HicksBiz Blog
Category: Around town
Around town
I'm collecting suggestions for the best grocery, deli, bakery, butcher and liquor stores in Edmonton and area, or REAL food at REASONABLE pricees! No restaurants please, not at this time.
Please pass on tips to me at graham.hicks@hicksbiz.com, or on Facebook, or Twitter @hicksonsix.
We need more cheese shop and butcher recommendations!
Recommendations so far:
Groceries/deli: Sayah Meat + Pie, Saccamanno's, Italian Centre South Side and Little Italy; H+W Produce (several stores); El-Safadi Market (113A St. and 134 Ave).; Ben's Meat + Deli (Stony Plain Rd.).
Beer, wine and spirits - DeVine Wines downtown, Aligra in West Edmonton Mall, Select on 149 Street near the Whitemud,
Sherbrooke Liquor (118 Ave. and St. Albert Trail, amazing beer selection), Vines in Riverbend. Wine & Beyond (Sherwood Park, Windermere) is kinda fun.
Cheese - Sylvan Star Gouda at Old Strathcona Market, great new cheese shop Cavern on 104 St. downtown with reasonable prices - Paddy's Cheese Market ...
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The Soul Collector
Directed, written and scored by Jonathan Christenson
Design by Bretta Gerecke
A Catalyst Theatre production,
ATB Financial ArtsBarns, to May 12, 2013
matinees Saturday and Sunday, May 11 and 12.
Tickets $17 to $42, online at Tix on the Square
Review by Graham Hicks, Hicksbiz.com blog
For Jonathan Christenson fans, there’s an irresistible pull every time the brilliant writer, composer and director teams up with designer Bretta Gerecke for another Catalyst Theatre world premiere.
The Soul Collector, at the ATB Financial Arts Barns through May 12, 2013, is truly a world premiere, as are all Christenson and Gerecke (CG for short) Catalyst productions. Catalyst has rock-band-like legions of international fans. Its shows tour for years, across North America, Europe and Australia. As far as made-in-Edmonton cultural exports go, Catalyst is up there with Tommy Banks, kd lang and Corb Lund.
The pull, the must-attend factor, is the unique style of any C/G production. For wan ...
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Review by Graham Hicks
Monty Python’s Spamalot
A Citadel Theatre Production,
Citadel Theatre, Edmonton, Alberta Canada – Shoctor stage
Until May 19, 2013
www.citadeltheatre.com
It’s as much fun as Grease, back in 2003.
It’s as zany as Rocky Horror Show in 2011.
And it’s as silly as The Drowsy Chaperone in 2009.
In other words, The Citadel Theatre’s own production of Monty Python’s Spamalot is as funny a show as has ever graced the Citadel’s main stage.
You do know what you’re getting – given Spamalot is a loose stage adaptation of Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail movie, and the show itself was one of Broadway’s biggest hits of the past decade. Who doesn’t know The French Taunter’s “I fart in your general direction” or the Black Knight’s “tis only a flesh wound“ as King Arthur hilariously lops off his arm?
As was the case with the Citadel’s renditio ...
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What is there about Edmonton, Alberta, Canada that represents the best of Canada, North America or world-class?
Here's the start of a list below.
If you'd like to add to it, please e-mail me at graham.hicks@hicksbiz.com or Facebook (Graham Hicks) or add a comment.If you have the source of your statistic, please include it.
I'd like to make this the "go-to" list for Edmonton's points of pride.
Last updated, April 27, 2013
PCL Construction, Canada’s largest construction company and sixth in North America, is headquartered here.
Stantec is a Canadian architecture, design and engineering giant, closing in on its goal of being in the top 10 North American construction service firms.
North American’s second largest energy park is Leduc-Nisku with 4,650 acres and another 3,000 acres in reserve by the airport. Its 600 companies are leaders in adaptive technology for oil extraction. Three-quarters of them sell internationally.
The deep bitumen extraction technology of choice, Steam Assisted ...
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“Make Something Edmonton” works as an Edmonton slogan.It may be generic, but it keys in on the essence of Edmonton.We do make things happen in this city and region. (References to "Edmonton" in this column means "Greater Edmonton." We're all in this together.)As slogan originator Todd Babiak points out, there’s no aristocracy here. We’re not glamorous, but we’re not phony. An urban “barn-building” culture means we get things done.The trick will be to spread the “Make Something Edmonton” expression beyond the downtown artisan community, to make the attitude expressed in that slogan a point of pride in the entire business community.Make Something Edmonton isn’t wishful thinking. It's reality.The git-‘er-done attitude and accomplishments of our entrepreneurs over the past decade has been remarkable. And in researching the “git-‘er-done” success of Edmonton, surprises have emerged.Mayor Steve Mandel has brought all the players onto the same page and pointing in the same direction. Before his watch, we squabbled e ...
