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Swiss Chalet – Calgary, Alberta

Over the weekend, we wanted to eat out but didn’t know where to go. I remembered that someone gave me some gift cards to Swiss Chalet, so we decided to stop by the one on 130th Ave SE. We went in during the late afternoon, and oddly, no one was around to greet us or seat us. We were a little confused, but that’s alright!

We started our lunch with Seasoned Dry Ribs and it came with 9 pieces of ribs for about $5.99 which wasn’t the best deal, but still within reason when you eat appetizers out. These lightly seasoned ribs was exploding with flavour and tasted great on it’s own. The pieces weren’t too big, but it was tender and juicy. The sweet chili dipping sauce was really good and tasted good – and just as it was described you get the sweetness and then a nice kick of heat followed!

With our meal, we also ordered a Chalet Chicken Soup which tasted like a regular chicken noodle soup. The consistency was thick and it was really hearty. It appears that the soup is made with their white chicken meat, simmered with vegetables and noodles in a savoury chicken broth.

I ordered their new menu item of Hickory Rotisserie Chicken Flatbread Rotisserie Chicken served hot with Hickory Mesquite BBQ sauce, Monterey Jack cheese, crispy bacon and mayo folded in a Panini grilled flatbread. I ordered this with a side of mashed potatoes and gravy. The smokey barbeque sauce was delicious and the main flavour of the flatbread. This was delicious and the cheese was perfectly melted. The mashed potatoes was gritty and cold, but I didn’t need to eat it since we had some delicious starters, I didn’t need to fill up on that!

Then, from their signature menu, we ordered a Classic Hot Chicken Sandwich – hot Rotisserie Chicken smothered in home-style gravy. This arrived and we looked confused because the actually sandwich was drenched in gravy! It was interesting as nothing could taste bad with gravy all over, however, the chicken meat was cold, and the gravy was really salty. The best thing on the plate was actually the medley of fresh vegetables… even the fries was cold and soggy. It was quite a disappointment as it was what they called a signature dish!

Overall, this was a fantastic lunch – of course not considering the signature dish of classic hot chicken sandwich. I’m really tempted to return to try their actual rotisserie chicken meals as well as their chicken is quite delicious!

Swiss Chalet

4916 130 Ave SE, Unit 300
Calgary, AB T2Z0B2
(403) 216-2557

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Homemade Spicy Sweet Potato Soup

I was wanting to make a soup for lunch – with a sandwich, so I roamed the grocery store and found some nice sweet potatoes. So, I figured I can make a delicious Sweet Potato Soup

Ingredients:
4 Cups Chicken Stock
1 lb chopped sweet potato
1 chopped onion

Seasoning:
Smokey Chipotle
White Pepper
Black Pepper
Cayenne Pepper
Salt

I first chop my onions and saute them until they’re golden. While they’re browning away, I chopped up my sweet potatoes into sticks. I got lazy to do them into chunks – which didn’t matter anyway as I use an immersion blender to make the soup thick and smooth afterwards.

When the onions have softened, I add the sweet onions into the pot and give it a few minutes to develop it’s flavours.

After a few minutes, I add the chicken stock into the pot and turn down the heat. After about 45 minutes, the sweet potatoes have soften – so I use the immersion blender in the soup. You will find the soup is quite thin, so let it cook down some more and it’ll thicken more and the flavours will become stronger.

Once the soup is to the right consistency, I then season up the soup and serve. This was my version of spicy sweet potato soup so I added smokey chipotle seasoning, cayenne pepper, white pepper, black pepper and some salt. I served this in a bowl with a gallop of sour cream. I’m not sure how much seasoning I used, but I kept tasting it until I was satisfied with the end result. It’s always best to add a little at a time until instead of adding too much and not knowing how to reduce the flavours.

Serve this soup hot and it’s really delicious. The sour cream helps cool the heat from the spicy, so it was a bowl of soup that was beautifully balanced.

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Fortune House Restaurant

We just arrived as an entire family to Toronto and just in time for Chinese New Years. Well, it’s kind of hard to miss as festivities go on for about 2 weeks! We went to Fortune House Restaurant on Birchmount and celebrated Chinese New Years.

The first dish we ordered was Silky Egg with Shrimp and they used really large shrimps in this dish. The egg was made perfectly as the egg was cooked such that the omelette was silky and soft.

