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Watching the city's taxi drivers fight Uber, the new, superior, passenger transportation system that's far more consumer-friendly than their industry, how should we feel?
Sad? Sympathetic? Disdainful? Indifferent?
Edmonton's taxi service as a whole has been lousy for years. There's never a cab when you want one, let alone when you really need one. We're told not to drink-and-drive, yet the conventional taxi industry rarely provides reliable, fast, alternative transport.
Years ago, city council limited the number of taxi cab licences, allowing existing owner/operators to buy and sell those licences. For the older operators, it meant an instant retirement nut. But to get into the industry, to buy an existing licence, became very expensive. Ergo, fewer cabs when most needed.
This city-regulated, supply-managed, personal transport system has long been dysfunctional.
Along comes Uber, which is nothing more than a sophisticated co-ordination system between those willing to provide a ride from point A ...
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I’d wager it was more fun than this week’s main event, though Ryan O’Flynn might disagree.
Having won the regional Gold Plate Medals Competition in October, The Westin’s executive chef is competing this Wednesday through Friday, Feb. 4 to 6, in the Canadian Gold Plate Finals in Kelowna. The winner takes home a new BMW, multiple other prizes and, far and away the most important, bragging rights as Canada’s top chef.
Our fun took place last week. O’Flynn and the Westin invited food writers/bloggers to rehearsal night.
Westin food and beverage manager Nasser Nammari had shopped that day for 10 mystery ingredients. From the moment Ryan opened the mystery box, he had 10 minutes to assess his food stuffs, declare his intentions, then another 50 minutes to cook and present his small plate recipe to about a dozen guests.
Don’t stand back in awe, said Nasser. Talk to Ryan as he cooks, follow him around the kitchen, get in his way a little bit. At the Kelowna finals ...
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Edmonton Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Janet M. Riopel poses for a photo in her office in Edmonton, Alta., on Thursday, Jan. 29, 2015. The Chamber is undergoing a new branding initiative and Riopel is their new president. She previously sat on the board of directors in 1996. (Ian Kucerak/Edmonton Sun/QMI Agency)
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Hicks on Biz: Does Alberta Premier Prentice have what it takes to stand up to unions?
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Hicks on Biz: Uber is just superior
As its brand-new president and CEO Janet Riopel would agree, running the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce is a complex thing.
So many possibilities, so many requests, so many mandates, so many members – 2500 of them - wanting this, that and everything else in return t ...
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North 53
10240 124 Street
87-524-5353)
North53.com
Food: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Service: 4 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two, just food – basic $40, loaded $70
5 p.m. to late, Tuesday through Sunday
Closed Mondays
It was one of the most interesting, if bizarre, restaurant tales of 2014.
Just opened a year ago, North 53 was an overnight sensation with its chicken cooked in hay, veal sweetbreads and juniper-scented haddock. Young, self-trained executive chef Ben Staley was the talk of the Edmonton foodie scene.
Then, poof! For whatever reasons, Staley abruptly exited North 53 in September. He’s soon to open his own digs, The Alder Room, north of Chinatown.
North 53 wasted no time. Sous-chef Filliep Lamant took over the kitchen. The restaurant closed for a couple of weeks, then emerged with a new menu, a new concept and new branding.
It worked! North 53 Version 2.0 isn’t creating the same foodie waves as the Staley version, but it’s probab ...
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Not for me the bad-mouthing of retail titans, the Walmarts or Home Depots that scour the world for the best deals, buy in the millions, and through every efficiency known to mankind, make available mass-produced goods at rock-bottom prices.
But damn it’s nice to experience the other end of the scale.
Enter Ficus Studios on Calgary Trail.
Day light pours through the front windows of what was likely once a retail shop.
One corner is taken up with visual artist Megan Stein’s studio.
Next space over, wet-plate photographer Gary Soo (Soomuu) records images of the new world using technology from the old.
Dion Bews (Dion Guitars) makes beautiful, hand-crafted, $6,000 guitars sold in New York City and Los Angeles.
Greg Morgan (Ryaton Shoes) doesn’t assemble shoes, he creates, designs and makes them.
Brad Goertz of Nomadic Infrastructure Labs, with apprentice Leila Sidi, designs and makes high-end wood furniture.
Tinkerer Alex Hindle; visual and multi-disciplinary art ...
