Dining Week at The Common!

Whew. It has been a long time since my last post due to my final exams at the University. I wish I manged my time properly so I could have this post up since it is long due! As I mentioned in the last post, from the week of March 15 to 24th, Edmonton held it's annual dining week. For those that had no idea, I encourage you to check this event out next year! It is a great opportunity to enjoy new creative dishes offered by many restaurants in Edmonton. When I mentioned this event to my parents, they were quite intrigued because they rarely venture out away from home when it comes to eating out. I wanted to go to the Common because their $25 dinner menu was very enticing and offered two different dining choices! But....I forgot to mention to them it was more of a lounge setting than it was an actual restaurant.. Did I mention, it would not be a place you would normally take your parents to? Oh boy... it was honestly quite embarrassing for me at the beginning and it involved a lot of explanation on what lounges are, what they serve and why everyone is not around their age etc.

For drinks, I went with the classic Crabbie's Ginger Beer! I am not a huge fan of beer but I absolutely love Crabbie's. It is light and tastes great in comparison to the other beers that I have tried.

On to the food: I decided to go with what the $25 dining week special of three courses. To start, I had the shrimp with gnocchi. Unfortunately, I forgot the name of it, but this is what it consisted of. This was amazing! From the tender flavorful shrimp to the soft, chewy gnocchi to the creamy tantalizing sauce. Everything just came together so well. If you can see from the picture, the shrimp was in a different sauce, it was sweet and complimented the well seasoned shrimp.

My mom went with the poached egg, bbq pork salad with lentils, She didn't care too much for the lentils since they were undercooked, but the small amount of bbq pork tasted exactly like the chinese bbq pork we love!

For the mains, I went with the veal and potatoes, coated in a creamy dill sauce. Where to start.. I wish I could say that I love this dish but...everything came out so wrong. The veal was cooked well done and it was extremely dry and tough. It was awful! I never had a steak cooked until the juices inside evaporated.. It was so dry the meat was flaky and on top of that there was no steak knife. They expected us to cut this tough piece of meat with a butter knife? I don't think that is going to happen. The dill sauce was alright... but that was about all you can taste with this meal. Without the sauce, this dish would be extremely bland! Good thing they do not offer this on their actual dinner menu!

After our meals, my dessert came: chocolate sformato with whip cream. This was so amazing! The sformato was so rich, thick and extremely chocolaty. Well done! Within minutes, I had this plate entirely cleaned!

Overall, it was a nice dining experience for my family and I. I was super disappointed with the main dish, but I am super glad the appetizer and dessert made up for it. This is a great place to hang out and socialize after a long day of work or school. I will definitely be hitting up this popular spot very soon with a couple of girlfriends and is looking forward to try dishes from their dining menu!

Carnivore feast at Pampa's Brazilian Steakhouse!

The title says it all. When I mean carnivore I mean it! At Pampa's Brazilian Steakhouse, the amount of meat offered will be enough meat to last you a week long! Upon walking in and leaving, the thing that was on my mind constantly was meat... If you are a vegetarian or not a fan of beef, chicken or pork, don't bother setting foot in this restaurant. You wouldn't want to be in there and they probably wouldn't want you in there complaining about the lack of vegetables offered minus the salad bar. I'm writing this post way late because I forgot about my trip here! For my birthday (in January), Raymond decided to take me to Pampa's. I personally LOVE meat, so this was a great choice on his part (after the big dinner...I don't recall having the same enthusiasm for meat..). I heard many cool things about this restaurant and did a quick Google search on the restaurant. This restaurant was actually featured on the food network show: The Opener.