Our next dish was half a Marinated Chicken with Ginger Oil and this is one of my all time favourite chicken dishes. I like a cold chicken and I absolutely adore Chinese ginger oil sauce as it tastes good on anything!

Here, we have this clay pot which is filled with lots of goodies – from shrimp, tofu, bbq pork and veggies.

As this was still apart of CNY dinner, anything long is good, so we had some Long Beans and it’s sauteed with chilies. It’s a simple dish, and when dishes are simple, it’s crucial that it’s done perfectly! This was definitely one of the hits of the evening!

Another dish with veggies was Beef with Mushrooms and onions and to be honest, I can’t remember much about this dish, so it wasn’t anything extraordinary – but, I don’t remember not liking it either. So, it must have been a decent dish that we enjoyed! 🙂

I personally don’t eat a lot of eel, but when it comes to these dinners, you’re required to at least have something of everything, and when the Black Bean Eel came out, I was a little hesitant to try, but I must say, it was pretty good! I think the sauce was a perfect compliment, and even though it was full of bones in the eel, the meat was really soft! The eel was fresh enough that there wasn’t any fishy tastes or smell to it, so it worked well at the end.

My parents were stating that they eat more dishes now days without meat (even though I want to say it’s not true), regardless my aunts ordered Lo Hon Braised Mixed Vegetables in Hot Pot for them. It was full of Chinese fungus and greens, but the flavour they used in the sauce was really quite good! I think they used “fu yu” which is a type of fermented bean curd. It would’ve been even better of a dish if they added more fu yu in as it was really subtle tasting… when it should be more prominent!

Pork is an important dish for Chinese New Years as some say pork symbolizes progress. We ordered Pig Feet and this one was prepared such that the flavours was infused into the meat and it’s very tender. There are many ways to make pig feet, but often it’s quite time consuming – whether you braise it or use the pressure cooker.

Overall, the food was really good and the service was quick too – as they were really trying to turn tables to seat more customers. We later came back another day for lunch and the food was also really delicious! They do everything at this restaurant, so it doesn’t matter what you’re craving – they’ll have it!

Fortune House Restaurant on Urbanspoon

Fortune House Restaurant in Scarborough

2598 Birchmount Road
Toronto, ON M1T
(416) 292-1260

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Chiu Chow Boy – Toronto, Ontario

We didn’t know where to go for dinner as it was a family dinner with lots of people. It isn’t easy finding place for a large party over the weekend and still during Chinese New Years. We ended up making a reservation at Chiu Chow Boy in Scarborough located in a strip plaza on Kennedy Road. This was one of the best dinners we had as the food was very flavourful and well made.

We ordered lots of dishes, as mentioned, there was an entire army of family for this dinner. We ordered Duck in Marinated Sauce which is like a soy sauce marinated duck. We had a half order and it was still quite large! The lo-sui flavour was infused into the duck meat thoroughly and made it really good.

This is an interesting dish that we enjoyed, it’s a Stir Fried Pig’s Intestine with Sweet & Sour Preserved Vegetable and it was really good. The sweet and sour flavours was balanced really nicely with the preserved vegetables and the intestines. I really like eating the intestines and the texture is really unusual. It’s important to eat intestines only when they’re cleaned properly and they cleaned it thoroughly.

I really liked the dish of Deep Fried Baby White Fish with Spicy Salt from Chiu Chow Boy as the fish was deep fried perfectly. The tenderness of the fish meat and the perfectly crispy coating was delicious. The spicy salt sprinkled on top was so good it was one of my most memorable dishes from this restaurant. It’s soo good that I didn’t even need any other dipping sauce or anything!

An all time favourite dish for me in “late night – da laang” style (which is a Chiu Chow style eating with white congee) is Pan Fried Oyster Patties Chiu Chow Style! This was great because we ordered it as a normal dish and I pretty much ate a quarter of the entire dish! Sometimes, this dish is called an Oyster Omelette, but those tend to be thinner. This omelette has just the perfect amount of oysters and stuff ratio to egg which is a nice treat as most places have an omelette with a few oyster pieces floating around!

Our family loves braised pork belly, and normally with large gatherings, we’d order some. It’s less guilty when everyone has a little bit of pork belly to indulge instead of a big plate to yourselves. This time, we got Pork Belly with Taro Root which is braised slices of pork belly and some fried taro slices and then smothered with some sauce on top. This dish is always an appetizing dish no matter how you make it because the sauce is always delicious over rice!

