For the Love of...: …Selkirk Grille (Heritage Park, Calgary)

Overall - 9/10
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Food - 9/10
Service - 9/10
Ambiance - 9/10

The Selkirk Grille has an ambiance that is hard to beat.  Set in Heritage Park, the restaurant doesn't just rely on it's vintage charm but also their consistently excellent food to draw it's clientele.  In the few times we have eaten their food, we have never been let down- reminding us that we should definitely come here more often.  The fact that their ingredients are locally produced and organic is just icing on the cake.

We started the evening with seafood appetizers- the calamari and crab/shrimp cakes.  The batter on the calamari was crisp and went well with the olive pistou and diced raw red onion, but fell off the squid as soon as you went to pick it up with your utensil.

The crab and shrimp cakes were fresh and delicately seasoned, served on top of a sriracha aioli.

I chose the pan seared pickerel served with king oyster mushroom risotto, toasted pine nuts and braised greens.  The skin on the fish was crisp and the meat cooked to just the right doneness.  The flavours of the mushroom risotto and pine nuts worked perfectly.  In my opinion, a good balance in fish dishes are hard to find and Selkirk will go down in the books as a restaurant that can do fish justice.

The better half chose the special which on this particular evening was a play on surf and turf: seared ahi tuna and maple, soy braised park belly.  The fresh tuna was well seasoned and served on avocado cream, sriracha aioli and black rice risotto.  The black rice risotto was nutty, creamy and a unique take on black rice, as we are used to having it in sweet desserts in Asian cuisine.  The pork belly was tender but still had enough texture so it had satisfying bite without being tough.  Overall, this dish was interesting and successful in blending in Asian ingredients and Western techniques.

For dessert, we shared the apple pecan tart served with vanilla ice cream.  The flavours were good, but overall, the dish itself was slightly underwhelming because of the thinly sliced apples and sparse sprinkling of pecans.

We would recommend Selkirk Grille for a couples or family dining experience.