Veggie Bites

This was just a cake and drink stop so that we could check out the 13 rolls of film I took in the Rockies that we had just picked up from the processing place. Martin went chocolate all the way and had a chocolate mousse brownie and a chocolate gelati shake. Not being in a very chocolatey mood myself, I went for the cheesecake and a chai latte – Indian chai tea with a bit of chocolate melted into it… The highlight of the whole thing (apart from the awesome photos! was the chai latte… I am going to have to figure out how to make this drink! Prairie Ink is a cafe in an independent book shop – if you are a book and cake lover, it is well worth a browse through the bookshop on the way up to the cafe for a chai latte!

We read that this place had a good variety of vegetarian options, so we went out of our way to go here and eat. They did have an excellent variety of vegetarian options, as most Indian restaurants do. We started with a vegetarian appetiser plate – containing samosas (no peas!), paneer bhaji, pakora and an interesting cold chickpea and potato salady thing. It also came with a variety of chutneys. The paneer bhaji was the highlight on this plate – however, everything else was also pretty good. We followed this with malai kofta, dhal and navratan veggies, along with rice and a variety of breads. The highlight of the meal was definitely the malai kofta! The dahl and the veggies were not as spicely flavoursome as we are used to. The description of the bread that I ordered on the menu was raisins, almonds and something else blended into a naan bread, however when it arrived, it also had those glacé cherries chopped up and blended into it – meaning that I absolutely hated it… I hate those cherry things. Luckily Martin didn’t care too much and shared his chapati and roti with me! All in all it was an ok Indian meal, I think we are completely spoilt by having a really good Indian restaurant very close to home and sadly this means all Indian we eat will be compared to that…

This was the other restaurant in the Lake Louise Inn and our only option for breakfast. We decided to go with the breakfast buffet as we thought it would provide us with enough veggie options as well as cereal, toast and fruit etc. However, after piling my plate with scrambled eggs and hash browns, I discovered that there was more than just potatoes in the hash browns… there was also shredded bacon in it – YUCK! They really should tell you that, especially since they went to all that effort to have a sign saying hash browns in front of the bain marie. So, I ended up with scrambled eggs, a couple of dry bits of french toast and some oatmeal. The fruit looked horrible and all the cheese that they had was sitting on top of slices of meat… all in all, not a great breakfast!

It was mid afternoon, we were hungry, but didn’t really want a meal since dinner wasn’t going to be too far away, so when we saw the falafel king, we thought it would be ideal… it wasn’t. I managed to order my falafel ‘sandwich’ without pickles, but it did come with some horrible looking pink cabbage, which also turned out to be horrible tasting as well… how on earth does cabbage get pink? I know there is such a thing as red cabbage – but this wasn’t it! Martin had a falafel plate which he thought tasted marginally better than my roll… however, we were unimpressed with the service as well as the food. They used the same tongs for meat and falafels, and I actually saw a ‘tong full’ of chicken being moved over the top of my falafel roll… and on top of that, they also have a fresh juice bar, but couldn’t do all the varieties they had on the main menu – we had to select from the alternate menu, which had apple listed, but when Martin ordered it, he was told they couldn’t do plain apple… weird. And after all of that, they didn’t even offer Martin the change when he paid… it was less than a dollar – but that isn’t the point… my recommendation? Never eat here!

We were a little wary of a Thai restaurant called Rose Garden, but as we were eating the restaurant filled up and we overheard people commenting that they knew the food was good and that is why they were eating there. We ordered our food, but hadn’t been given a wine list, so had to wait quite a while to order wine. They only had house wine by the glass, but when we asked what type of wine the house white was, we were told it was a merlot, and when we enquired about the house red, we were told that was a merlot too and that both were Italian… Since we both kind of doubted that the house white was a merlot, we opted for a glass of the red each despite the fact that we would have preferred a nice chardonnay with our curry! For our entree we ordered fresh veggie spring rolls, and fairly quickly some deep fried spring rolls appeared at the table – I enquired as to whether these were the fresh ones and the waitress muttered something about the wrong table and took them away. She returned a few minutes later with the fresh variety and apologised, saying the kitchen made a mistake… Following this we had ordered a red veggie curry and a veggie pad thai. Both were delicious. The red curry was nice and flavoursome without being too hot, and the pad thai is one of the best pad thai dishes I think I have ever eaten! Given the trouble we had ordering wine and the trouble the ladies at the next table had ordering dessert, we decided to skip dessert and head back to the hotel. The food was good, and there was a good variety of veggie dishes and by the time we had finished the restaurant was half full – on a Thursday night… definitely a sign of something good!

