Holy Roller
8222 Gateway Blvd
780-540-4659
theholyroller.ca
Mon. to Wed. 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Thurs. to Sat. 4 p.m. to 2 a.m.
Sun. 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Dinner for two, excluding tip and beverages: basic, $16; loaded, $50
Food: 4 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 4.5 of 5 Suns
Service: 4 of 5 Suns
Old Strathcona’s newest restaurant Holy Roller is way too cool, full of Harry Potter twists and turns.
The “lobby” (and cafe) is all London men’s club – the library, a quiet bar. One half expects Winston Churchill slouched in one of the overstuffed easy chairs, puffing on a cigar.
But then the hostess leads you through a secondary entrance to the interior. Suddenly a crystal palace greets you, a crystal palace, a restaurant all a-bustle with restless energy, an enormous ceiling, chandeliers, a bar/ open kitchen all down one side, comfy and trendy tables marching down the others.
Keep going, to the third space at the back, an entirely new world – modern white ta ...
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Good on Edmonton Coun. Andrew Knack for sticking to his guns, and to the new city council for coming to its senses.
Last July, in a vote that made no sense, the pre-election city council defeated a relatively innocent motion from Knack: That the city look at new ways of improving public transit … including private-public partnerships, ride-sharing, driverless cars and Light Road Transit – trains on tires that could run on dedicated roadways.
The notion – just to do some research, just to have a look around — was defeated in a tie vote, with dissenting councillors bowing to union pressure, or their own ideological beliefs.
Thanks to you, dear voters in October’s municipal election, our new city council is a more practical bunch. Knack brought his idea back after the election. This time it passed by a healthy nine to four vote.
City employees (or consultants) will check out best practices around the world to see if we can improve on the abysmal fact that only 13% ...
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There’s a sinking feeling in the city’s development community, worry that the mighty “aspirational” Blatchford Lands – the City of Edmonton’s 540-acre redevelopment of the now-closed Municipal Airport – will be yet another white elephant.
A white elephant: When a big project starts with the best of intentions and an optimistic budget, but ends up taking twice as long, costing twice as much, and delivering a fraction of what was promised.
Blatchford started off as a city council dream. So much open land, so close to downtown, could be used to show the world how eco-sensitive Edmonton was.
Blatchford is being marketed as a 30,000-resident neighbourhood with the very latest in environmental technologies, renewable energy, lovely lakes and paddle boats, no cars, lots of bikes – so attractive that thousands of families will pay premium prices to purchase brand-new eco-homes in this super-eco-neighbourhood that’s far away from the river valley but very close ...
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The Butternut Tree
9707 110 Street, #101 (Ledgeview Business Centre, ground floor, complimentary indoor parking)
780-760-2271
Thebutternuttree.ca
Tues. to Sun. 5 p.m. to midnight
Closed Mondays
Dinner for two, excluding tip and beverages: basic, $80; loaded, $125
Food: 4.75 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 4 of 5 Suns
Service: 4.75 of 5 Suns
So close to a perfect five out of five for food.
If not marred by over-salted jus (gravy) for its duck breast entree, the new Butternut Tree Restaurant would have earned an extraordinary Weekly Dish five-out-of-five Sun rating for its food, and equally close to a five out of five for service.
From where did this lovely restaurant, comparable already to the Hardware Grill in quality and meticulousness, come from?
When chef/owner Scott Downey, an incredibly young 27, opened Butternut Tree in August, nobody knew who he was. Years ago he had left the family home in St. Albert to wander the world and ended up apprenticing in top restaurants (Noma in Copenhagen) and ...
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Hadestown
Citadel Theatre
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Nov. 11 to Dec. 3, 2017
Tickets start at $30.
Review by Graham Hicks, Hicksbiz.com
Hadestown is a beautiful, rich mix of all that is good and right in American performance art.
That said, it has its problems.
No report on Hadestown can take place without considering the current context. The acclaimed musical, close to a modern-day opera, is getting its final polish here at the Citadel Theatre before its producers and financial backers move the show to Broadway.
The production, based on a concept album by the talented and distinctive American songwriter/singer Anais Mitchell, contemporizes and universalizes the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.
Hadestown was a major off-Broadway hit in New York City. But it had to be adapted from an intimate theatre space to the big spaces of Broadway theatres. Enter the Citadel’s 681-seat Shoctor Stage.
So The Hadestown we are watching in Edmonton is not yet a final product. ...
