Bad Ass Jacks (We Eat Edmonton)

I had fond memories of this joint from my Edmonton days, but it turned out to be not so good last week when I convinced Ian to go for lunch. We went to the U of A location and at noon on a Friday, the chicken wasn't ready and they were out of rice?? Huh??

For $7 (with our 2:1 coupon), we had 2 falafels with noodles, veg and thai sauce. It wasn't terrible, but the Toronto burrito selections really do have the Bad Ass beat in the wrap department.

Here's the link.

Al Mac's in Niagara

At the corner of Stanley and Ferry in Niagara Falls is a compelling sign. 6.99 for a breakfast buffet and 13.99 or so for a dinner buffet. It was walking distance from our hotel so we went for breakfast. It seemed like a good idea at the time but it was not!

The place was fairly crowded so that seemed good and we went in and were seated right away. The waitress asked what we wanted to drink and so we asked if the beverages were included. They're not so we asked for water. We were shocked though when the waitress said it is their policy not to provide water. If we wanted water, we could buy bottles. We were shocked.

We decided to stick around to sample the buffet anyway without any drinks. The food was fairly standard: pancakes, waffles, french toast, bacon, sausage, eggs, hash browns, potatoe fries, etc. The food was alright for the price. More select than you get with Ikea's $1 breakfast but you're paying significantly more. It's tough to enjoy breakfast when you're thirsty. It's one thing for my glass to run dry during a meal but a whole other thing for there to be no water whatsoever.

We each took two plates of food and got the bill. It's apparently a good thing we didn't order a beverage. Juice is apparently $4 for a tiny portion. Anyway, once we paid we hopped across the street to 7/11 where we bought two juices which we enjoyed on our walk home. We never looked back - well except to scowl at the place when we passed it on the drive out.

I feel bad for people that paid for the drinks. The breakfast buffet at other places looks significantly better for The morale here is to save your money and go for a vegas or at least some place other than Al Mac's

Oliver & Bonacini - Wall of Shame

Another entrant - this time for charging $20 to priority mail a gift certificate to Kathy in Sarnia (despite the stamp saying $9 and Kathy not wanting priority).

That being said...we still plan to go to Oliver and Bonacini for winterlicious lunch!

Shoeless Joes - Why Are You a Chain?

Chains usually = tasty. Shoeless Joes certainly was not.

Ian's beer was ok, but is there really any excuse for not have steamwhistle on tap when the brewery is less than a km away?

Nachos came next. The tortilla chips were crispy and fresh but the cheese was a horrendous mix of pale cheese in a tube squirted on. I still get the heeby jeebies thinking of it!!! No complaints with the veggies on top.

We then shared plate of 1/2 rack of baby back ribs. Ribs themselves were ok, but with only 4 small-ish ribs, it was not a lot of food. Fries were good.

Finall bill was $54 with tax and tip. It makes me cringe to even think of how much we spent for a meagre amount of gross food! From here on in, we'll walk the extra 10 min and go the Wheat Sheaf (never ever let's us down!).

Fred's Not There and he doesn't like families

Ontario finally caught up with Alberta and added family day last year. We weren't able to celebrate last year though but this year with the extension of Winterlicious we thought we'd be able to celebrate the day in style.

"Fred's Not Here" appeared to have some decent offerings so we thought we'd give it a try. We tried to call for a reservation in the morning but only got the machine. That made sense, it was the morning but the message did say they're open on Mondays. We headed over at noon hoping we could get in without a reservation but, upon arrival, we only found a darkened restaurant. Fred was not there - well we didn't knock so maybe he was in the back?. This seems pretty anti-family to me to close on a holiday. Fred we gave you a chance and you blew it. We won't be back.

Bite Me Bites

As noted earlier, we had ambitious winterlicious plans. We didn't get in to all the places we wanted but we did get in to Bite Me. By that I mean, we made a reservation - for 8:30. Not an ideal time but a reservation nonetheless. So we showed at our appointed day and time to find a packed restaurant. That seemed great, until we found the hostess and she said they were running "behind" and hadn't even seated any of their 8:00 reservation. I asked for a time estimate and was informed that they had no idea. They made it almost seem like a stupid question because they explained they don't know when people will finish. To me that's a really bad sign, and knowing how quickly you can get people through sort of seems like basic information that they should know.

