Text 18329, 67 rader
Skriven 2007-07-29 23:26:00 av JIM WELLER (1:123/140)
Ärende: Road Trip 4
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On Wednesday, Lily's employer, a high end jeweler and goldsmith, was
throwing a champagne and appetizer bash for his 100 best customers.
Roslind is a VERY minor customer but Lily made sure we got an
invitation too. The affair was held at Il Portico, an upscale
Italian place. The crowd was amazing and totally surreal... a bunch of
obviously very well to do 50 year old men escorting gorgeous 25 year
old trophy wives, mistresses and girlfriends around, all of them in
plunging cleavage to show off their latest diamond necklace. Bentleys
and Morgans in the parking lot. We had not planned for such an
outing so I just wore jeans. I think some people assumed I was even
richer than the rest so I could get away with being underdressed!
Anyway, tons of tasty appies and canapes including some gorgeous
roast asparagus wrapped in excellent bacon and rosmary lamb
lollipops all washed down with excessive amounts of champagne. It
was fun. (So was admiring all the magnificent busts in the room.)

Thursday Hank, Olive, Roslind and I hit the Delux Burger Bar,
another chowhound's find and reputed to be the best burger place in
Edmonton. Their food lived up to their reputation. We had three
burgers cut into four portions each so everyone could have a taste of
everything and two salads. The beef patties were all 6-8 oz of prime
meat, the buns and bread all bakery fresh and the condiments numerous,
imaginative, flavourful and made on site. We had a Kobe burger, 6 oz of
waygu beef, with fried Shiitake, Portobello, Oyster and Crimini
mushrooms and a bit of wasabi and chile mayo on a giant Kaiser roll,
a 7 oz. bison burger in focaccia with mixed baby greens, tomato,
onion and chipotle ketchup and a Delux burger: 8 oz of Black Angus
chuck with blue cheese, caramelized onions and 4 slices of double
smoked bacon between slabs of French bread, a lobster salad (lots of
nice lemony greens, just a bit of lobster) and another beet salad.
This one was quite different than the Sage creation, although also
very good, despite having many ingredients in common. It was
composed of a mix of red and yellow beets, beet greens, raspberry
vinegar, olive oil, glazed walnuts and goat cream cheese smeared on
croutons, little rusks actually. The sweet potato fries seen on most
tables looked good but we were too full to order any ourselves. Each
platter was $11-13 so the four of us ate well for around $60. There
was an extensive beer list here as well; I tried an Innis & Gunn beer
which is Scottish, sweetened with heather honey and aged in old
whiskey barrels. Too sweet for my tastes and interesting to try
once. I will definitely go there again but I have now sworn off
burgers as well as steaks for the interim.

On Friday we started back home stopping in Peace River at Peter's
Szechwan which has the best Chinese food on the 1000 mile road
between Edmonton and Yellowknife. We had pork dumplings (pot
stickers - the standard factory dumplings found in 1000s of Chinese
restaurants everywhere, so satisfactory but not exciting) and
Cantonese Lo Mein (very good). The soy sauce on the table was La Choy
so I asked if they had anything better in the kitchen. The waitress
brought out some Kikkoman and said it was the personal bottle of the
kitchen staff. I was the first white customer to ever ask for it!

For dessert we stopped in Manning again for more cheesecake. And
that concludes this year's food trip.

I gained five pounds on the road and m now on a fish, salad and raw
fruit, low-fat, low-cal, dessert-free diet for a bit.

Cheers

YK Jim


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