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| - I've had a couple of cocktails and the odd appy at Raw Bar, but last night was my first full dinner. I was surprised it wasn't a little busier. Maybe everyone else was enjoying their cocktails poolside. What, wait? Poolside? Yes, one of the charms of Raw Bar! You don't need to be a hotel guest to lounge by the table with one of their summer cocktails when the weather's warm. If you're there for a cocktail, I've had the Tea Jito and the Maple Colada. The Tea Jito is well worth trying, while the Maple Colada is an interesting take on a Pina Colada. I'm not usually a fan of Pina Coladas, they're just too coconut-y, but the Maple Colada cut down on the coconut, though I don't think the maple flavour was all that evident. Maybe the pineapple overpowered it? Not sure.
Anyway, dinner during Yelp Eats was inside and it was great. I was tempted by the $45 Chef's Tasting Menu, but opted for a couple of items from the regular menu.
To start, we ordered the Dungeness Crab and mango roll. Lovely presentation, it was sliced into 8 pieces and made for a nice appy for a few of us to share. This is the kind of sushi I first started eating back when I didn't know any better and didn't really like sushi. It's a pretty safe appy for all. It also came with a bit of calamari on the side. That I loved! Another of our party ordered the BC Spot Prawn and papaya salad roll. Also not a bad starter in my mind, though if you've got guests with you that get weird about food texture, they may not enjoy the "roll" part of this appy.
Next course for me was the Heirloom tomato salad. It came with soft goat cheese (have you ever seen hard goat cheese?), forest mushrooms and aged balsamic. I liked that the aged balsamic came in a little Chinese spoon at the edge of my plate so I could decide how much or how little of it to drizzle on. The server bringing me my salad told me the tomatoes came from Lethbridge and were grown on vines more than 100 years old. Really? 100 year old vine? That didn't seem possible to me. And yet, a brief internet search brought up a few results saying this very same thing! Either way, the salad gets a 3.5 star rating. I think it could've used a few more pieces of goat cheese. Also, I'm no tomato expert, but I do like my tomatoes sweet (the Roma tomatoes I ate in Italy spoiled most tomatoes for me, except for grape tomatoes, I could eat bucket loads of those, popping them in my mouth like candy). These were not all that sweet, but they were firm and a lovely shade of red. Definitely on par with a good ol' Alberta right off the vine.
For my main course, I ordered the Pad Thai. It was incredibly plentiful! Which is great if your walking in famished from a day of exploring Calgary. Don't get your hopes up on authentic Thai food though, Raw Bar is not the place for that. I didn't think it had quite enough spice in the sauce and it was more a bowl full of noodles and I don't think they were stir fried. Don't get me wrong, I still ate about half my order and brought the rest home for later.
I wish I had room for dessert! Instead I opted to finish off with a cappuccino, which came with rock candy to sweeten it. Tasted a-ok to me!
If you're having trouble finding a spot to park, the website mentions surface and underground parking at Hotel Arts. So check with the boys at the front door.
In retrospect, part of me is happy the resto wasn't busier last night. By about 830 it had filled up to about 2/3 capacity, but the noise level remained low and the DJ kept the tunes to a nice background beat (Sabz & Angelo, I was right! That piano bit I was trying to figure out IS from American Beauty http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=al21Vtlsg4A). Our party trickled in between 7 and 8 and we stayed until nearly midnight chatting.
What would I improve about Raw Bar? A couple of things in the decor. Raw Bar feels like a theatre set to me, which also means it feels a bit unfinished. Sabahat N noted the curtains along the walls and felt like something was missing at the bottom of them. And though the red chairs look cool, they're hard when you sit down in them and complete that feeling of a theatre set. But maybe that's the point? It is Hotel Arts after all....
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