Aroma!

Two weeks ago it was Saturday, and Patrick and I were going to the movies. He had pre-purchased tickets so we could see the 10pm showing of Bridesmaids at the Galaxy in downtown Saskatoon. But before we went to the movies, we had to get supper.

It was 8pm, which meant we only had a couple of hours to eat.  Could we Saskaspoon?
Could we? There were so many what ifs. 

What if we get a restaurant way across town? What if we end up in a slow-food restaurant? What if we get a place where the servers are sullen teenagers who are in the middle of Personal Dramas and forget to place our orders and we starve? What if we get the Seven-Eleven? I was excited about the movie. I didn't want my evening ruined because I'd had to cobble together a meal of old hotdogs and dried out "potato wedges".

Still. We love adventure almost as much as we love movies. So we dove right in and shook that little ole iPod and got....."Aroma!"

The good thing about Aroma is that it is downtown, in the Radisson Hotel, actually only a block away from the movie theatre. The bad thing about Aroma is that we had literally been there about two weeks before. I think it was been the last time we'd been out to eat, actually. And we'd consciously picked it last time -- I believe because of its proximity to the movie theatre.

Sigh.

We went anyway.

I was pretty happy, because I'd been craving pizza all day, and this place does pretty good wood-oven pizzas. So there was that.

I ate a pizza much like this one.

Here is an aside:
I am always amazed at hotel bars and restaurants. They are always full. And, I think, full of travelers. Other than the free breakfast, who is eating at their hotel? I get it when you are in a small town and the only choice for eating is the restaurant attached to the front lobby. I get it -- it's the only game in town. But when you're a tourist, or a business traveler with an expense account, and there is an entire city out there with really good restaurants, why do you eat in the same building where you sleep? I don't care if Aroma is a well-reviewed, well-loved restaurant in Saskatoon. Unless you are a holidaying agoraphobe, please go outside and explore the rest that our town has to offer.

Okay. Rant over. Moving on.

So Patrick and I got mojitos, and I ordered myself a peach and pecan salad with a ham-and-pineapple pizza. Patrick ordered a goat cheese pastry thing with crackers and short ribs.

While we drank and waited for food, we watched as the host told a table next to us that he was "often compared to Steve Buscemi" and we thought how that was not something you should tell someone. Not unless Steve Buscemi is his brother, or you have a fetish for Steve Buscemi, should you ever tell a man that this is his closest celebrity look-alike.

We watched as an out-of-town family tried to find a gourmet pizza that was the closest approximation to the pizza they ordered in their home town. In the end they went with plain cheese.

We watched as the chef, whose kitchen is open to the entire room at large, tossed dishes, swung knives, and slammed pots, pans, and pizzas onto flat surfaces with what appeared to me to be a disdainful-yet-passionate strength. I imagined her speaking with an Eastern European accent; I got the feeling she'd apprenticed with Great Chefs and had ended up in Saskatoon cooking at the Radisson Hotel Bar and had spent the past four years wondering just what the hell happened to her life.

Our food arrived just in time. I enjoyed my pizza, though my salad was a bit heavy on the dressing, and the peaches were dried, which I hadn't been expecting. Patrick liked his goat cheese thing (so did I -- I snuck some bites) but he wasn't too impressed with his shortribs. "They're kind of just blah," he told the server, and I snuck a look at our intense chef and hoped she couldn't hear.

In the end we made it to the movies on time, mojitos and meltey cheese in our bellies. And our nice waiter waived the short ribs from our bill! So that's why you eat at hotel restaurants--they'll do anything to please their customers. Otherwise we might not book our business trips there again!