Monthly Archives: September 2009

News and links

Posted on by bruleeblog

Just a short, quick post today.

  • Ferrán Adrià asked to help improve Spanish tourism
  • Article for food bloggers – How & Why You Should Work with Food PR – some avoid it but some seek it out. Which one are you?
  • New places opening locally – southside Mikado, southside Chez Cora… am still waiting for the downtown HealthFare to open! When I walked past there last week the place had been gutted and construction was happening inside.
  • Like many local food bloggers I also got an e-mail from Culina about their $75 Molto Local harvest wine dinner on October 18. I’m busy that day (and on a boot camp diet) and I can’t go, but like Chris I wish there was an option for without the wine as I don’t really drink.
  • And lastly, this Saturday is the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival (a.k.a. Mooncake Festival). I was super excited to find two different brands of lower calorie/lower sugar moon cakes while shopping at T&T. Expect a review of one brand on Saturday!

Asian Wok Express, St. Albert

Posted on by bruleeblog

Go to any food court in any shopping mall here and I guarantee that you will find a place selling food that is partly Chinese and partly Canadianized/Westernized concepts of Chinese food. You know the ones I’m talking about – those places that pour neon coloured sweet and sour sauces onto dough-covered chicken balls and lemon chicken covered in radioactive yellow sauce. Some friends came up with a term for this Westernized Chinese food – Chestern. (Mostly to tease me but I’m copyrighting it here so I own it now. Ha!)

The Asian Wok Express, located inside a strip mall right next to St. Albert Road, is one such place. A friend and I stopped in there to have a quick meal and I was interested to see that a constant flow of people – mostly doing take out – kept the kitchen staff busy. Service was very attentive and friendly.

Asian Wok Express

Asian Wok Express

My friend was craving some fried food, so an order of spring rolls was on the list, as well as a bowl of hot and sour soup.

spring rolls

spring rolls

The spring rolls were fried just right and tasted fine, but wasn’t anything special.

hot and sour soup

hot and sour soup

The hot and soup soup serving was quite large, and probably could have fed two people. It was nicely spiced but the texture was a little too thick and gloopy for my taste.

satay Shanghai noodles

satay Shanghai noodles

I had satay-flavoured Shanghai noodles. The flavour was great with a hint of heat, and there were plenty of chicken pieces that also held the flavour well. My one criticism was the amount of vegetables in the dish as the ones you can see in the photo plus a few more pieces were probably all I got on the plate. A dish with so many noodles need more vegetables than that.

So all in all, the food was relatively decent. Would I make an effort to go back? Probably not, but if I was in the neighbourhood and wanting Chestern I would not hesitate to stop here.

Asian Wok Express
1 Hebert Road, St. Albert

Asian Wok Express on Urbanspoon

Searching for buried treasure

Posted on by bruleeblog

Finding nutritional information can be like searching for buried treasure. I started a new permanent page on this blog – a listing of places that list their nutritional information either online or inside the restaurant. Here’s what I posted on the page:

When you’re on a diet, need to be careful about ingredients or just want to eat healthier, it can be hard to find out exactly what you’re eating. It’s interesting to see how limited you suddenly are to certain parts of the menu. And to be brutally honest even those aren’t safe – some salads can be 600 calories or more!

I haven’t really seen a place with a list of local places (Edmonton, Alberta) that list this information, so I’m starting my own list here (omitting fast food places, locally-owned restaurants are indicated with an *). If you know of a place that I’m missing, please let me know!

If you’re interested in seeing the list, head over here: http://bruleeblog.wordpress.com/restaurant-nutritional-info.

Why Montreal bagels are the bestest

Posted on by bruleeblog

I’ve been to Montreal twice, and both times the top things on my to do list wasn’t about poutine. No, I needed to grab me some Montreal smoked meat (Schwartz’s) and some Montreal bagels (St-Viateur’s).

Unlike New York bagels (which I’ve also had) or bagels from anywhere else, Montreal bagels have this magical and mystical quality about them that can be a bit hard to explain. I’ve found that people only truly understand after they’ve tasted some.  Montreal bagels are smaller than most other bagels. They’re also quite dense, have a slightly sweeter taste, and are baked in wood-fired ovens. I’ve known people to specifically ask travelling friends to bring back bags of bagels, and then promptly hoard them in their freezers. The taste is quite unique and is hard to find in the West.

So imagine my glee when I saw a sign at the City Market downtown farmer’s market declaring “Montreal Style Bagels” for sale! Unfortunately, they were sold out that day, but I made sure to go back another week in the early morning to make sure I could grab some.

Montreal style poppy seed bagels from the City Market

Montreal style poppy seed bagels from the City Market

So how were they?

Visually they looked quite good. The holes on some of them probably could have been a little bigger, but I figured that was just being too picky. The texture was great – dense and chewy, although a touch dry. The smell was definitely there – smoky and a little sweet. But the taste. Oh the taste. It was SO close, but not quite. The bagels were slightly sweet like they were supposed to be, but these ones are not baked in a wood-fired oven and instead are flavoured with liquid smoke.

I personally didn’t care for the liquid smoke taste, so have ultimately decided to do without rather than settle for something not quite right. But if you’re craving Montreal bagels and can’t afford to have them shipped from Montreal, this is probably your best bet in Edmonton.

Montreal Style Bagels
City Market, downtown Edmonton, Saturdays

P.S. I have heard of a place in Calgary called Montreal Bagels that I’m dying to try. Apparently the baker used to work for either Fairmount or St-Viateur’s in Montreal, and they’re baked in a wood-burning oven.