Ali Baba and the Forty Leaves

Dinner last night out here on the farm at Ali Baba's Steak House on King St. First time there. Kinda hyped by locals. Was not necessarily looking for a specific celebration, but was in a great mood after leaving the office at 8pm on a Friday and was happy to hang out with some cynical bastard local colour with the chops to keep up with Sheena's sometimes spastic mind.

Was pretty quiet, actually. Got a nice big comfy booth into which I promptly melted, becoming one with the cushions. Grabbed the newspaper out of dining companion's hand and told him to slide on over.

Agenda item #1 - Wine list. An 'ok' list. Nothing earth shattering, but adequate variety of VQA. Picked the Henry of Phlegm unfiltered Cab-Merlot meritage blend. First bottle was a 2005.

Agenda item #2 - FOOD. Was starving after a 14+ hour day (one of several lately) sustained by only the scrap leftovers from the catered lunch from team meeting on another floor and some forgotten chocolate almonds on the shelf behind my desk.

Ordered the table-side caesar salad for two. Seemed like it took forever for the waitress to finally get organized enough to wheel over the cart and start the show. No bread to hold us over, either...

Everything was done right from scratch - double garlic, bit of anchovy, all smushed together in a well used wooden bowl... one real raw egg yolk, pepper, parmesan, tabasco, worchestershire sauce to taste... all good.





Until she whipped out the lettuce. Wondered if she was going to make each of us our own. Seemed kind of inefficient, but was pretty excited at how wonderful it looked. Then she took out two plates pre-garnished with a lemon slice and chunk of real parmesan. And split the salad between the 2 plates. It was a pretty chintzy serving. It was absolutely fantastic, still giving out garlic fumes 18 hours later. But surprisingly small portion. And at $10 each, a bit disappointing.

Mains were plentiful - prime rib medium with garlic mash pour monsieur, bacon wrapped filet medium rare pour moi. Perfectly done. Second bottle of wine ordered - this time was a 2006. I pointed out that they were different, the waitress seemed cluefree that this was of interest.

The service was just plain weird. Two waitresses we dealt with were very pleasant and polite, but as soon as they turned away from the table were scattered and complainy and freaking out over missing spoons and uncleared tables. Ummm.. ladies, we can still see you...



Leftovers by the Dashboard Light