Tidbits

Sleepover at Ikea - Maybe this is the only way to get to the $1 early enough…
A ramen bath - Japanese spa with special baths resembling instant noodles. I wanna play!
Old age homes for dogs - 1) Old dogs don’t like to be abandoned at strange places. 2) Playing with young puppies will probably cause the older dogs to die faster due to exhaustion.
A remote-controlled pigeon - Oh the poor thing…
An article on a brilliant method of teaching grade schoolers about bats and rabies. I smell a lawsuit.
Will trade beer for Crumpler bags. Tempted by the beanbag and messenger bags…

Food Review: Wildcraft

March 06, 2007, 4:40 am

Wildcraft
425 King St. North
Waterloo, ON

This is the new “premium casual dining” restaurant from the Charcoal Group that opened in Waterloo recently. It’s located across King from the East Sides Marios near Blue Springs, just north of Weber and King. I just recently discovered the Charcoal group of restaurant when Mike took me to del Dente for Valentine’s day, but I guess that’s another post. The rest of the places in that group occupies one building in Kitchener near Fairview Mall.

So last weekend, we spontenously decided we wanted to check it out. Walked in on Saturday, around 7:30, and they said the wait was 2 hours. Humph, so we went home and had instant noodles. We called later that night to make reservations for Sunday, and after waiting on hold for like 10 mins, they said the earliest they can seat my large party of 2 is at 9 pm. On a Sunday. But we were determined to try it out.

We got there 15 min early. There was sufficient free seating, so we were seated promptly. First impression of the place was pretty snazzy, they really put a lot of effort into the decor. When you first walk through the front door, you are greeted with this impressive two-stories glass-walled wine room. And there lies the first disappointment of the evening. If you are going to put up such a fancy wine display, at least train your staff on how to serve wine. Mike asked our waitress about two reds, the purpose of which to hint that he would like to try them. Instead, she was like, “hmm, this one is from Italy. That’s like, an Old Country, and so should be better.” (The wine menu had all the European countries listed as “Old Country”, and North American ones as “New Country”, or something like that) And then when she brought us the bottle, she didn’t even bother asking us to try it first to see if it is acceptable, and just filled the glass.

But onto the food.

We ordered the mushroom soup and goat cheese spread as appetizers. They were both pretty good, the goat cheese was not that strong. But it comes with a bunch of bread that we filled up on.

For mains, we ordered the steak and frites and the rack of lamb. I thought the steak was nothing special, so rather disappointed by that. The lamb though, was very tender and flavourful, but it came out more rare than we would have liked, even though we wanted it medium rare. But we didn’t want to spoil it by sending it back, I suppose I prefer rare over medium, but it was just a tad too raw for me.

We didn’t have any room left for dessert (the late hour didn’t help of course), but next time, I would prolly want to try their white chocolate cheesecake. They also get their gelato from the gelato place in Uptown Waterloo, so I assume it would be cheaper just getting it directly from the source.

Oh, the washroom in the place is very fancy. They had LCD screens. I was amused to learn that they were showing the hockey game in the men’s room, while the ladies’ room had on a Grey’s Anatomy DVD. Oh, and the guys has 4 LCD’s, two by the sinks and one over each urinal. The females only has two. Humph.

So overall impression of the restaurant is that dispite the hype, it’s nothing special. The decor is definately very impression, but the food wasn’t that memorable. And the wine knowledge of the staff is rather lacking. It’s nice to have alternatives to The Keg to go for company meals, but it’s not somewhere I would go on my own all the time. The food wasn’t ridiculously expensive, but at $75 for 2, I would rather go elsewhere.

Oh, I also saw the CEO of my company eating there with his wife and friends. I was tempted to thank him for the meal when he walked by…

I took pictures of course, but they turned out too dark. Adobe Lightroom also expired, so there’s gonna be some delay in sorting through photos.