The restaurant is totally nondescript from the outside… It even looks rather sketchy if I may say so. But, alas, you open the doors to find a very well run, fancy(ish) restaurant with subtle lighting and nice booths. And, it smells good!
Vintage had been on my wishlist for a while, and I chose it because a friend was in town visiting from Edmonton. I figured it would be a good place to get a great steak outside of the downtown core.
Service is excellent here – from the time you check in to the time you leave. Our server was attentive, but not annoying. I asked him about his odd white coat – ‘What’s with the lab coats?’ I asked. He chuckled and said they’re intended to be butcher’s coats. Every server wears one, as a testament to the old days. Personally, I just thought all the servers looked like lab geeks…
The tables were set with white napkins folded up to look like little jackets – so cute!
The server brought out a wooden cutting board with samples of the different cuts of steaks they serve and explained the differences between them, and the temperature at which each cut is best served (e.g. medium rare, etc.). If you know nothing about steak, I suppose this is the place to go for an education. The feature was wagu steak… I’d love to try it, but not for the price. I think it was over $60 for a fair sized chunk, but still! And, they have a massive steak on the menu (32 ounces for $88) – perfect for 2 people, so I’ll have to go back with Jay to give that one a shot.
With your steak you get one classic side. You can buy an additional for $10 if you’d like. The sides include various potatoes and various veggies. They’re large enough to share, so I got the bacon scalloped potatoes and my friend got the beets and we split them both. The bacon scalloped potatoes were heavenly. Seriously. They were awesome – and not too greasy like some scalloped potatoes can be. The beets were beets – purple and orange. Well cooked and yummy. We both got the 8 ounce tenderloin and they were awesome. At medium rare, mine was perfectly tender and juicy and seasoned nicely. I would totally recommend this place for steaks – for the tenderloin I think it’s a toss up between Vintage and Saltlik, but for the sides, Vintage wins hands down. It would have been nice to have had an appy, but I just didn’t need it! Sorry the photos are so blah… in the evening mood lighting it was hard to get a photo without flash.
My one thing I wasn’t impressed about is that we were served our steaks by one person holding a plate in each hand. She then had to go back to the kitchen to get our sides. It took way too long. We should have been served all our food at once by 2 people or she should have put it all on a tray to carry it all together. There’s nothing appealing about staring at a large plate with a tiny steak on it for 2 minutes waiting for the rest of your meal to come.
For dessert we shared the baked Alaska at the recommendation of our server. I’d never had one before so I was pretty excited. Meh… can’t say I’d jump up and down to have another one any time soon. The stuff on the outside was the best part – a toasted meringue that reminded us of roasting marshmallows at the lake. Mmmm… the rest was pretty good except we both found the little chocolate balls inside to be rather distracting. They seemed out of place. I do have to apologize for a rather unpleasant half-eaten photo of the dessert (I should have cleaned up the face of the dessert before taking a photo but I wasn’t thinking!), but you can see the little crispy balls I’m talking about. Everything else was smooth and creamy then these little balls crunched in your mouth.
Anyways, all in all I think Vintage is an excellent steak house and I’m totally looking forward to going back and trying many more items on the menu!
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