Posts Tagged ‘Food’
From colourful cupcakes to ceremonial centerpieces, Cake Break turns flour and eggs into sculpted art. I don’t know if I would eat skin or eyeballs, but you have to appreciate this talent.
My wife and I went to Asia Garden for the first time this afternoon and were not disappointed. The combination of quality of food plus the friendliness and the price has made Asia Garden our favourite restaurant.
Asia Garden, primarily termed as a buffet, includes a “Mongolian Grill”, a lot like Menggu Grill previously. I asked our friendly server Vivian to assist me with the grill as this was our first visit to their establishment. She took a stainless steel bowl and added fresh, cooled, uncooked ingredients to my specifications. The ingredients ranged from rice noodles, peanuts, shrimp, bok choy, squid, pork, THEN with a warning, very sparingly, Mongolian hot sauce mixed with oyster sauce and lastly, a curry sauce to top it off. Vivian then took the heaping bowl to the chef who grilled the mixture and in no time she returned to our table with the steaming hot food.
The Mongolian hot sauce is hot! I am accustomed to warnings of hot sauce turning out to be mild for my taste – not in this case! The dish was excellent with every ingredient having a distinct flavour and yet the combination of sauces lingering in the background.
The price includes the usual Chinese buffet but after my Mongolian dish I was quite satisfied. My wife ate from the buffet and said everything was very fresh and good also.
For the two of us, including a $3 tip, the bill was under $20.
Asia Garden, next to Visions
2 – 3363 Dunmore Road SE
Medicine Hat’s 20th annual Chili Cookoff is coming up this weekend in Downtown Medicine Hat.
The event is on Saturday, July 18th, and kicks off at noon and runs till 4PM. Entry is $3. Team sign-up forms can be found on their website as well as pledge forms.
Everyone loves chili, check it out!
It’s been over a week now since East Side Mario’s closed its doors for good here in Medicine Hat. I’m posting because I wanted to ask our visitors if they know why? I haven’t been able to find out personally, but I have made a couple speculations based on our global economy.
East Side Mario’s was busy every time I’ve went there, and even when I visited on obscure times of the day, like between lunch and dinner there was still quite a few people. I wouldn’t recommend anybody to go on a Saturday night because it seemed like a madhouse with all the people there. So with all these people, why did it close? Was it the food? Was there health problems? I found the food good every time I visited and I tried a lot of the menu over the years of going there, although it could be a bit pricey the soup and non-stop french bread (YUM!) more than made up for it. The Alberta Health Services site no longer lists East Side Mario’s so I can’t confirm any health problems.
Like I stated above, the only reason I could think of is with all these chains (like Starbucks) closing and shutting down their locations across the globe due to the recession, it could just very well be that this one was targetted for whatever reason. Anybody know?
Pasta-Bilities is a quaint restaurant tucked away behind a small facade in the Starbucks/Joey’s Only parking lot off 13th Ave SE and TransCanada Way. The restaurant offers a large menu consisting of pasta courses and desserts, as well as a pasta-of-the-day which is not only filling, but affordable as well. The courses are always available to have add-ons put in, such as meat balls.
The pasta, sauces, and desserts are all prepared in-house by a nice elderly man who is also the resident Chef and owner and ensures that you will have a freshly prepared meal. The ambiance in the restaurant is wonderful. The front facade of the building is all windows, allowing much sunlight in. The colour scheme of the decor is primarily green, white and red, reminiscent of the Italian flag, and soft Italian music floats through the air to top off your dining experience.
Apart from a delightful dining experience, the restaurant also offers pasta products and sauces, as well as a few other things such as pasta makers.
I have never had a poor meal at Pasta-Bilities, and plan on going back many more times.
Pasta-Bilities is located at 1290 Trans Canada Way SE, across the parking lot from Starbucks.
The name of the restaurant is “Buffet Medicine Hat”. That means, when you say something like, “Oh, I feel like some buffet food!”, everybody automatically assumes you mean Buffet Medicine Hat because you’re in Medicine Hat. It’s kind of like if there was a place called “Fancy Dinner Medicine Hat” and you felt like a fancy night-out, it would be assumed you would want to go there. No? Okay, obviously I’m being a little facetious here, the naming always intrigued me though. It is pretty generic, but I think in a marketing sense it works a lot better than “stereotypical Asian reference restaurant” that a lot of businesses use in the same genre of eating.
It may deserve the naming though. It literally is the biggest buffet joint in the hat – in terms of eating space but also in terms of the amount of food and deserts they serve. The dinner (which starts at 4:00PM each day) buffet is a little bigger than their lunch selection – at dinner they bring out the big things like roast beef and a full turkey/chicken with stuffing. They also have a special brunch on Sundays when they serve every breakfast thing you could ever imagine.
