FOOD: River Cree Casino hosts heirloom tomato festival
One imagines the heirloom tomato fetishists keeping the sacred seeds of the precious Brandywine Lollypop safe in lockets around their necks, only sharing their fruits with a select few of their privileged fellow heirloom tomato enthusiasts on special occasions. You’d think they were growing marijuana. The humble fruit – right, tomato is a fruit – […]
GRAFFITI CRACKDOWN: Police seize artwork from gallery opening
The owner of an Edmonton arts supplies store and gallery where police seized dozens of pieces of graffiti art this week says the raid will likely discourage illegal artists from going legitimate. Kim Fjordbotten, owner of The Paint Spot on Whyte Avenue, says six officers showed up at her business on June 14 shortly before […]
ART: Voyer vistas explode with colour
Mind the stairs as you make your way into the new Sylvain Voyer landscape exhibit opening Saturday at the Douglas Udell Gallery. A huge poplar tree blazes yellow against a deep blue fall Alberta sky, pretty much spanning the big feature wall ― and here’s betting more than one visitor stumbles up the steps as […]
Edmonton Pride Festival more than words
For those in the straightest quarters of Edmonton who don’t know, the word “Pride” in its proper form has come to mean “gay pride,” just as the word “gay” in all its meanings will apply to the big parade and subsequent party taking place Saturday at noon in downtown Edmonton. It’s the Edmonton Pride Parade. […]
FOOD: The fatti is fine at Castle Bake
You know that thing where you talk up a restaurant for so long to anyone who will listen that when the time comes to introduce your friends to it, you begin to think maybe it’s not actually as good as you’ve been making out? Or maybe it’s changed in some fundamental way that renders less […]
FOOD: Mamenche’s the real deal for Central American cuisine
The first time I had a pupusa, it was in the very rooms now occupied by Mamenche’s Restaurant (10824 97 Street, 780.497.0037), a relative newcomer among Edmonton’s Central American food emporia. Back then, its 97 Street premises were the original home of Acajutla, a pioneer of said niche which has since relocated to the Avenue […]
ART: Talent overcomes cultural supression in Alex Janvier at the AGA
The superb collection of some 90 artworks making up the Alex Janvier exhibit at the Art Gallery of Alberta touches on many levels. Primarily abstractionist, Janvier’s colourful, curvilinear assemblies inspired by traditional themes are well represented at the AGA, from their exploratory beginnings in the 1960s through the ‘70s when they became his most familiar […]
LIVE TO WORK, WORK TO LIVE: Zoning proposals good news for city artists
In the movies, artists live in studios in giant empty warehouses because the rent is low and there’s plenty of work space. They sleep next to their sculptures and paintings, and other artists ride the freight elevator up to attend their cool parties. Here in Edmonton, that would be illegal. There’s a movement at work […]
FOOD: Shawarma is superb at Dahlia’s Mediterranean Bistro
Seems like just yesterday that Montreal expat Fadi Smaidi, scion of a Lebanese food dynasty in Canada’s coolest city, opened Dahlia’s Mediterranean Bistro (10235 124 St.), named for his young daughter on Edmonton’s yet-to-be coolest street, 124th. The reasons for Smaidi’s pilgrimage to this particular northern waste are obscure to me but now, three years […]