Anyway, we told the hostess we'd wait. We pushed into the restaurant a little and saw that the situation seemed bad. It almost looked like they'd have to turn all the tables to get everyone in who was already waiting. We spied a winterlicious brochure and started going through to see other places close. Once we saw their were a few options, we took off. More on where we headed to in a few days

DineSafe

Janice and I are always fans of checking DineSafe before we dine. We generally don't check it before we shop but apparently we should. I hate to pick on Loblaws since I generally love them but that news seemed particularly galling. It's made slightly worse that this the Loblaw's I used to go to (now of course with their prices I wouldn't go there often). It looks like the Loblaws we go to currently on Jarvis and Queens Quay has been green for almost 2 years. They had some yellow in 2007.

The No Frills where we do most of our shopping (Peter's nee Rennie and Liz's) seems alright but due to the name change they only have limited history. Everyone's favoriate Joe's No Frills appears to have flirted with yellow in the past but is, in general, green. So overall it seems like no place is 100% safe and yellow is everywhere.

Fight @ the Mountain Mist Ice Cream (Saranac Lake)

Ian and I finally tried the Mountain Mist in Saranac Lake (near Lake Placid NY). It unfortunately ended up in me fighting with the cashier.

The girl took our order & moola (with plastic gloves on), then proceeded to grab my cone with the same gloves still on - no paper napkin or paper cover thingy over the cone. I point out that she just handled cash with those gloves and then made my cone. She seemed to feel the gloves were on to protect HER skin from the ice cream?? She basically thought I was CRAZY for questioning her sanitary practices!

Anywho, she changed one glove and then made me another one. It did not accomplish much since she used the dirty glove to grab my cone. Fortunately no illness resulted (yet -1 day & counting).

The ice cream itself - a baby soft serve maple walnut for me & hot fudge sundae for Ian were tasty & decently priced.

Here is a picture so you can form a mental note and stay away!

Outback Un-Tastiness

While stuck in Duluth Minnesota, we often partake in the Outback across the parking lot from the hotel we stay in.

The first time around I ordered the "Outback Special" involving a 9 oz centre cut sirloin. I would have liked "medium-well", but instead it came out "hockey-puck overcooked". No complaints about the extremely tasty baked sweet potato and bread before the main event.

The second time, I would have liked the fish special, but instead ended up with the Tilapia since they ran out. It was seasoned and grilled, but unfortunately seemed to have been coated in butter of some sort. The fish was a bit undercooked, which I know some restaurants like to do, but who wants to eat slimy inside fish??

The "fresh steamed veggies" tasted as though they had butter on them :(

Island Foods

Well today was the usual Thursday lunch. I was in favor of the korean bbq place that I really should have blogged about weeks ago. The place was amazing, all-you-can-eat for 7.99 + tax. Sadly I don't remember the name of the place (hence the lack of blogging about it, well that and laziness) but if you're ever at Yonge and College (not Carleton as then you'd be on the wrong side of yonge) walk north for a few blocks and look for a good deal! Seriously, I guess I'll post details when I convince the gang to go again.

Back to today's lunch, we went to the food court across from the OCAD building. I think they building may officially be called the Village by the Grange but I call it the food court with the McD's. As opposed to the Taco Bell food court which goes by the name "College Park" to the rest of the world. Anyway, there aren't really a lot of good options. There's McD's obviously but with Whoppers still sitting heavy in the belly from Whopper Wednesday I figured I'd give the heart a break. Others were fans of Wiki-Chicken and hit that up but I generally don't like the pick a few items format. Instead I made a big mistake and went to Island Foods.

The place always has a long line which you'd think is a good sign. Not exactly, they're just trying to compete for world's worst service. I'd been to their location at the Ex before. Same deal, long wait. Their menu is reasonably large so you'd think that might be the problem but no everyone gets the exact same thing, boneless chicken roti and I was no different. You'd think that would enable them to churn them out as fast as Ronald makes Big Macs but no that is not the case. The final product was alright but it wasn't worth the wait. At 6.95 the price isn't terrible but again the wait is unforgivable. I had been to Ducky's on Lakeshore earlier in the week and sure that place definitely qualifies as sketchy and hole-in-the-wallish but they manage to deliver a tastier roti with comparative haste. (With Ducky's I do find it a mildly troublesome sign that the guy is always shocked that we'd eat in but that's forgivable - bad service isn't!)

My recommendation, if you like getting frustrated by bad service and you enjoy long lines then give Island Foods a try. Otherwise, stay away.

The poor customer service "Diet"

So this week I was in Hawkesbury working at a very exciting steel plant and thus had to frequent the local restaurants for meals.

Poor customer service prevented me from procuring some tasty fast food.

I stopped in at pizza pizza in town and there is one lady cleaning the bathrooms and the other guy cleaning out the drink cooler. The dude says something to me in french, I don't really speak but the gist of it was, just a minute. I say ok, but then wait about 5 minutes and finally walk out. It's been a while since I worked at DQ, but I think that serving customers in a timely fashion if more important than cleaning the joint!