Anyone who knows me knows I love fish and I eat it no matter how it’s prepared! We ordered Braised Garoupa with Tientsin Cabbage in Hot Pot and this is one of the tastiest fish hot pots! Lots of sauce, deep fried fish pieces, it was just perfect! It’s a great winter dish as hot pots tend to stay hot longer on the table.

Finally, a dish I actually don’t eat since I claim it tastes like “nose bleeds”, but a lot of people in my family likes it… it’s Blood Jello & Chives! Yup, it’s actually what you think it is, and I know the texture as a silken tofu. The texture is great but I can’t get past the taste — the entire plate did disappear so it means it was good, right?

Chicken with Chinjew Sauce which is basically deep fried chicken pieces with deep fried kale. I normally really enjoy this dish, but they over fried everything so the chicken was dry and almost tough. They seemed to have over salted this dish. It was the only dish on the table that didn’t get finished which was really too bad as it’s a simple dish to make – you just got to do it right!

Our vegetable dish was Satay Beef on Gai Lan and the gai lan was cooked perfectly! I never remember how delicious it is to just use plain good quality satay sauce on something like steamed/boiled gai lan! It’s a small picture, but it was pretty much beef in satay sauce poured on top of the gai lan! it was a total hit as you can see, I couldn’t even get a shot of it without chopsticks!

Overall, it was a good restaurant! The service was like any other Chinese restaurant, so nothing special. The rates weren’t too bad either. The food was full of flavour and the quality was really nice! I’d return here as it was a location that I remember a lot from the trip due to the food!

Chiu Chow Boy in Scarborough

3261 Kennedy Rd
Toronto, ON M1V
(416) 335-0336

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Karma Fine Indian Cuisine – Calgary, Alberta

When the weather is cold outside, and after being what seems to be stuck at home, spice is always something I crave. Whether it’s Thai curry, Indian Curry, Szechuan spices or whatever, I need the heat of the spice! This time, I went for Indian Curry not too far from home off 130th Ave Southeast to Karma Fine Indian Cuisine. The location of Karma is just off Deerfoot Trail and 130th Eastbound – and you turn in towards Canadian Tire and Superstore.

I was going to enjoy a nice hot cup of Chai Tea, but opted out for something a tad different. I had a glass of Mango Lassi which is a very common Indian and Pakistani drink which is yoghurt based (lassi). Basically it’s made of pureed mango, yoghurt and water – and depending on how much water/ice they put it would depend on how thick it is. Sometimes, some places have it so thick that you suck so hard to only get a little drop. The consistency here was really good, as it was thinner than a milkshake, but definitely thicker of a drink. One thing I like about this drink from Karma is the fact they don’t use ice! It never separated which is something I like about my drinks!

This visit to Indian food, I really wanted to try different things, and so, instead of the usual suspect of coconut rice, this time, we got Saffron Rice which looked like a bowl of Christmas rice! It was beautiful! It didn’t have as much flavour on it’s own like coconut rice, but it was very fragrant!

Staying on the different track, I wanted to have lamb with my curry, so we ordered a Lamb Boona which they described as a Karma special made with traditional curry cooked with herbs and spices. This sounded like a wonderful choice as it’s like their “house special” and to me, those are always good! The lamb was really tender, and there were quite a few pieces of lamb in the curry too! We got the curry in mild and you definitely get the kick, but it’s a tender kick.

Now, for the twist on my naan, we normally get the garlic naan (which is fantastic from Karma), we got Keema Nan which is made with white flour bread stuffed with mildly spiced round beef. We normally don’t get the stuffed ones, but since I went to England and tried Indian Edge with their stuffed naan, I had to get it again (at least some version of it!). This was delicious and I would definitely get keema nan again, or other meat stuffed into my nan! Keema naan is just stuffed with some sort of “seasoned ground/minced meat” and varies from location to location, as Keema just means “minced meat”

Then, for my favourite dish of curry for the evening, we ordered a plate of Prawn Korma which obviously had prawns in it, but cooked in a mild curry enriched with cream, nuts and spices.

My overall experience here at Karma was a VERY positive experience, and I have no problems returning or bringing friends & family here who like eating Indian curries! I’m sure when my sister and brother-in-law come and visit me, I’ll take them here for dinner! I’m sure they’ll love it – but it’s definitely not as good as the curry where they are…

Karma Fine Indian Cuisine

4600 130 Ave SE
Calgary, AB
(403) 257-4977