River City Writer

Two of my favourite Edmonton festivals are coming up soon. The first is this weekend. In much of Canada, the August long weekend is simply a civic holiday. Here is Edmonton, the Monday is Heritage Day, and the entire long weekend is the Heritage Festival.

Edmonton Heritage Festival

If you’re unfamiliar with the Heritage Festival (or, as most people call it, Heritage Days), it’s the festival the celebrates the myriad cultures that make up Edmonton. If you’ve been in Edmonton for any length of time, I’m sure you’ve noticed that it’s a pretty multi-cultural/multi-ethnic city.

This is, apparently, atypical of Alberta (and even of Canada, to a large extent), which always strikes me as odd. Having grown up here, and lived here all of my life, I find it hard to comprehend a place that is essentially mono-cultural.

To me the Heritage Festival is awesome because, as I said, it celebrates the diversity that makes Edmonton awesome. It’s also the best festival for food all summer. The Taste of Edmonton is pretty awesome, but Heritage Days beats it with little effort.

There are 63 pavilions (representing 75 cultures), and just about every one of them has food. Where else can you eat bannock, falafel, curry, jerk chicken, green onion cakes, and langos (Hungarian elephant ears) all in one place?

Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival

The other festival that is coming up soon, that I’m really looking forward to, is the quintessential Edmonton festival: The Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival. The Fringe is the festival of alternative theatre. Because the plays that get presented at the festival are chosen via a lottery system, you never know what you’re going to get from one year to the next. It’s a mixed-bag of awesome, decent, mediocre, and downright terrible.

In addition to the theatre, the street itself is a festival of food, people, sights and smells (not of all which are pleasant).

The Fringe is also the only festival where I’m willing to tolerate watered down beer-tent draught. This is probably because the actors hang out in the same beer tent as the regular festival goers, and drunken actors can be quite entertaining–especially when they’re friends of yours.

But, enough of my rambling. I’ll go into more details about the individual festivals in upcoming entries. For now, what I really want is to ask my readers what your favourite Edmonton festivals are.

Has your favourite festival already occurred? Is it yet to come? Do you love the Fringe, or a more obscure festival that you think more people should know about? Share your favourite festivals in the comments below, and I will try to cover them in the future (assuming that they’re not already done for the year).

River City Writer was in Calgary on Saturday, doing a reading at the first of the Slarkz Saturday Showcases. I’ve got to say that they’ve got a cool thing going with this six week series of concerts/poetry readings. I had a great time doing my reading (though, I have to admit, it was definitely not my best performance ever), and the bands that I saw were pretty kickin’, so you should definitely check it out if you have a chance.

In fact, Lara T told me that she’s looking for more poets and spoken word artists to perform at the festival, and asked me to spread the word among the Edmonton scene. The whole thing has a very punk rock vibe about it, so I think the ass-kicking rebels from the Raving Poets will be the ones who’ll fit in best with the rest of the performers. If you’re interested, send Lara an email.

If you do decide to read, keep in mind that it’s an outdoor venue, in a public park. There will be children and families present, so the language has to be “family friendly.” I, unthinkingly, violated this unspoken rule within about 10 seconds of taking the stage, and let slip a few more even after the rule had moved from unspoken to, well, spoken. It wasn’t exactly a huge controversy, but swearing in your poems should be avoided as much as possible while performing at the Saturday Showcases.

Having participated in the festival series, and having poked around the Slakrz’s website, I’ve found myself inspired to get more involved in the scene here in Edmonton. I’ve been reading for a few years now, and I’ve had a minor role in organizing the Roar, but I’d like to do more.

I’d like to make realties of some of the things that have been on the back of my mind. I’ve actually already done a lot of thinking about a charity poetry slam idea that came up during a conversation with some of my poetic peers a while back. And, I’d like to organize some sort of regularly occurring poetry sweatshop type deal. I’m not sure where or when these things will happen, yet, but I really want to make them real. Stay tuned to River City Writer for more details.

I went down to the Taste of Edmonton last night with my mother, and youngest brother. We had $20 worth of tickets each, and everyone of us left feeling like we’d eaten way too much food. Writing this (on Thursday night), I still feel disgusting and bloated, but it was totally worth it. I got to sample some great food from the local culinary scene. Here are my top recommendations, in no particular order.