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Parkallen Restaurant
7018-109 St.
Parkallen.com
587-520-6401
Monday to Friday, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Saturday, 4 p.m. to midnight
Closed Sunday
Dinner for two, excluding tip and beverages: basic, $45; loaded, $90
FOOD: 4 OF 5 SUNS
AMBIENCE: 4 OF 5 SUNS
SERVICE: 4 OF 5 SUNS
All the successful “classic” restaurants of Edmonton – i.e. those 30 years or older still providing excellent dining experiences – share a common trait.
They evolve – adding new dishes here and there, quietly dropping the dated stuff but ensuring customer favourites stay on the menu.
Above all, they’re willing to change … which is why they thrive.
The Parkallen Restaurant was a favourite pizza joint of the inner southwest when Habib and Nahia Rustom opened in 1982, all by itself at that time on 109 Street in the stretch between Whyte and 61 Avenues.
Son Joseph grew up in the business. As a young adult full of ideas, he set the Parkallen on a course that served it well for de ...
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One really shouldn’t be so foolish as to predict Edmonton’s economy.
It’s like predicting how the Oilers will do. Who, six months ago, would have predicted our hockey team’s current dire straits?
This column has been all gloom and doom on the future of Edmonton and Alberta’s economy.
I’ve been arguing that the now-three-year crash in oil and gas prices shows no sign of let-up, that construction is slowing, that “carbon restraint” is clamping down on global demand for our oil and gas and at the same time raising Alberta’s electricity costs: That sky-rocketing provincial debt and a perceived anti-business bias from the current provincial government has scared off investment in Alberta.
Not a pretty picture.
But in the past few weeks a flurry of economic forecasts are painting a more optimistic future – at least for 2018 and 2019.
The basic theory seems to be that things have been so bad — a 3% drop in Alberta’s economic output ...
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Jersey Boys: The Story of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons
Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA
Nov. 10 to 12, 2017 – matinees Saturday and Sunday
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, Hicksbiz.com
Jersey Boys, at the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium for a far-too-short run of five shows between Friday November 10 and Sunday November 12, 2017, , is just as much the dazzling, interesting nostalgia trip today as it was in its Broadway debut 12 years ago.
The nostalgia is the canon of songs from Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons – Frankie holding some kind of record of 40 hit songs over a career that has spanned five decades. (Valli, at 83, continues to perform with his remarkable voice still intact.)
In this show, the hits just keep coming: Sherry, Big Girls Don’t Cry, Walk like a Man, December 1963, Dawn, Big Man In Town, Let’s Hang On, Bye Bye Baby, C'mon Marianne, Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, Working My way Back to You, Fallen Angel, Rag Do ...
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Once upon a time, a good chicken soup was the ticket to warm you up on a cold winter’s day.
Today, it’s ramen.
The Japanese soup/broth – long-brewed pork bones in which all the fat and marrow etc. cooks into cloudy white creamy liquid – has exploded in popularity. Since the Prairie Noodle Shop opened two years ago, at least 10 traditional ramen shops have sprung up across Metropolitan Edmonton.
And why not? The big bowl of creamy pork broth over noodles, slices of pork belly and various other accoutrements is a very fine comfort food and a meal unto itself.
Down a full bowl of ramen with its meat slices, slurpy noodles, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, boiled eggs and multiple other options … you are warmed from feet to head, ready once again to brave this new winter’s cold.
In Japan, ramen is as popular as hamburgers are here, being a quick but healthy food that can be downed in minutes if one is in a hurry. Like hamburgers, there are literally thousands of ...
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Little stories that deserve to be bigger … save the downtown, the oil patch and clean coal, but save us from city council and misleading marketing!
DISPOSABLE DOWNTOWN?
Do buildings now depreciate as fast as cars?
In 1982, city council signed the death warrant on yet another historic Edmonton landmark. The historic Tegler Building came tumbling down so the Bank of Montreal (BMO) could construct a brand-new, glass-fronted regional headquarters in the heart of the downtown.
The handsome, seven-story Tegler Building, with its brick exterior and Woolworth’s on the main floor, was a mere 70 years old. Judging from older office buildings in older cities, it had plenty of life left in it.
Now the BMO building, only 33 years old (it opened in 1984), has a date with the wrecker’s ball.
The bank has downsized into the next-door, brand-new Enbridge Tower. Regency Developments intends to tear down the BMO building and build a mixed-use high-rise on the site.
The BMO building ...
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