Sunday, June 11, 2006

Canmore - the finale.

Scott and I got back from Canmore this afternoon. As I have written before, I get to go to Canmore for work a couple of times a year. Saturday morning meetings, my company picks up the hotel bill and Scott comes along. It looks like this was the last trip for me. I'm going to be handing that part of the job to someone else in my office. And honestly I'm not sad about it. There was a whole lot of drama before, during and after this meeting. It put a black cloud over me from Thursday to today. So knowing that this was our last free hotel trip to Canmore, Scott and I ate two very lovely meals yesterday at 2 restaurants we haven't been to before.

We had lunch yesterday at Tapas Restaurant. It's just off the main street, in an old red house. Look at the beautiful art on the wall:
Isn't that lovely? We decided to try a few dishes and ordered 2 small plates and one Spanish Lunch with 2 sides. We ordered a vegetarian salad with chickpeas, feta and orange aioli for our main to come with gazpacho and spanish rice. Our two small plates were Patatas Bravas ( fierce potatos) and Cojones del Conquistador (meatballs in tomato and green olive sauce).

Above is the soup and rice and a green salad.

Here are the meatballs. They were to die for.

Patatas Brava with Aioli. Very good and VERY spicy.
It was all very very good. But didn't I say something about a salad with chickpeas and feta and orange aioli? It never came. The waitress screwed up with the green salad instead. We were too full to eat any more, but I passively aggressively mumbled about it for a few minutes anyway.
Here is the copper door at the Copper Door Restaurant. We were going to have dinner there, but went to Zona's Late Night Bistro instead. We went late (for us anyways), about 8:30. They were pretty busy, with only a couple of empty tables. The hostess told us the only room she had was on their covered patio. We thought that sounded fine. Turns out the covered patio is more of a storage room. There were 2 other occupied tables in there, though no one looked really happy about it. By the time we had a drink and had started on our appetizer - a very nice tamarind and cheese naan bread, we were the only two people in the room. On one hand it was sort of nice to have our very own room. On the other hand I felt like we had been exiled. A peek inside the door showed us that there were still empty tables available. A few minutes later on a trip to the bathroom I could see even more. We asked our waitress why we were on the patio when there were tables available. She said the hostess had told her that's where we wanted to sit. Hmmmm. We were moved inside to a little corner table and enjoyed it much more.
I had the most incredible lasagne of my life - Chicken Coconut Lime Lasagne. I could eat that every day and not get tired of it. The noodles were layered with chicken cheese and coconut lime sauce. It was topped with shredded coconut that was browned and crisped in the oven. Fantastic. On the side was a small mango and pear salad. Scott had Moroccan Molasses Leg of Lamb Curry. The lamb was so tender it was unbelievable. It was served with jasmine rice and a terrific apple mint chutney. The best meal we've had for a while.

oh hotel hot tub. I think I'll miss you most of all.
I also bought some ginger candy and organic chocolate. Shockingly, I have not eaten either yet.
I also bought some Nutritional Yeast Flakes. Why? What am I going to do with them? I don't know yet.

New pepper grinder from The Colorful Cook.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like you had a great time!!

I love Green & Black's chocolate, it's really good!

jasmine said...

What great photos and such good descriptions of the food.

I really like the look of that door :)

j