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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Restaurants & Cafes
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IFN, some time to kill and so the boy and I head over to Cafe Beano on 17th Avenue. We're going to The Coup for dinner, but it doesn't open until 5:00, and so we'll kill some time with a cup of coffee.
Now it's been forever since I've had a coffee there, despite having lived in the area for almost 20 years, somehow or another it just dropped off the map. A shame, it's great, the layout, the crowd, it's a proper coffee house, what coffee houses used to be before they became the dull Starbucks clones. An excellent place to while away the time, read a book, people watch...
From here to The Coup on 17th Avenue, a vegetarian restaurant I've heard good things about. And despite us arriving at 5:05 it's already half full, and by 5:30 there's a wait for tables. A busy place.
The food is good, vegetarian, I let the waitress surprise me and it's a pleasant surprise. The ambiance is nice, food is good, reasonably priced.
And from here to The Uptown for the movie - American - The Bill Hicks Story. I found it OK, the boy liked it, if you know who Bill Hicks is or was you'll probably love it. I didn't, such is life without TV, and the boy didn't either, but he's at the age where the rebellion against the establishment is a great theme warmly received and so I suspect upon dropping him off he was searching Google for more of his comedy.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Restaurants & Cafes
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Working tomorrow, so IFN with the boy has been moved forwards to today.
As there are no films I'm especially dieing to see (none, at least, released in Calgary) we instead opt to go for dinner. Someplace new, and so I have the idea to try out the The Coup on 17th Avenue, a vegetarian restaurant I've heard good things about.
Unfortunately they're closed on Mondays.
So we wander back down 17th Avenue until we come to Tubby Dog, another restaurant I've heard much about but not yet tried. The very antithesis, if ever there was one, of The Coup.
Now lets be fair, it's a dressed up hot-dog stand, with "gourmet" hot dogs. Decor, interesting, Prices: Good, portions: Large, Yam Fries and Onion rings, tasty. The hot dogs, while well dressed were, well, so-so. But their market isn't the 6:00 diners, it's the 2:00 AM drunkards staggering home after the bar, so lets be fair - for them it's excellent.
The boy, he has a problem getting his hot-dog out of it's chili bath and ends up dropping huge globs of chili and cheese and coleslaw all over the table. We banter about the possibilities of him becoming the enfant-terrible of the food-critic world, dining in restaurants and then signing his name in the swath of spilled leftovers that mark his presence, and we laugh at the possible reviews: "It sure looked good, if only I could have gotten some to my mouth..." or "I really like Vietnamese food but never really learned how to use chopsticks...".
Maybe it was just me laughing.
Tubby Dog: Overall good, but the hot-dogs are no big deal. Delicious Yam Fries and Onion Rings though. Worth trying once, not sure I'll ever go back. Certainly not sober anyways.
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Restaurants & Cafes
- Hits: 1416
It's independent film night with the boy, and I've got to go downtown to pick up our tickets for the animated objects festival. I'm multitasking.
And as we're downtown we stop into Milestones on Stephen Avenue Mall. Now really, IFN should be about independent & foreign films, and by extension independent and exotic restaurants, but we're already there and so we take a chance. We're hungry.
And it's lousy. Lousy not just in a "we ripped off Earl's Menu" kinda way, but in a "We ripped off Earl's menu and Denny's chef's" kinda way. Lousy, lousy food. A spinach/artichoke dip that had the consistency of melted butter with bits of green goop floating in it (spinach? Parsley?). A waiter that couldn't make eye contact (although I appreciated the fact they hired older waiters, Earl's could learn a lesson or two there) and scurrilously lit our lamp and had to write down an order for 2 - for 2. A burger with less meat on it than a McDonald's cheeseburger, a dessert that tasted vaguely of chocolate and I suspect was imported from the dessert cafe on 14 St (where they import things from I don't know...). Flat soda pop. A fine decor that looked like it might have once been expensive, but the carpet hadn't been vacuumed or cleaned in what I suspect were years, and there were chips here and there, small details of decay that spoke of the ruinous meal that awaited.
Summary? Don't go. Walk further up Stephen Avenue Mall and take a chance somewhere - anywhere - else. No stars here. Not a one.