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| - The Kilt and Caber was set up as part of the cartoon setting of McKenzie Towne, but has become much more. Mac-Town, as the kids call it, is the strangest part of Calgary with its faux-European design, complete with "downtown" street names like High St. and the like.
Luckily, my cousin is the mayor of Mac-Town, and I've been able to look past the over-crowded insanity of the place to find a few gems like the Kilt and Caber.
At first glance, it looks like the typical "neighbourhood pub" facade. But through some strange coincidence of money and location, it has become the place it seemed to be pretending to be. On weekends, the place is as crowded as the community it's in. Beer is spilling everywhere, the game is always on and you can barely carry on a conversation at times. But that works to its advantage. The people are real and they're actually doing something right.
The food is great and I've never had a bad meal there. On a fateful, less-crowded night, I got into an argument with the barkeep over the proper pour of a Guiness, which he told me was too difficult considering how busy it was. A quick glance around produced no evidence of this (on a Tuesday night there were maybe 20 people, compared to the hundreds that usually show up). But the locals assured me the man was decent at heart and meant well, so I let it go. It's a Scottish-themed place after all and perhaps he was trying to make a point....
In any case, the Kilt's servers are top rate, even when it really is busy. And yes, they all wear kilts. Their homestyle meatloaf is one of the best things on the menu. One dark night I was actually able to finish the whole thing.
I give the waitresses top marks and actually look forward to my sojourns to that "Olde" pub, despite the bastardization of the English language in that "Towne".
Something real exists in a place that tries its best not to be real....
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