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We still don’t know how it all started.But we do know.Most of us have driven through white-outs, knuckles as white as the pelting snow, intensely aware that the slightest mistake on the steering wheel could send our vehicle caroming out of control with just a few thin strips of metal between us and eternity.In our imaginations, a massive ghost truck looms out the whiteness.There’s nowhere to go but straight into its headlights.RCMP still truly don’t know how it all started at about 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, March 21, not until every collision report is complete and every driver and passenger interviewed.On the Queen Elizabeth II Highway, 20 kilometres south of Leduc, 50 kilometres north of Ponoka, just past a rise, in the midst of a white-out, heading north, one vehicle must have collided with another.Vehicle after vehicle came over that rise, sliding helplessly into other vehicles – sedans, SUVs, pick-ups, bigger trucks, tractor-trailers, fuel-tankers, buses, cattle-liners.The lucky ones, about half of the 85 ...
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Battista’s Calzone Co.Corner 118 Ave. and 84 St.780 758 1808@battistacalzone►Food: 4 of 5►Ambience: 3.5 of 5►Service: 3.5 of 5►Lunch for two: $10 to $20El Rancho11810 87 St.780 471 4930►Food: 4 of 5►Ambience: 3 of 5►Service: 3 of 5►Dinner for two: $20 to $30There’s something about 118 Avenue’s restaurants and bakeries. From The Barbecue House at 97 Street to Uncle Ed’s past 50 Street are dozens of restaurants of every ethnic variation. The bakery cluster, from the Popular to the Handy to the Italian, creates more fresh bread choices than anywhere else in the city.The 118th Avenue blend of ethnic, artist and community has a small-town feel. But its low-income nature is a brake on gentrification, keeping rents affordable for family-run restaurants.These family restaurants are usually friendly, unpretentious and economy-priced. Trendy flatbreads or sliders don’t show up in these parts.Their village-style food, as typified by Battista Vecchio’s Calzone Co. at 118th and 84 Street and Dora Arevalo’s El Rancho Spani ...
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Select10018-106 St.780 428 1629www.selectrestaurant.caFood: 4 of 5 starsAmbience: 4 of 5 starsService: 4 of 5 stars(gluten-free options)Dinner for two (without beverages): Basic, $50; Multi-course, $90——How exciting to witness re-birth.Just over a year ago, the Packrat Louie group, led by managing partner Jodh Singh, purchased Café Select.Café Select … in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, this café/bistro on 106 Street just around the corner from the Avord Arms was one popular space. Its signature dishes are remembered by many - a vodka-spiked tomato soup, mussels, steak tartare and coquilles St. Jacques.From the outside, it wasn’t much. And it still isn’t today.But to enter then, as now, is to walk into a cosy Brussels or Prague café, with beautiful dark wood, gilded mirrors and antique light fixtures.Over the last decade, the café had deteriorated. Discerning diners lost interest. Things were fading to black.Enter the Packrat Louie gang. “I knew the restaurant was for sale,” says Jodh. “I went to dine. It was ripe f ...
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Theatre review by Graham Hicks
The Kite Runner, adapted by Matthew Spangler, based on the novel by Khaled Hosseini
At the Citadel Theatre (Shoctor Stage) in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
March 9 to 31, 2013
Ensemble cast
Tickets and information:
Thank you Citadel Theatre, for once again presenting a theatrical masterpiece, a contemporary masterpiece in a least expected setting.
The Kite Runner is epic, spanning an emotional/ethical arc of friendship, betrayal, weakness, saintliness, rigidity, hypocrisy, lost innocence, twisted brutality.
These qualities of the soul are fit within a panoramic psycho-geographic landscape that echoes the interior conflicts and passions - an idyllic Afghanistan, tumultuous Afghanistan, wretched Afghanistan and San Francisco, USA, through the eyes of a refugee Afghan community.
There is the masterpiece of the writing, shared between the author of the original novel, Khaled Hosseini, and the craftsmanship of stage-adapter Matthew Spangler. That so ma ...
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Café Crepe Symphony
10115 100A Ave. (Rice-Howard Way)
587-520-7111
Call for reservations
Food: 4 of 5 stars
Ambience: 3 of 5 stars
Service: 4 of 5 stars
Dinner for two (without beverages):
Basic, $20; Multi-course, $40
(Gluten-free available)
———
It’s tucked away in a Rice-Howard Way nook, beside the popular Tres Carnales, with a construction depot for the LRT Jasper Avenue overhaul right outside its doors.
But the Café Crepe Symphony should not be such a secret.
It ought to be as busy as Tres Carnales next door, Sugarbowl in the Bridge District or DaDeO in Old Strathcona.
Its crepes – for that is what the Crepe Symphony does – are that good.
So often, all one wants from a restaurant is something grease-free, light, refreshing and inexpensive. Yet the options are so limited.
Enter, at least for those close to downtown, the Crepe Symphony.
The menu is straightforward. Savoury c ...
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