One night I went to the Valleyfield River for some kayak action and stop in at McD's across the street for a drink. I wait about 5 minutes to get my order in, but then the pace is 1 car every 8 minutes or so. There was conveniently no porkchop between the order thingy and the food giver so I took off! It would have been like 5 cars x 8 minutes = 40 min? After 2 cars and 16 min wait I was fed up!

Shame on EQ3

We normally don't comment about furniture stores on here but today EQ3 was supposed to have an anniversary party with food, drink and 20% off. They sent me something in the mail as well as calling me which seemed a little excessive. Anyway we make the long trek over to the wrong side of Yonge and get to EQ3 only to find a disappointing anniversary party. We walked all through the store before we found one table with a few picked over veggies and dip and some "sketchy" (Janice's word obviously) salad. It looked like something that might have just been picked up at the corner store. Seems ridiculous that they advertised an event that was this bed. While we were there they found some more wine of which we got a drop-sized serving. Janice with her fancy expense account wine drinking habits couldn't even finish her drop. With my grad school palate I finished mine and hers without any complaints.

This is a controversial post, Janice thinks we should forgive EQ3 and shop there again in the future. I think with this big a disappointment one strike and you're done! So onto the wall of shame.

The Long Road Home

This is a post by Ian - not Janice as the tag on the bottom seems to suggest!

Normally a trip east of Toronto isn't complete without a stop at our favorite tacky 401 roadside attraction - The Big Apple. This trip was no different and here's me on a bridge over grass with the infamous apple.



Now the big apple makes apple pies, lots of them in fact and they sell these pies both in slices and full pies. The catch, the slices are 3.50 but the pie is only 10 bucks. Not a tough decision but much to our annoyance they won't let us eat the pie in the restaurant area. We've been asked to leave on prior trips so this time we skipped the confrontation and took our mumble crumble outside to tailgate it up with our pie as you can see below (note how I'm standing underneath the hatch protecting the precision pie - this will be important later)










While tailgating is maybe cool before NFL games, it isn't particularly awesome for pie eating. I got over it and was enjoying the pie until a sea gull flew over and dropped off a present for Janice. Not good.











It gets worse, the present was large and we thought it splashed onto the pie. Initially, I had a brilliant plan to salvage the pie innards and remove the soiled crust but we thought better of it and ended up having to toss the remaining pie. A sad sad day at the Big Apple

Given this awful traumatic experience (for Janice getting hit, for me having to toss out over half a pie), we have to report that the Big Apple is on the No Visit List of Shame (NVLS). We do not plan to go back for a few reasons
1) If they had let us eat our pie inside this whole incident could have been avoided
2) If they're making us eat outside, at least control the sea gull population as there were quite a few circling (which we only noticed after the incident)
3) The mini golf course never seems to be open

Amsterdam Brewery - World's Worst Tour

I was trolling the i-net looking for something to do and I came across Amsterdam Brewery Tours. The place is across from Fort York on Bathurst so we thought we should go and check it out.

We arrived at 4:52 and just in time for the 5 pm tour (we thought). We ask the guy if there is a tour going down and he barely sets down the newspaper to say "yeah at 5". So we hover around awkwardly and then finally the guy gets up and tidies up the very messy looking sampling bar (basically 8 taps). He then says to help ourselves so we do.

He said that the sampling/tour is actually free and they just have the $8 tour thing for university dorks.

5 rolls around and nothing, he just keeps reading the paper. So we finally grab the beer from the case and buy it. As we are leaving, he says "just the beer?". Yeah, I guess so????

World's Most Akward Tour!!! Go to Steamwhistle, they actually run a semi-professional operation.

Restaurants of Shame

We had planned to go to a new (to us) Peruvian place today but instead we made a last minute (and in retrospect foolish) decision to go to the Brasserie for their Take 5 lunch. Well after walking there and sitting down we found out that they no longer offer the lunch on the weekends. The signage hasn't changed just some magical "rules" have. We walked out and went somewhere else. I don't foresee going back there. If any other restaurants let us down in such a big way, we'll probably start a restaurants of shame sidebar but for now since it's only the Brasserie that let us down, I'll leave things as they are

Bad Sushi

Went for a b-day lunch in Mississauga to Crazy Sushi. Only barely adequate and expensive. We did get some free "pancake" items on the house to start, but since they were a bit greasy and sketchy I am just neutral on them. Not sure why the co-workers seems to like it so much? Maybe they don't have the cheapness affliction that Ian and I do.

Just go to New Gen.