loungeburger

loungeburger.com

As my sister astutely pointed out, I owe you all a restaurant review and I didn’t do it.  Well here’s the thing, I think that says a lot about my experience there, it was forgettable.

loungeburger looks great when you first walk in and the bar really draws your attention with it’s great faux rock faces, unfortunately after about ten minutes you start to realize the serious need for a false ceiling in the place so that you don’t have to see the stacks of junk on the top floor.  Ok, admittedly it’s not likely that most people would notice this but I did and it drove me nuts.  The saving grace was the bathrooms which were pretty freaking awesome with a wicked patterned tile on the walls and some inventive sinks cut from marble.  [Full disclosure:  I LOVE bathrooms.  If I’m in a restaurant it’s what I check out first to know how classy (or not) the place is.]

True to it’s name loungeburger concentrates on burgers mostly and they are good.  But for a place that concentrates on burgers I expected more than good, I expected exceptional.  I had the Kobe Beef Burger with a salad and while it was better than Wendy’s it didn’t come anywhere close to my expectations.  For that matter I didn’t think it really lived up to the menu description which included horseradish aioli and a pretzel bun, neither of which I thought were in the burger that I received.  Couple that with the half dead lettuce mixed through my salad and I left feeling like a Happy Meal would have done more to brighten my day!

It would be unfair to end this review without pointing out that we did have good service and to a person, the four others with me absolutely loved their burgers and raved about them for quite a while.  I suppose my final assessment would be, try it and let me know what you think, but for heaven’s sake don’t look up because the ceiling is ugly.

Wurst Restaurant & Beer Hall

www.wurst.ca


Located on 4th Street in the old Forzani's Running Room building is a new restaurant named Wurst.  Thankfully it's not the worst I've been to.  See, I can make that play on words because they do it all the time.  It's a little bold and kind of lame if you ask me but I suppose it seems to be working for them.


When you walk in on the first floor you're greeted with a beautiful and elegant dinning room with large trees down the center and if you're looking for a nice place to take someone I'm guessing it's pretty grande. We on the other hand were wearing work clothes so we headed downstairs to the bar.  We chose Wurst tonight because Eric is building another bar by the same designer and we wanted to check out some of his other work and this new place.  Although Wurst is by the same designer as The Craft Brew House and the soon to be open Common Wealth it's owned by the same people who run the Mercato just down the street and is not actually related to the other two.  When you're down at the bar that's pretty hard to tell.  The designer used a lot of the same elements in all three places and given my unpleasant experience at The Craft Brew House I'm not sure you'd want to look like you're related.  All that being said we loved the interior which feels oddly like you're in a bunker in World War II, in a comforting way of course.  The large picnic style tables were the highlight for me and when you add that to their impressive selection of German beers and the personal beer stein lockers (great idea) it's hard not to feel like you're at a Bavarian Beer Festival.


Of course at any good beer festival you have to have beer and Wurst is packed with plenty of fine beers which you can get in sizes ranging from 200 ml testers to the whopping boot size which looks like it holds half a keg...ok maybe not quite that much.  We both tried the Erdinger Dunkle on the recommendation of a friend and it's absolutely become a new favourite.


Wurst's relationship to the Mercato shines through in the food which was German in influence and for the most part delicious.  We ordered the Apple Beet Salad which has a mustard-slaw-dressing and for me it was another highlight.  Eric and I gave it a 7.5/10 and I would recommend it to anyone.  Next up was the Pile of Bratwurst which comes with four Brats, braised beets and creamed potato.  Honestly I think Eric would have had another whole plate of this as the Brats had just the right amount of spice and the rest of the dish serves only to enhance the flavour.  We gave it an 8.5/10 and if you ever wish to bribe Eric I think this is the best way to his heart.  For our last dish we tried the Cast Iron Lamb Crepe, partially because it's lamb and partially because it sounded odd.  The dish certainly wasn't bad but we both found it greasy and a little bland.  Although they try to liven it up with a fresh salad on top it just isn't tangy enough to over-ride the grease in the rest of the dish.  It's too bad because I really feel this dish could hit the mark with a few small tweaks.  We gave the lamb a 4/10.


Last but certainly not least is the service.  Simply put it was very good.  Our waitress was quite attentive and when we had the unfortunate issue of finding a piece of plastic in our lamb she went immediately to Josh the Manager whom we then watched as he gathered the kitchen staff and found out exactly how this could have happened before coming to apologize and explain.   I felt it was exceptionally nice that he actually took the time to find out how it happened and explained it to us.  I haven't had that happen before.  In the end they took that dish off our bill and gave us a gift certificate for our next visit. 


Despite the lamb dish and it's many flaws (including the plastic) I'm going to give Wurst a 7/10.  I feel like it's a great new concept in Calgary and the other dishes we tried were great.  Add to that the customer service we got and I think it's the place to go if you're feeling German for the night or just want a good beer.  The only thing I really wish they had was a patio but I know that with City of Calgary regulations there's a good possibility that isn't an option.  If you're on 4th sometime soon walk past your old favourites and try out Wurst I think you'll find it lovely.