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Chef Lou's Kitchen
15131 121 St. (Castledowns)
780-457-5630
Food: 4 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 3 of 5 Suns
Service: 4 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two, just food – basic $20, loaded $30
10 a.m. to 9 p.m. weekdays
11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturdays
Closed Sundays
Graham Hicks
780-707-6379
graham.hicks@hicksbiz.com
www.hicksbiz.com
@hicksonsix
You wanna go where everybody knows your name.
You wanna go where people know, people are all the same.
Chef Lou’s Kitchen isn’t quite Cheers – theme song quoted above - but it’s darned close.
It’s the beautiful smile on Chef Lou’s face when he greets you on arrival at his restaurant way up in Castledowns.
It’s the equally gracious greeting of his wife Quyen when she pokes her head out from the kitchen.
Here, in this nondescript strip-mall restaurant, I discovered true hospitality and excellent, inexpensive “Fast Food, Authentic Western & ...
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I made a pile of notes at two events this week, the Edmonton Economic Development annual lunch where Premier Jim Prentice talked turkey about the Alberta government’s over-reliance on oil/gas royalty revenue, the other a panel discussion at the U of A’s Institute for Public Economics, entitled “Does Alberta Need A Sales Tax?”
I should have just sat back and listened.
For it all boils down to one thing: To control government spending, Prentice must confront Alberta’s well-paid public sector – i.e. anybody funded from the provincial purse – with the same determination and tenacity as Ralph Klein did in the ‘90s.
Prentice is asking Albertans to accept new taxation to compensate for the $6 billion to $7 billion shortfall created by the loss of oil/gas royalty revenue due to the oil price crash.
Perhaps ... but only if he lives up to his side of this bargain.
As Klein did, Prentice has to walk the walk and talk the talk when it comes to controlling gov ...
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I made a pile of notes at two events this week, the Edmonton Economic Development annual lunch where Premier Jim Prentice talked turkey about the Alberta government’s over-reliance on oil/gas royalty revenue, the other a panel discussion at the U of A’s Institute for Public Economics, entitled “Does Alberta Need A Sales Tax?”
I should have just sat back and listened.
For it all boils down to one thing: To control government spending, Prentice must confront Alberta’s well-paid public sector – i.e. anybody funded from the provincial purse – with the same determination and tenacity as Ralph Klein did in the ‘90s.
Prentice is asking Albertans to accept new taxation to compensate for the $6 billion to $7 billion shortfall created by the loss of oil/gas royalty revenue due to the oil price crash.
Perhaps ... but only if he lives up to his side of this bargain.
As Klein did, Prentice has to walk the walk and talk the talk when it comes to controlling gov ...
Read the rest of entry »
Cafe Bicyclette
8627 Rue Marie-Anne Gaboury (91 Street)
587-524-8090
lacitefranco.ca/cafe-bicyclette.php.
9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday
9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Thursday to Saturday
Dinner for two, food only: basic, $40, loaded $80
Food: 2.5 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Service: 2 of 5 Suns
How disappointing when a restaurant of allegedly good repute puts out an inferior product on a busy weekend evening.
The service at Café Bicyclette was abysmal. Something was wrong in chef Alysha Couture’s kitchen. Nobody seemed to care.
Café Bicyclette is a cute little bistro in La Cite Francophone. The architecturally stylish building is the beating heart of the city’s Franco-Albertan community on Rue Marie-Anne Gaboury (91 Street) north of Whyte Avenue on the east side of Mill Creek.
The space has defeated many a restaurant operator — the latest was Café Persaud — but Café Bicyclette seems to be making a go of it.
Sti ...
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Just this week, the City of Edmonton’s assessors announced the average assessed value of an Edmonton house had hit a record $401,000.
The CMHC (Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation – the go-to indicator of Canadian house prices) suggested Edmonton’s 2014 market value prices averaged $360,000 per home.
The CMHC predicts house prices will still rise, modestly, to an average $371,000 in 2015 to $380,000 in 2016.
ATB Financial’s crystal ball gazers predict a 2% overall growth for Alberta’s economy in 2015, with oil prices (based on the benchmark WTI (Western Texas Intermediate) price per barrel, in American dollars) likely to recover to the $55 to $70 range.
These forecasts are made with sophisticated financial tools, by experts.
But often they are wrong. Nobody knows what tomorrow will bring.
What if the world economy, saddled with enormous debt, continues to stagnate, or, even worse, contract?
Alberta is a petro-state. We currently produce around 2.6 milli ...
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