This year’s Calgary food festival fizzled. The rocket failed at lift off and it’s not hard to understand why. But start with the upside: the internet site clearly displayed the food on offer. The restaurants were conveniently listed and the prices well marked. Telephone numbers were front and centre. Anyone who wanted information could find it. Top marks to the web designer.

But…but…(cue sigh).

The occasion is conceived as restaurant promo. If you don’t regularly dine out, you’re supposed to be lured. After which the taste and ambience will, it’s hoped, keep you coming back. But many of the spots are downtown, and few Calgarians want to stay dressed up in suits and ties and away from home for the opportunity to discard $35 to $85 on indifferent cuisine. Overcooking, lack of imagination, where do we start? Plus wine and tip, the prices seemed to escalate way too fast. Even a lunch usually carried you over $25 plus wine, coffee and tip. Maybe it was my imagination, but last year’s range was more enticing; you could sample restaurants (in the evening yet!) for $25. And what’s the point of drawing a new customer if you serve tough poultry or beef? The chef has ample notice of your reservation and you’ve ordered ahead of time. There’s no excuse for a misjudged roast or lumpy gravy. All we do, with this Dine Out shambles, is confirm many Calgarians in their opinion that restaurant prices are way too high.

I might have figuratively struck out in the lottery, because there were 62 restaurants and I know they aren’t all bad, but the good suffered by association. There’s no excuse, in this day and age, for dry chicken breast and tough peaches. And not all goat cheese tastes the same. This was indifferent dining masquerading as a special treat. Should restaurant owners give their chefs more elbowroom in selecting the special menus? Greater discretion in food prep? If our chef had candidly told us the peaches (special menu) were tough, we might have spent extra and avoided them. And the restaurant would have gained our trust. Now it has neither much of our money nor our confidence. The food was boring, tasteless and expensive. The chef must have known. If not, it speaks volumes about the kitchen. Perhaps the master chef was ill. So, DineOut was a disappointment in 2008. Better luck next time.

(bb)

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 12:02 am and is filed under Notes & Queries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.