We read that this place was vegetarian and vegan friendly and were disappointed to discover that it is only open for breakfast and lunch, not dinner. So, we returned for breakfast… and it is vegetarian and vegan friendly! We both had scrambled eggs which came with breakfast potatoes and toast. Breakfast potatoes are a great invention – kind of like real hash browns only they can be done with more variety – sometimes there are onions or something else added… and they are yummy – I could eat them every day! martin also ordered granola and fruit – which looked ok – I am not much of a muesli person though. There is quite a variety of breakfast options to choose from and the most popular seemed to be the breakfast wrap to go. At least it seemed popular with the park rangers or emergency workers that congregated around the front of the cafe! If you can make your way through them, this place is definitely worth a try!

Since the food here was pretty good, and we had so much trouble trying to find decent veggie food in Jasper, we headed back to Lake Louise to spend the night because we knew we could eat here… We didn’t really try anything too different to last time – because we knew it was good. Again we had the cheesy garlic bread – which wasn’t quite as good as last time… but since our mains were also a little different, we put it down to being a different chef that night! We also ordered a Greek salad, which was ok but, as I have discovered previously, North American olives have no taste. There was a time when this would have made me happy and I would have eaten all the olives because they had no taste – however, now that I actually like olives, I really, really want them to have that strong olivey taste… I am going to give up ordering things with olives in them – it is just too disappointing… Martin went for the penne with Italian tomato sauce and roasted veggies, while I ordered the linguini with rose sauce and roasted veggies. Both dishes were delicious, although the ‘roasted’ veggies were not really roasted! We washed all this down with a couple of glasses of red wine – not the overly expensive Australian wine that was on the menu though! We decided to skip dessert, but couldn’t go past the hot chocolates – Martin went for the hot chocolate supreme which contained amaretto, while I had the Caribbean hot chocolate which contained Malibu… Mmmmm, I have discovered a new use for alcohol – putting it in hot chocolate… thank goodness there will be a little bit of winter left when we get home for me to experiment with this idea!

We ate breakfast here twice – which means it couldn’t have been too bad the first time! Craig’s is kind of an ‘old style’ diner with booths and a counter near the kitchen where it looks like you can sit and eat and have a waitress top up your coffee and call you hon’! We didn’t sit at the counter… They serve breakfast all day which was great for us because it was really kind of brunch that we were eating, and there is a lot of choice on the menu… The first time I had eggs benedict with mushrooms and hash browns. That’s real hash browns made with real chopped up potatoes and fried in a pan – not the mashed up, battered and deep fried variety… The second time I opted for the veggie supreme omelette with a side of hash browns (yep – love them potatoes!). Both dishes were great… The poached eggs were a little runny for my tastes, but the hollandaise sauce covered it up pretty well… Both days Martin ordered the veggie scramble – served on a muffin with fresh tomato, as well as oatmeal – which was actually quite nice. Not sure what is on the rest of the menu, but breakfast is definitely good!

We looked at a lot of places for some decent veggie options before we found this place. It was a little scary – I haven’t been in a Chinese restaurant like this for many, many years! We ordered veggie spring rolls for our entree which were pretty good, they came with a very unusual sauce – which looked like it could have been mango, but didn’t taste like it. For our mains we ordered Mapo tofu (without the pork), vegetable chow mein and the waiter talked us into a dish called Laho vegetables. The Mapo tofu was pretty good – nice and spicy but contained peas! The chow mein was good, not the best I have ever had, but certainly not awful. The Laho vegetables dish was horrible. It had unidentifiable bits in it, which Martin thought was egg and mushrooms, however, that wasn’t the only thing that put me off – the flavour was pretty awful too. The waiter told us that it is a dish that you like more the more you eat it, which makes me wonder why he would recommend it to people the very first time they ate there… Oh well, possibly not the best food, but certainly the best veggie option, especially if you didn’t want pizza or a veggie burger!

We had dinner here after a long day checking out the sights around Lake Louise, so needless to say, we were pretty hungry! We started with the garlic cheese bread and a garden salad. The bread was great – lots of garlic and lots of cheese… The salad was also good, but being a tomato lover, it would have been nice if there were more than 2 small pieces of tomato in it. For mains, Martin ordered fettuccine with basil and garlic pesto and I ordered spaghetti with rose sauce, after discovering that is was a creamy tomato type sauce. The servings didn’t look huge when they arrived but, as you ate, you realised how much was actually on your plate. They also came with more garlic bread (although sadly, not the cheese variety!). And we washed it all down with a glass of local chardonnay, which smelled better than it tasted, but it wasn’t bad! Martin had already decided that he was going to order dessert, and at some point I decided that I was probably full enough to not bother, but I was going to try the Caribbean hot chocolate (hot chocolate with coconut rum). However, the waitress was a little slow coming to take our dessert order and the chocolate brownies were calling my name, so when she did come and take our order, the words ‘chocolate brownies’ just came out of my mouth! When they arrived, they were huge – 2 large triangles, where if you put them together they would have been the size of a large piece of bread. This meant, of course, that Martin had to eat one of them, because there was no way I could have eaten them all! Martin did manage to fit one in, though, along with his vanilla panacotta, which he declared was delicious!