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| - Rouge Bistro (or known as Bistro Rouge on Yelp) is a fancy restaurant tucked away in a corner of a strip mall in Strathcona Square on the west end of Calgary. It is beside a Pizza Hut. But do not let this deceive you. For beside the mediocre chain that serves the most greasy and unhealthiest pizza in the new world - and one of the greater culprits for overrunning America's population with disgusting fatbodies I might add - is a restaurant that will blow you away with its high quality food, service, and ambience!
Ok, maybe that is an exaggeration, and I don't want to set the bar too high for this place, but personally, I feel this place is all sorts of great.
The first time I came here, I took my mom out for lunch. She had seen an ad in Palate magazine that showcased Rouge Bistro's mouth watering burger, and said she would like to try it one day. So the next week, we decided to check it out.
We got there at 4pm on a Saturday, when the place had just opened. We wanted to sit in the restaurant instead of the lounge, and though the restaurant side doesn't officially open till 5pm, they were nice enough to let us sit there anyways because the servers and kitchen was already ready to take on the evening's guests. The restaurant side had white tablecloths, and big windows, meaning a lot of sunshine comes in. We were the only two in the restaurant, at which point I told mom that I had booked the whole place out so we could eat in peace.
Both ma and I ordered the Bistro Burger. It looks just like the picture in the ad, which is unusual if this were a fast food chain restaurant. For sides, she got the salad and I got the truffle oil fries. The burger was excellent, and falls into the category of what I would call an artisan burger. This means a good quality fresh bun, lots of veggies, and a beef patty that is made in-house with its own special ingredients. This isn't a greasy burger by any means. The best way I can describe it is it's just a really quality burger with ingredients and veggies that seemed very fresh. Sort of like that 80's McDLT commercial made it seem like MickeyD's would sell you a really fresh burger where the hot stayed hot and the cool stayed crisp. (It's the hottest taste, you can't resist.) The McDLT was a huge disappointment when I was growing up, along with the realization Nicole from 5th grade liked that dweeb "Lee" instead of me and the fact that propeller beanie caps didn't actually let you fly, but the Bistro Burger from this place did not disappoint! In fact, if you Youtube the 80's McDLT commercial, this burger accomplishes the type of burger you would EXPECT from the McDLT! Yes, it's that fresh and that good!
Next, I tried the truffle fries. They were magnificent in a way that make you see fries, and even food, in a different light. Like, if say, you never liked red haired girls, then one day, you meet one that you start having feelings for. You never realized what you were missing until now. Except, pretend you've never even seen a ginger in your life, and suddenly, you meet that same redhead. The feeling would be sublime and transcendent in a way that is hard to put into the English language. The truffle fries here are like that. You get the feeling that the combination of truffle oil, potatoes, mystery spices, and sweet custom made ketchup was a craving you both never had, and always had. It is a transformative awareness which forces you to ponder life's great mysteries, like, what other people, places or things can shift my paradigms and beliefs in such a way that this side order of salty potato snacks have shifted my thinking of how differently good fries can be? It is a question that I still ask myself to this day.
My mom's salad was ok. As I've said in my other reviews, I'm a man that likes to eat meat, so it is not my place to judge the lifestyle choices of others. Live and let live, I say. Ok, the truth is the *only* reason I ate some of it was because mom forced me to - due to my past vocal protestations as a kid of not eating the veggies she put in front of me. I insisted that the lettuce in the burger had satisfied my weekly quota, and that our neanderthal ancestors were mostly hunters, and they survived, but she was hearing none of it. This is one of the perils of taking your mom out to lunch I suppose.
I also went to this restaurant with a friend of mine a week later and ordered the same thing. This time we sat in the lounge, which was wooden and dark like all the others. No complaints there. I also have to file an official protest regarding the price listed on Yelp. It says this place is $30 and up per meal, but the lunch menu, including the Bistro Burger, was around $17. I've never come here for dinner, but maybe that's what the price is referring to. 17 bucks is really nothing, and that is around the price you would be paying at a Earl's or Joey Tomatoes for a burger anyways. For a hamburger as good as the Bistro Burger, that is fantastic value.
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