Filistix's Nasi Goreng fried rice is a meal unto itself.
Filistix
10621 100 Ave.
780-716-4708
Filistix.ca
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7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. (11 p.m. Fri and Sat, 9 p.m. Sun), seven days a week
Delivery pending, reservations by phone
Food: 4 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Service: 4 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two: Excluding drinks and tip, basic $30, loaded $50
By GRAHAM HICKS
Ariel del Rosario and Roel Canafrance had no grandiose business plan when they started selling Filipino-style barbecue skewers out of a food truck some 10 years ago.
Yet Filistix has evolved as a textbook study in growing a hospitality business, culminating in the recent opening of its first sit-down, full-service Filipino/Asian fusion restaurant in the city’s downtown.
Del Rosario and Canafrance are cousins — second-generation Filipino-Canadians raised on the excellent Filipino cooking forever emerging from their moms’ and lolas’ (grandmothers) kitchens.
They were among the firs ...
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One of the first cannabis crops at Freedom Cannabis is growing within strictly controlled circumstances. Graham Hicks / Postmedia
Don’t get carried away.
Despite much wishful thinking, Alberta’s brand-new legalized cannabis industry is NOT going to replace oil and gas.
Alberta produces and exports 3.7 million barrels of oil and diluted bitumen PER DAY – at roughly $50 Cdn. per barrel, that’s $185 million PER DAY, or $1.3 billion PER WEEK.
The federal government estimates total cannabis retail sales (legal) for all Canada this year will be around $726 million.
Even if we double that number, for spending on wholesale cannabis production, greenhouse construction, legal and accounting services, even if we add on the salaries of some 2,000 cannabis retail store employees and maybe 1,500 cannabis greenhouse workers … it’s the equivalent of – at most – two weeks of provincial oil and gas gross revenue.
That said, the emerging cannabi ...
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The colours in Chartier's onion risotto and kohlrabi "steak" were a treat for the eyes. Photos by GRAHAM HICKS / EDMONTON SUN
Chartier
#102, 5012 50 St.
Beaumont
780-737-3633
www.dinechartier.com
Reservations: Yelp.com
No listed delivery service
Tues to Sun. 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.
(Fri. and Sat. midnight closing)
(Bread window, Tues. to Sun. 9 a.m. until sold-out)
Closed Mondays
Food: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 4 of 5 Suns
Service: 4 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two: Excluding drinks and tip, basic $50, loaded $80
Three years ago, the Weekly Dish visited Chartier, the then-recently-opened Franco-Albertan restaurant in the town of Beaumont – today just a few minutes drive south of Mill Woods.
That meal was perfect – one of the few five out of five Suns ever rewarded in this restaurant review column.
But perfection is either maintained, or it slips. And even the best of chefs, if they are not owners, tend to eventually move on.
On our return visit to Chartier, the fo ...
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A new trade deal with China is good news for Alberta cattle producers.Postmedia
By GRAHAM HICKS
Why is beef so expensive, and pork so cheap?
A nice four-pound (two kilogram) pork tenderloin for the family’s Sunday get together clocks in at a reasonable $20. The equivalent prime rib beef roast – two kilograms – would cost about $80!
You can’t even buy a prime rib roast anymore! At the west-end Superstore earlier this week, all the roasts were cheaper cuts of beef – outside round for $13 a kilogram, blade roasts for $15 a kilogram. “We don’t make prime rib roasts anymore,” the meat counter clerk said. “They’re so expensive. People just don’t buy them.”
Do you not vaguely remember a time when a good roast of beef and a pork tenderloin cost about the same? When beef ribs, kilo for kilo, were close to pork chops in price? When a 16-ounce porterhouse or a t-bone steak in a good restaurant didn’t cost a jaw-dropping $40 to $50 ...
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Spotlight's interior decor harkens back to the golden era of Hollywood. Photos by GRAHAM HICKS / EDMONTON SUN
Spotlight Cabaret
Second floor, 8217 – 104 St. (elevator accessible)
780-760-0202
spotlightcabaret.ca
11 a.m. to 2 a.m. seven days a week
No listed delivery service
Food: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 4.5 of 5 Suns
Service: 4.5 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two excluding tip, taxes or beverages: Basic, $30; loaded $65
By GRAHAM HICKS
Keep your fingers crossed that the Spotlight Cabaret, in the heart of Old Strathcona, is a roaring success.
It’s a bold venture in what was the O2’s second and third floor bar and restaurant, and before that Chili’s Old Strathcona.
Spotlight is modeled on those classic Hollywood and New York City fancy bars you see in late-night movies, but in living technicolour – nightly cabaret entertainment and full menu service is offered in the beautifully renovated room, complete with a real stage.
On an Edmonton summer afternoon or eveni ...
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The City of Beaumont unveiled ELAElectric Autonomous, the first Electric Autonomous Shuttle experience open to the community and will be free to ride, during a press conference in Beaumont, May 16, 2019. This will be Canada's first-ever pilot of an autonomous shuttle in mixed traffic use. Ed Kaiser/Postmedia
We’ve heard it so often, we’ve become numb.
Soon! Soon! Autonomous vehicles (AVs) will take over!
No more human-driven vehicles, no more individually owned vehicles.
We will all ride-share in a dial-a-bus-like municipal AV fleet. Soon!
Guess what?
Soon has become now!
Right now, a 12-person fully automated van – no driver, no driver’s compartment – is scurrying up and down the town of Beaumont’s main thoroughfare, sharing the road with regular traffic.
There’s plenty of leading-edge AVs out there – every major automaker has skin in this game. AV fleets are beginning to buzz around industrial sites, airports, golf courses, wherever there& ...
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While the broth colour was not appealing, the seafood and green curry tang worked well.
Noi Thai Restaurant
10724 95 St. NW
780-423-3213
Noithairestaurant.com
Delivery service: Skip The Dishes
Tues. to Fri. 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Sat. and Sun, 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Closed Monday
Food: 4 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 4 of 5 Suns
Service: 4 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two excluding tip, taxes or beverages: Basic, $30; loaded $60
By GRAHAM HICKS
There is something alluring about Thai food and Thai restaurants.
At its best, Thai cooking is delicate and clean, never oil-heavy, lovely colours, the aroma inevitably described as “fragrant.” The restaurant interiors are spotless and pretty. Servers are exquisitely polite.
Lesser Thai kitchens haven’t the same intangible delicacy, somehow don’t come across as so “clean” in the food presentation. The spring rolls can be greasy.
My attention was directed to the humble Noi Thai when WHERE Magazine, in an unusual de ...
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I don’t think I’d want to be in Van Wilmott’s shoes.
Not that it isn’t fun, being the artistic director of Edmonton’s Mayfield Dinner Theatre.
But there’s pressure. He’s gotta make money!
In commercial theatre, there ain’t no government grants/Canada Council/Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
If Wilmott’s shows didn't make money or at least break even, his corporate masters – the owners of the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel West Edmonton - would close the theatre which is in the hotel.
If his shows don’t bring in the crowds, there’s nobody to buy the theatre’s buffet dinner or bottles of wine, no out-of-towners to stay at the hotel after the show.
And each show, with an eight-to-nine week run, has about 25,000 dinner theatre tickets up for sale. With five shows in the season, that's 125,000 tickets to sell!
And when you have to sell that many tickets, you simply cannot take risks.
“Each show HAS to be successful,&rdqu ...
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