In terms of the quality of the food (since that is the biggest factor of any buffet place), it is decent – which may be interpreted as “meh”. I say that because although I do have a “once every month” craving for buffet food I usually end up at the Jungle Cafe instead of other buffet restaurants in town such as: Buffet Medicine Hat, New Imperial Palace Restaurant, Ming Court Family Restaurant, Hat’s Restaurant (another silly generic named one), or Sizzling Wok. This is because Jungle Cafe literally is the best Buffet place in Medicine Hat (my opinion), but it is a little pricey. Although that would count as getting off the subject of this review. In the list of other buffet places in the city though, Buffet Medicine Hat would definitely be the top in terms of quality, taste and atmosphere. You also have to weight in the amount of diversity of food available at Buffet Medicine Hat as well which definitely raises it above its competitors.
The Beefeater – it pretty much sums itself up in its name and it’s damn proud of it too! It is Medicine Hat’s premier “beef eating” establishment and probably one of the most expensive places you can eat at within the city (save M Grill and DeVine). I maybe should reword that for some people, it is an expensive place to eat if you are going there for a really nice cut of steak, such as a Filet Mignon or sirloin cut – but really you get what you pay for. Otherwise though, there is a standard selection of chicken, seafood, and other beef meals (ribs, burgers) that are reasonably priced and like I said, if you want the nice stuff, you’re going to pay for it. I even noticed a $10 hamburger – I was kind of intrigued since it seemed quite reasonably priced for the type of place. Throw the $1 salad and soup bar into the mix, and it’s actually a pretty good deal if you’re looking for a “fancy-ish” night-out.
Let’s talk about the soup and salad bar. There’s normally two soups available, piping hot and both delicious. Usually they serve a beef soup (such as beef barley) and an other alternative soup (such as french onion). Both are delicious, and the beef variety of soups they serve seem very “home-made” in the sense that it seems like they cooked the beef themselves and thrown it into the mix – this isn’t condensed soup grade beef (like Campbell’s), it is prepared in the kitchen. There’s a huge selection of salads: lettuce, macaroni, 6 different dressings with all the fixings. This is all for $1, unlimited servings, granted you buy an actual meal. Continue reading…
I’m sure most of you know this website by now since it’s fairly popular in the city, but you might not know the details. Medicine Hat Menus is a website dedicated to listing full local restaurant’s menus. They also offer maps, links, addresses and other information (all the common YellowPages stuff).
Medicine Hat Menus Logo
Quite a few restaurants (30+) are listed but there is also some that aren’t – most of these places that aren’t listed are chains or corporations. Medicine Hat Menus is more about local food and restaurants and big chains probably don’t see any value in a site like this – but I still think they should at least take advantage of it. I think it’s a great service and probably more useful than any traditional advertising restaurant owners in the city use; however, Medicine Hat Menus also promotes itself and its clients in the Medicine Hat News newspaper (physical print advertising) and on the Medicine Hat News website through skyscraper ads which really justifies the cost. I’ve also spotted some promotions in hotel and motel room directory books, catering to out of town people. I’ll also say while I am involved in the design and development of the project, I do personally believe in it 100% and I also just struck a partnership (link exchange) between our sites.
Please first view our news post about Lost & Found.
In brief: the Medicine Hat College’s Visual Communications grad show will be held tonight starting at 7PM. There will be a variety items in the exhibition including art, design, furniture, video, photography and more. There will be entertainment, food, and most likely some alcohol beverages. It will be held in the main Medicine Hat College entrance – it will be hard to miss.
Lost & Found Mailouts - Photo via Flickr
Sushi Miso is a quaint sushi restaurant located at 1561 Dunmore Road SE in Medicine Hat.
The food is prepared rather quickly and almost entirely made by hand, but nevertheless, I have never been disappointed. The restaurant boasts a wide selection of menu items, ranging from the archetypal raw fish to more “Americanized” sushi, which has chicken in it, to anything else you might ask for in a sushi restaurant.
The norm for me and friends to get is Miso Soup to start with, which is a salty broth filled with chives and tofu, followed by at least a roll (sliced into 6 smaller rolls) each, or three rolls (18) for two of us, or 5 rolls (42) for three of us. Despite looking like a small portion of food, one roll sliced into six smaller ones is enough to fill me up, and what is more, the ends of the roll are usually left untouched, so you get a little bit extra salmon, chicken, or whatever you ordered, sticking out of the ends.
The great thing about Sushi Miso is definitely the fact that it is not fast food and does not have all the additives and preservatives that other fast food places have. When I am done eating, I do not feel physically bad from eating it, as I might from McDonalds or any other fast burger place. Our bills at the end of the meal generally range between $6.00 and $10.00, comparable to most restaurants.
Sushi Miso:
1561 Dunmore Road SE.
403-528-9881