• Cajun Jambalaya, Four Rooms: While I suspect that a certain New Orleans-born Edmontonian might tell me that this dish is not authentic Cajun cooking, it was damn good. Shrimp, veggies, and what I think was crawfish, with a spicy tomato sauce, all poured over rice. I added some Tabasco sauce for an extra zing. For 5 tickets, this was one of the most expensive dishes I tried. It was also the most filling, and definitely one of the best tasting. There was enough food that it could have been a meal all on it’s own, even though it was only a sample size.
• Pork Dumplings, Beijing Beijing: While I still think that the best pork dumplings in the city were found at the now-defunct Bottleneck Korean restaurant in HUB Mall on the University campus, Beijing Beijing’s dumplings were excellent. Fried but not greasy, and the perfect texture–not too soft, but not too crunchy–I loved these dumplings. Add some of the hot chili sauce and you’ll be in heaven. If you visit the Beijing Beijing booth during busy hours (at either noon, or between 5-6pm), you’ll probably get dumplings fresh out of the oil. The fresher they are, the better they’ll taste. At only 3 tickets for 4 dumplings, this is one of the best deals at the festival.
• Tamales, El Rancho: I found out about El Rancho a few months ago, when my friend Rosemary held her birthday party at the restaurant. While I haven’t managed to make it back since, it’s only a matter of time before I do. They have the absolute best Mexican and Salvadorian food in the entire city. For those of you who still feel that Alberta Avenue (118 Avenue) is a shady area that you’d rather avoid, you’re missing out on one of the best restaurants in Edmonton. The tamales are excellent, and cost 4 tickets. They also have pupusas for 4 tickets, which are also worth tasting.
• Canada Maki, Kyoto Japanese Cuisine: I’m a sucker for sushi. I’m not sure what “Canada Maki” is, exactly, but it was damn good. It seemed to be more or less the same as California Maki, but with shrimp. Whatever the case, it was a damn good plate of sushi. Like the Jambalaya, this dish is 5 tickets, making it one of the highest priced dishes on the menu–but it’s worth every dollar.

While almost everything I tried was very good, some of it wasn’t so great. I’d recommend passing on the Korean Village vegetable tempura. I’m normally a big fan of veggie tempura, but the batter in this dish was much too heavy. Not only that, the main “vegetable” was potato, so it felt like I was eating a big bowl of French fries, rather than vegetable tempura. If this is the way that all Korean tempura tastes, I’ll stick with the Japanese variety. Having said that, if you enjoy really heavy batter on your vegetables, it is a lot of food for 4 tickets.

Taste of Edmonton runs from 11am to 11pm everyday until July 28, 2007.

Capital Ex (or: the exhibition formerly known as Klondike Days) is now in full swing. It’s being billed as Edmonton’s BIGGEST summer celebration. BIG entertainment. BIG smiles. BIG shopping and culture. BIG value. Everything is BIG at Capital Ex, if you believe the hype. Unless things have improved dramatically since last year, Capital Ex is anything but BIG.

Last year, wandering around the Midway, I found myself wondering why I’d handed over my hard earned money at the admission gate. The exhibition grounds looked barren, and abandoned. The rides were all half-empty, and the corn dogs–those most sacred of all carnival foods–were small and soggy.

Perhaps I’ve just outgrown the Ex. I have friends who’ve attended every year since elementary school, and have always reported having a great time. Personally, the only part of K-Days that I found enjoyable for the past 5 or so years had been the concerts. Since the festival was re-branded last year as the painfully generic Capital Ex, the concerts are no longer free with admission. This is a bit of a mixed blessing.

Since there is now an additional fee to attend the concerts (which have been dubbed Ed Fest), the organizers can now afford to book higher calibre acts. And, after realizing that most people didn’t want to pay $25 a ticket last year, this year’s prices have been reduced to $8.

If nothing else, I have to admit that I would love to check out Ed Fest on Wednesday, and see “Weird Al” Yankovic. However, that happens to be the day that my friend Patrick Pilarski is launching his new book of haiku and haibun (more on that tomorrow).

Despite my criticism, I may go down to the Ex this week, and see if it really is as BIG as the marketing team is claiming. It’s been a year since the exhibition was first re-branded as Capital Ex. It’s quite possible that the organizers have learned from the mistakes they made last year, and improved things. The only way to know for sure, is to head down to Northlands and check it out.

Edmonton is nicknamed Festival City for a reason. Especially during the summer months, the city is host to a seemingly endless number of festivals. Every time one ends, another begins. This means that, during our relatively short summers, there is never a shortage of things to do. One of the festivals currently in progress is the Taste of Edmonton festival.

For those who may be unaware, Taste of Edmonton is a festival celebrating Edmonton cuisine. Dozens of local restaurants setup shop in Churchill Square to highlight their favourite menu items. This year, 39 restaurants, featuring nearly 80 menu items, are participating. The festival also includes a Taste of Wine (PDF), and the new feature: a Taste of Beer, which features a number of beers, including a couple from the local Alley Kat brewery.

While some people have complained that the festival has become more expensive in recent years–many items now cost more tickets than in the past–I still think it’s a very affordable way to sample what the city’s restaurants have to offer. Keep in mind, as well, that the overall cost of living in Edmonton has risen in recent years, due to the oil boom, so it would be unreasonable to expect restaurateurs not to raise their prices accordingly.

In addition to the great food, there will be two stages setup for entertainment (the Taste of Edmonton Stage, and the Taste of Wine Stage). There are at least a dozen acts, and every day will be different (a PDF showing the full line-up can be viewed here).

Like all of Edmonton’s great street festivals, a Taste of Edmonton is also a great place to people-watch. Festivals are among the few times that one is able to witness a wide cross section of Edmonton’s population in one place at the same time. Suburbanites with children, hardcore punks, downtown office workers, hippie kids, the homeless, and a variety of other people will all be putting themselves on display during the festival.

Whether you’re looking for a great way to sample Edmonton’s culinary offerings, sample some alcohol, check out some live music, or just spend an afternoon observing the fine citizenry of River City, the Taste of Edmonton is the place to do it.

Taste of Edmonton runs from 11am - 11pm everyday until July 28, 2007.