Modern Sushi at Japonais Bistro

We're back with a brand new review, and this time we headed downtown for some Japanese delights at Japonais Bistro! A relatively new restaurant on Jasper Avenue, Japonais (meaning Japanese in French) bills itself as "modern Japanese cuisine" and offers a sake bar and kaiten dining, where plated dishes travel around on a moving belt. In addition to the sake bar and traditional cooked dishes, an intriguing assortment of unique sushi offerings, new twists on classic cocktails, and tempting desserts round out the large menu. We invited sushi fanatic Becky along for lunch to try some tasty food and see if we could find a new go-to sushi joint! Keep reading to find out what we thought!

#yegCupcakeChallenge: Fuss Cupcakes

Alright folks, it's time for round two of our #yegCupcakeChallenge!

For our second cupcake shop, we headed to Fuss Cupcakes with Meat Vs Veg reader Taylor, who is a big fan of Fuss (follow her on Twitter: @whatthedeuce23)

Fuss Cupcakes is proud to be the first gourmet cupcake shop in Edmonton, and have two locations in the city. We visited their Whyte Ave store, right next to the awesome Funky Pickle Pizza Co.
One of the great things about Fuss is that they offer ample seating for those wishing to enjoy their sugary snack right away. They also offer a large beverage menu of coffees, teas, and sodas to make your treat complete. Every week Fuss offers six standard cupcake flavors and six different weekly specials. Unique options such as "Salted Caramel", "Cloud 9" and "Creamsicle" make for a difficult decision!

Bonjour Café Bicyclette

While on the south side and looking for a simple, peaceful lunch we decided to try Café Bicyclette. This quaint little café nestled next to the Campus St. Jean in Edmonton is a great place to find fresh food at a reasonable price. While the menu is entirely in French, the staff are helpful, friendly, and willing to assist with translation. Though, for anyone with basic French language skills (we’re talking elementary school) it should be easy enough. 

The Inaugural #yegCupcakeChallenge...Crave!

In our endeavor to bring the best eats in Edmonton to our readers, we've tasked ourselves with the challenge of finding the best cupcake bakery in the city. With the help of readers and friends, we've narrowed our challengers down to these seven selections:

Crave Cookies and Cupcakes
Fuss Cupcakes
Once Upon A Cupcake
Flirt Cupcakes
Hey Cupcake
Big City Cupcakes
Whimsical Cake Studio

(If there's a bakery you love that we left off the list, let us know in the comments!)

To keep it fair, we will both order a cupcake at each location, and rate it out of five in three areas: taste, presentation, and the all important icing-to-cake ratio. The bakery with the highest overall score will be declared the champion and become our go-to location for delicious cupcakes*!

Mini Review: Food Blogger Meetup at The Common

A couple of weeks ago Steph, Jackie, and her fiancee Becky, embarked on an adventure: our first food blogger meetup! Organized by Marianne and Maki (of Loosen Your Belt and In My Element respectively) this would be our first chance to meet and eat with fellow Edmonton food bloggers. Naturally we were very excited (and maybe a teensy bit nervous) to meet everyone, especially since it was being held at The Common which we had never been to!

A Trip to Paris... er Duchess Bake Shop

While planning which restaurants we want to review for this blog, one of the names that kept coming up was Duchess Bake Shop. This gorgeous little shop, located on the revitalized 124 Street, is incredibly popular and for good reason. Specializing in French pastries and also serving a light lunch, they pride themselves on making all of their products from scratch daily in their onsite kitchen. The attention to detail, wide variety of items, and simply delicious food brings their customers back again and again!