I like to celebrate my birthday all week (who wouldn’t!) but for my actual birthday, Mike and I decided to try La Ronde Revolving Restaurant in downtown Edmonton. I had wanted to try La Ronde for quite some time, but it’s definitely not a place we can just go to at any time (It’s not a cheap date! $$$).
Mike and I have eaten at the Stratosphere Revolving Restaurant Top of the World in Las Vegas, so we really wanted to add La Ronde to our list of revolving restaurants too. Of course as is the case it seems for most of our trying something in Las Vegas then trying something similar in Edmonton (Vegas Fogo De Chao – AMAZING! Edmonton Pampa – meh), we were kind of disappointed.
First I’ll say the view was great and certainly one that we’ve never gotten a chance to experience before in Edmonton, so I was excited for that.
But when it comes down to overall atmosphere and food, it was only okay. We really expected La Ronde to be quite romantic but it just felt like any other place. We also hoped for more with the food (at those prices, you always do hope for more) and none of the dishes we ordered really lit up our faces or made us exclaim in any way (I say this in particular because when we dined at XIX Nineteen for my birthday party dinner the next day, we actually did do these things: faces lit up, ‘mmmms,’ and ‘oh my gods’ and ‘this is so delicious’ actually came out of our mouths at XIX, but not so at La Ronde).
We ordered the Steak Tartare (fresh AAA chopped Alberta Beef Tenderloin served with toast crisps, greens and peppered Dijon mustard ($18)), La Ronde Mixed Greens (mesculin greens, oven roasted roma tomatoes, carrot threads, raspberry balsamic dressing ($9)), and Traditional In-House Caesar Salad ($9) to start.
The Steak Tartare was quite good. You can’t really go wrong with Caesar Salad. But my Mixed Greens were just okay. That’s my fault, I don’t really like balsamic dressing and this clearly came with balsamic, I should have asked for a different dressing but I didn’t.
We also started with complimentary bread and butter – which was okay. We’ve definitely had better bread and butter.
Mike ordered the Alberta NY Striploin (10 o.z Sterling Silver Striploin of Alberta Beef, wild mushroom ragout, pepper berry whiskey jus ($40)) as his entree.
I ordered the Prime Rib of Alberta Beef (Sterling Silver Prime Rib with buttermilk mashed potatoes and demi glaze ($39)) as my main.
As I mentioned earlier, the main dishes just didn’t get us excited. There were no exclamations, no lit-up faces, it was just, alright this is good, this is okay, this is alright. It tasted like how you would expect a prime rib and striploin to taste. It just didn’t exceed any expectations. I’ll also add that my buttermilk mashed potatoes were really bland. I rarely add salt to my dishes but I had to pack on quite a bit of salt to add some more flavour into the mashed potatoes and that was quite surprising for me, if you’re a fine dining restaurant charging as much as you do and you can’t get mashed potatoes right… there’s a problem. Lol.
Our waiter was nice enough and the actual time it took for the food to come out once we had ordered was quite fast so that was good. The time it took for our waiter to get our order could have been shorter. There was definitely a long waiting moment from the time we were seated to the time we got to order so that wasn’t the best. We decided not to try dessert because Mike had a cake for me at home. :) So after our entrees we got the bill, which came out to about $150 including tip, which was definitely the most we’d ever spent on dinner – ever (until the next night at XIX Nineteen, lol. Blog post to come).
Obviously being the frugal person I am, dropping $150 on dinner is not something that’s going to happen often but again, it’s a special occasion! We just had hoped for a better overall experience for the $150 and that just wasn’t really the case. Again the view was great, but the food just wasn’t anything special. When asked the next few days by friends how La Ronde was, our response was, ‘It was okay.’
Will we be back to La Ronde? Probably not. I’m still glad we finally tried it because it has been on the backburner as a place I’ve wanted to check out for a very long time. I’m disappointed the experience wasn’t better but at least we tried it. I’ve read a few different reviews on La Ronde and I find it’s pretty hit or miss.
On a semi-still-related note, my birthday itself minus the okay dinner was fabulous! Mike got me a new, beautiful red bike with an adorable basket – something I had been looking at over a year ago but stopped my search because I thought it was too expensive. He also got me the Grumpy Cat book – so perfect! I mean. It was OK. #grumpy. lol. :) My co-workers sent me a cat E-card and my officemate got me a bag of chips (yay!) and my work day was actually terrific because we had an anonymous donor pay $500 so strangers could have free coffees, teas and ice caps at the NAIT Tim Hortons. So awesome.
I’ll write about my terrific next-day birthday experience at XIX Nineteen tomorrow! So stay tuned. :)
Meanwhile… have you been to La Ronde?! What did you think?
Linda
3 Comments
Welcome to Fine Dining….big prices and not always worth what you get (in portion size etc). La Ronde is all about the ambiance….they take their time with everything so that you can enjoy the full rotation of the restaurant. For a more romantic feel, I find it best to go in the winter….Going for their Sunday brunch is really good. We’ve been several times and have quite enjoyed it. We’ve been twice at night and it’s great when the outside world is dark. Just my thoughts!
My husband and I went and had such a great relaxing time. Service was excellent, as was the wine we ordered. I expected the price so wasn’t daunted by that but you are right that the food wasn’t amazing it was ok!
I have been to the laronde and think its expectations meets it qualification of being an excellent eat out or dine in experience. Mike was cool…cheers.