked huge, and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to finish one.

"Would you like to share?" I asked Jess.
"No, I can finish one by myself," she replied.

Fine then. We got two orders of cod and chips (the cheapest one, you can get more expensive fish, like haddock or halibut) and an order of mushy peas, which Jess can never get because T doesn't like them.

Before we got our food, we were given a plate of free prawns as appetizers.


Prawn!


Annihilated.

The portion sizes WERE huge. I did have a few fries/chips, and had to force myself to finish the cod. But it was sooo good. The batter on the fish was light, and the fish inside was nice and moist, not dry and rubbery.



The mushy peas, however, were more soupy than mushy. I also found them a little bland. We ultimately didn't finish them.



We took our big bellies and digested while walking to the London Eye, which was truly the highlight of the day. Even though you're up there for half an hour, it definitely feels a lot less than that. We were lucky to get a fairly late "flight" time, so we didn't really stand in line at all, and got in half an hour before we were scheduled to get on anyway.




It was a spectacular day and I'm glad Jess shared her London with me. We managed to spend over 12 hours together without a picture of the two of us together (can you believe that?) but obviously the memories are still there. I said it then, and I'll say it again: Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you.




Ladurée
71-72 Burlington Arcade
London W1J 0QX
+44 (0) 20 7491 9155


Borough Market
8 Southwark Street
London SE1 1TL
+44 (0) 20 7407 1002

Master's Super Fish
191 Waterloo Road
London SE1 8UX
+44 (0) 20 7928 6924

Read More...