Charcut Roast House - a nice ending to the day

I won't be going into details about what repairs I undertook today to the RV, but yes I semi-successfully repaired something. When I say semi I mean that the activity itself was successful, however I replaced the wrong item due to the colour codes being switched around. So that took half a day of fucking around - not something you wanna do on a holiday.

The only silver lining on the horizon was a booking we had for a table at Charcut Roast House in the evening. We also met Nicole and her husband Jeff there - Simone knows Nicole through Supernatural.

Speaking of supernatural, there were some weird things going on at the restaurant. But firstly let me explain why we went to this particular one. I've been watching Top Chef in all its variations, and Top Chef Canada was one of the latest ones I got into. Connie DeSousa was one of the contestants in season one and she did very well, and I liked her style and approach to food. So when it was clear that we would be in Calgary I looked up her restaurant and I booked a table.

So, remember when I said something supernatural was happening? Ok there were two things:
After Nicole and Jeff joined us and we had spent some time chatting, and I had seen that Connie was actually working in the kitchen (!!), a waiter came to our table and asked for me by name. He then said "this is for you" and gave us a plate of sample cold cuts on bread. First I thought that they give this to all the tables, but after watching the other tables, this was not the case. Then I also thought that if they indeed give this to all tables, why not just serve it? There was no need to ask for me specifically. I was dumbfounded!

A little while later after explaining to Nicole and Jeff how I came across Connie etc etc, Connie actually made her way out of the kitchen and walked around the restaurant, she came to our table, introduced herself and asked if we had any questions about the menu. Being still partly stunned about the fact she actually came out and talked to us, I frantically tried to come up with a question but the one I did ask was really lame. Of course later on I came up with much better questions!! Duh.
So again, I believe from what I saw we were the only ones she talked to. What is this sorcery???? Not that I'm complaining :)

She was very nice and signed my menu:

This is the first restaurant of a celebrity chef we went to where the chef was actually there and in the kitchen. But now onto the food! The menu was very appealing to me, there was almost nothing on there that I would not like to order. We decided to share most of our food around the table, so we started with the raclette cheese:

followed by the Charcut board, which is a selection of the house cured meats with various other goodies, like the pork croquettes with piri piri aioli. I could have had 10 of those croquettes, they were outstanding.

The duck galantine (in the jar in the middle) was also a winner, in fact everything on the plate was very pleasing.
For my entree I had the pork belly (big surprise there) and Simone had the Butcher Steak.

The pork belly with aged cheddar grits, arugula pesto and fresh peas was extremely tender with a nice crispy char. The crackling was a bit tough in bits, but overall nice and crunchy. Simone's steak also hit the spot. We also shared a duck fat fried poutine with cheese curds and truffle gravy. The photo came out blurry so you have to let your imagination do the work. Suffice to say it was as tasty as it sounds.
For dessert Simone had the milk chocolate parfait with sea salt caramel, ovaltine crunch and dark chocolate crumb.

The bill came with a postcard and pork paperclip :)

What a nice evening, spent with lovely company and scrumptious food to fill our tummies and make the day end on a high. Thanks Charcut!

Jasper and Banff National Parks

This is a recap of the last several days. Starting with our leg from Golden into Jasper National Park to the north. That day was nice and sunny and we took plenty of photos/video with my little Canon pocketcam whilst driving. I have joined the videos together into one, posted below.

This was a posh hotel on our way into Jasper. There are railroad tracks to the left of it that go through the mountain and you get these really long trains that seem to go on forever. Neat!

Just some landscape shots. The mountains are amazing and make driving so much more fun than at home!

Our campground for Jasper, this one is the Hinton/Jasper KOA and we had a guy leading us to our site. The owners were very friendly and this was a top notch campground. All facilities were clean and in good order. This is also the only campground in the area with wifi, however they get their internet via satellite so it is fairly slow. And in peak usage times in the evening it was unusable. I still give this high marks though and would use it again. We were there two nights.
Unbeknownst to us it is actually the last long weekend of the year for Canadians, and accordingly all the campgrounds are fully booked. The only reason we got a site is because this is actually 18km outside the park.

Some cool clouds while walking around in Jasper. This was on our second day, the weather was not good to us and it rained pretty much all day. So we were limited to going into the town of Jasper to look around the shops etc. My original plan was to do a hike in the morning followed by a boat tour of Maligne Lake in the afternoon, but yeah. Shit happens and we can't be lucky with the weather all the time.

On our way back to our campground for the second night. Heaps of cars/rvs pulled over whenever these guys were on the side of the road.

Photos from traveling in Jasper National Park. What a sight.

Our trip from Jasper to Banff. The weather today was ok so we stopped in Jasper National Park to do a hike I had selected. Unfortunately due to the rain the entire path was muddy and it took us three hours to do the 4km round trip. I stacked it once but didn't fall on my ass at least. But yeah both our jeans and shoes need washing :)

Further along the road to Banff we stopped at the Columbia Icefields and I walked up to take photos of the glacier. You can actually walk up the glacier and they even have special snow buses that can take you up to the icefield itself.

Our RV is parked right above the brown house at the bottom. Simone was feeling cold already so she didn't get out and instead she waited for me.

The water is so clear you can barely see it. Lots of beautiful colours too.

Tonight after arriving in Banff and getting some yummy dinner at Melissa's Steakhouse, we still had yet to find a place to camp. And with the long weekend, all campgrounds within the park were full. So we went over to Tim Horton's for a drink and the free wifi, and we rang a few places outside the park. We found a spot at Spring Creek Mountain Village RV Park, which is in Canmore, about 20 mins outside the park. After initially only getting a partial hookup site (just power), I had a friendly chat with the girl at reception and she gave us the full hookup site instead for the same price (she didn't even think there was one left). The wifi here is great so far, not superfast but usable and pretty stable. Given the size of this park that's quite surprising - there must be 100+ RVs here.

So this is home for the next two nights, we have a fairly decent forecast for tomorrow so hopefully we get to do stuff in the park.