Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream Heaven from Blue Giraffe Creamery

Blue Giraffe Creamery Truck

Although the food truck landscape has expanded drastically in Edmonton, I have still longed for a food truck that is focused solely on dessert. Enter Blue Giraffe Creamery, a new food truck own and run by University of Alberta Business student, Avery Daugela, focusing on all natural, preservative free ice cream made to order with liquid nitrogen!

Avery, who is currently studying entrepreneurship and still has one semester left in school was inspired by her sister, who told her of a store in Australia that she visited that made ice cream only with liquid nitrogen. Wanting to get her feet work on starting her own business, she decided that a liquid nitrogen ice cream truck would be a unique and inexpensive way to start her own business.

Sip 'n Savour at The Taste of Edmonton 2013

Smoked Jerky with Apple Puree

I have attend Taste of Edmonton for many years, but the last few years have bemoaned the fact that most of the food vendors have served the same item year after year. The point of the event is to allow restaurants to showcase what they have to the Edmonton public who might never have stepped a foot inside their restaurants, and hopefully garner them some new customers. For the customers, it allows us to try a myriad of different food and see if there are restaurants that we like, but had never visited previously. However, it seems as though most restaurants have shied away from changing their menu year after year, and have opted to stick with items they know were popular in the past and sold well. As a result, I've found the past few years that I've attended fairly boring, eating the same items over and over again.

Indian Food on Brick Lane at The Monsoon

Poppadums

London is abundant with Indian restaurants, which a wander down Brick Lane confirms, as a multitude of Indian restaurants compete and vie for business. Their strategy is aggressive, with staff standing outside their respective restaurants trying to woo perspective customers by offering them a variety of different deals from free alcoholic beverages, to a percentage of the total bill, anything to get you through their restaurant doors. We opted to stop and try The Monsoon, an Indian restaurant who promised not only one free alcoholic beverage per person but also 30% off our total food bill.

Palatable Parkallen Restaurant

Hummus

Although I’d heard good things about Parkallen Restaurant from friends, I’d never actually gone. So when a Groupon for Parkallen Resturant went on sale, I took the opportunity to finally visit. The décor and furnishings inside the restaurant didn’t evoke a Lebanese or even Mediterranean feel, with only the hookahs located by the bar to signal that it was a Lebanese restaurant. In the middle was a large glass wine cellar, with a very impressive looking collection of wines, champagne and other liquors.

Revisiting Afternoon Tea at Claridges

Rose Champagne

Having visited on our first trip to London and had a great experience previously, I wanted to revisit to see if it was as good as I remembered it being on our first visit. After experiencing a disappointing afternoon tea experience our first week in London at Fortnum and Mason, I was really looking forward to afternoon tea at Claridges and knew this time not to eat before I went.

Nose to Tail at Hundred Bar + Kitchen

Chef Andrew Cowan

If there are two things you can count on when you go to a meal being cooked by Chef Andrew Cowan, it’s that every course has meat and that you will never leave hungry, even if you can eat like the Hulk. This past weekend, Hundred Bar and Kitchen hosted a Nose to Tail dinner featuring various parts of an Irving’s Farm pig that had been broken down the weekend before. That evening, it was an intimate event consisting of my humans and I, @ThePorkGirl and a friend, and Alan Irving (@berkypigs2008) – one of the owners of Irving’s Farm.

Boo & Moo Bites: Smashingly Delectable Burgers at Smashburger

Smashburger Canadiana Decorations

This has been a burger filled week, first I had burgers for lunch at The Burg on Saturday, then burgers for dinner from Drift Food Truck, and now more burgers for dinner at the grand opening of Edmonton’s first Smashburger!

Smashburger is a franchise started in 2007 in the United States. The franchise gets its name from the way that they actually cook the burgers. All of their burger patties are made from 100% certified Angus feeb, rolled into a big meatball. They cook the patties to order, so when a burger is ordered, they butter the grill and smash the meatball onto the 400 degree grill with a special tool they developed. Cooking them in this fashion with the butter caramelizes the bottom of the burger and creates a seared exterior that helps keep the juices in. The Sherwood Park location would be their first in the Edmonton area and their third location in Alberta with the other two located in Calgary. In fact, Alberta has the only Canadian franchise of Smashburger thus far.