Food

This past Thursday, my friends Yrol & Rob invited me to explore a Taste The City tour.  The experience is a "foodie magical mystery tour" where you are initially texted a restaurant location to arrive at a designated time that you choose when you book.  At each restaurant, you're (sometimes) served a mocktail and a sample appetizer/small plate dish (for each person), chosen by the restaurant. You can buy boozy drinks if you'd like, but those are not included in the fee when you register for your experience.

At the start, you only know the first restaurant (of 5) where you're to arrive at the given time.  Each successive location is texted to your phone after you're finished each dining experience, each one lasting about 20 minutes.

Our tour's 5 locations were:

1. Milpa - to 17th Ave on 5th Street SW.  It's an uber-modern looking Mexican restaurant where we had delicious Quesabirria with Basil Lemonade as the chosen mocktail; a nice light starter for the food tour.  This restaurant is new to Calgary, opened in January of 2023.  The interior decor is striking, with layers of arches that made me think of being inside a whale.  The servers were very welcoming, and gave us a great background on the restaurant.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. Mister M. - a bit of a walk up 5th Street to 8th Ave downtown, we entered the very big and modern decorated restaurant where we were taken to a nice comfy booth in the back of the restaurant.  Here, we were brought a tasty passionfruit mocktail (not listed on their menu), and braised & glazed pork belly appetizer as the sample menu item.  We also ordered some boozy cocktails - a Hot Passionfruit margarita, and their Grand Margarita. Sadly, service here was a bit slow for a time-sensitive experience, and we ended up waiting for 1 of our 4 appetizers quite a while, and we ended up getting our text for our next location while we were only half-done.  So we ended up having to rush through our cocktails to stay on schedule for our next location, which was....
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Da Vinci Steakhouse & Lounge - on the north side of 8th Ave beside the old Uptown Theatre / Barron Building,  I think this space used to be occupied by Escoba Bistro & Wine Bar.  We arrived and were brought to a comfortable bar-height table.  There was no mocktail here, but the chosen dish was a delicious homemade lobster ravioli appetizer served with warm fresh herb garlic bread to soak up the delicious ravioli sauce.
   
   
     After our 20 minutes here, we got our text to head nextdoor to....
   
   
4. Untitled - this speakeasy-style champagne bar been here for about 6-7 years, and feels full of character.  Upon entry, we were led to some comfy couches and low stools set around a couple of low round cocktail tables.  We were able to choose our free drinks from a menu of mocktails, which were all delicious.  This was our dessert course for the evening, where we were each brought a smoked chocolate mousse that was absolutely rich and delicious.  At this point, all of our were starting to get fairly full.  The menu has 3 pages of bubblys which I definitely want to go back and sample.  They also have live music (although it was not there this Thursday evening).
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Then we were texted our next location which was...
   Calcutta Cricket Club back on 17th Ave...
   ...HOWEVER...Joanna texted me directly just as we had started walking back down to 17th saying our next location was actually...
   
   
5. The Wednesday Room further down 8th Ave.  Upon entry, we were led down into the basement which is an exquisite 1970's style mid-century modern cocktail lounge, reminiscent of the decor in the hotel in in the movie The Shining.  There were no mocktails included at this location, but each of us ordered a mocktail from the menu.  But, we had a choice of two dishes - one savoury, one sweet.  We all chose the savoury dish, which was a potato rosti with caramelized onions, truffle, chicken thigh and chicken gravy.  This was like a warm hug at the end of the evening, truly a tasty comfort-food.  At this point, we were all very full, and were happy to have a walk back to our vehicles to help us digest.