2 Meh Meals in Saskatoon, and 1 Great One

Last weekend we were in Saskatoon to see my mom.  For dinner on Friday evening we tried a new-to-us restaurant, Primal Pasta.  We were pretty excited to go to this place, as they make all the pasta in-house, and had good reviews.  Unfortunately, we were disappointed in our meal.

To start we had the caponata with buffalo mozzarella and bread:

It was decent, although for the price, we expected more (both in amount of mozzarella, and quality of the dish).  The bread was soft, and pretty good.

I ordered the rigatoni with goat cheese, mushrooms, tomatoes, greens and truffle oil:

And Christopher had the squid ink puttanesca conchiglie bottarga, with olives and capers:

Mine was alright, but not worth the price, as we could easily make this dish at home for a couple of dollars; it was was very basic.  Christopher's pasta was really under cooked; the shells were crunchy!  He is a puttanesca lover, but this one just didn't cut it.  We would have mentioned something to the server if it wasn't 20 minutes before closing time.  Since it was late and we were tired, we just ate quickly so we could get to our hotel to sleep.

Next time we want fresh pasta in Saskatoon, we'll go back to Little Grouse on the Prairie.

Unfortunately we had another mediocre meal the next morning, this time at Park Cafe.  It's hard to screw up an omelette and hashbrowns, but this place just doesn't have it down yet ...

The eggs were super dry, and the potatoes were bland.

The next day we had an excellent meal though!  We picked up a pizza from a newer place called Thirteen Pies.  My brother-in-law Riley recommended this restaurant to us.  The pizza is made with a sourdough crust - mmm!

We went inside to order the pizza to-go, and then sat and enjoyed a beverage while waiting for it.  The service was wonderful, and when the pizza came out it smelled amazing!  We couldn't wait to get it back to our hotel room to dig in.

If the pizzas have the same base (tomato sauce, or white sauce), you can get 1/2 and 1/2 to try two kinds.  We had The Killer Cheese (fior de latte, mozza, provolone, truffle honey, leeks, white sauce), and The White Walker (roasted mushrooms, provolone, mozzerela, ricotta, white sauce, truffle oil), and we couldn't pick a favourite of the two.  Both were fantastic!  It's Brooklyn-style pizza, but I think it is better than any pizza I've ever had in Brooklyn.

The sourdough crust was excellent.  We're looking forward to going back to Thirteen Pies many, many more times in the future.

The photo isn't great as it was dark, but the pizza is well worth a visit.

Our server at Thirteen Pies was surprised that we had a bad meal at Primal Pasta, and he encouraged us to give it another try sometime, so we might head back to Primal Pasta to see if they can impress us on a second visit.

Have you tried any new restaurants lately?  

Where is the best pizza in your city?

The Last of Chiang Mai - The Food!

We ate dinner at Italics, which was in the lower level of our hotel, a couple of times while in Chiang Mai.  One night Christopher had the tuna tartare:

And I had khao soi.

Another evening we ordered the pizza (you can pick four kinds, and they'll do a quarter of the pizza in each of your choices), and the lasagna to share, with bruschetta as a starter.

 

Everything was excellent!

A different day we shared the mango sticky rice for dessert:

Mango sticky rice is a very popular dessert in Chiang Mai, and it's super addictive. You can find it on the menu at most restaurants, and we made sure to get our fill.

We did a lot of walking on this trip, and stumbled upon many ice cream shops.

Durian ice cream!  (It's not great).

On Cloud Nine:

Janie Scoop:

Frozen yogurt from the mall:

This was one of the better walking cities we've been in, if not the best.  No matter where we were in the city, there was always somewhere to stop in for a coffee or a treat to rest our feet, and there was always something beautiful to see.

The streets are really narrow, there are no sidewalks in most areas, and the traffic is crazy, so you have to watch where you are going, but we got used to it quickly.

When we weren't on foot, we mostly used Grab.  I've never used Uber, but I am thinking Grab is similar.  We just got the app. and then entered where we wanted to go, and in under a minute the car would pull up to get us.  They dropped us off at our destination, and none of our rides were more than $4 CAD, even if we drove for 20 minutes.  Nearly everywhere we went had free WiFi, so we were always able to use that to book our next ride.

We also took one tuktuk, and a few rides in the songthaews, although Grab was a cheaper, safer, and more convenient option.  I'm super thankful that one of the hotel employees told us about this app. as it was so useful!

Songthaews (these ride share trucks are everywhere)

We spent an afternoon wandering one of the malls, and ate lunch there.

One evening we went to a Korean restaurant for dinner.

We had a fabulous late-night green curry at Warm Up Cafe, while checking out the band.

We saw a couple of live bands on this vacation; there seems to be a big music scene in Chiang Mai.

Daddy's Antique Cafe was a lovely, charming little place, and it also had excellent chicken wings and house-made pasta (the pasta picture died with my phone).

We snacked on stuffed jalapenos at Rustic and Blue:

Cheesy fries with beet mayo at some over-priced pub:

And all sorts of new and exciting flavours of snacks from good old 7-Eleven.  They have so many 7-Elevens in Chiang Mai; it feels like they are on every corner.

The larb seaweed was really tasty:

But these lemon chips were horrible!  They tasted like Vicks lemon cough drops.  Good in cough drop form, horrendous in chip form.

We were pretty sad to leave Chiang Mai, but we will definitely go back.

Fortunately there was delicious ramen in the Taipei airport, so that helped to make our very, very, long journey home not so rough.

Do you have any spring/summer travel plans?  

Camping?  Road trip?  Somewhere far?