Wild Tangerine

 Last night I went out to dinner for a friend's birthday. We had our meal at Wild Tangerine- a locally owned and operated "west meets east" restaurant. I've heard good things and was excited to try it out.

Everything is a mix of styles in this restaurant. The decor is clean and modern, with a colourful, funky twist. It's a light and fun atmosphere. We were seated and quickly served water and menus. Here's the second mix of style with the restaurant - despite the clean and sleek look of the restaurant you get your water in coloured plastic cups and the menu is just printed on orange printer paper and attached to a small clipboard (that were looking quite ratty after all the use they'd clearly seen). It's an interesting juxtaposition that I think fits well with the restaurant, but does take you a little off guard.

The owner served us the entire night and was very friendly. He was eager to tell us that they try to get as much their supplies local as they can (and joked that with the way global warming is going he may soon be able to get wine from an Edmonton vineyard). I love eating local!

Out entire table shared a couple appetizers of the Shrimp Lollipops with Wasabi Yogurt. These were great! They were perfectly fried so that the outer shell was crispy, but the whole lollipop was light. The yogurt was light as well, with the wasabi flavour being very subtle as to not overpower the shrimp flavour.

For dinner I had Judy’s famous Thai Green Curry with Prawns & Tortiglioni. I have a love-hate relationship with green curry. It was the first meal my boyfriend Nick ever made me, so I am fond of it, but the packaged sauce mix that we use from the grocery store lacks flavour and we can never seem to find a mix of veggies to put into the curry that makes both of us happy (Nick would be more then satisfied if it just had peas and eggplant, while I want to go all our with baby corn and peppers). Judy's curry was excellent though and reaffirmed my enjoyment for green curry. It was full of lemongrass flavour and had heaping amounts of well cooked veggies like beans, peppers, baby corn, and onion. it was an interesting twist to have it on pasta (there we go with the mixing of styles again!) and the noodles were great in catching all that amazing flavour.  It has definitely given me some ideas on how to spice up my homemade green curry!


Overall it was a great meal. The food is very light and healthy and you don't leave feeling overfull, despite the large portions. The atmosphere is fun and the staff are friendly, and I'll definitely be back to try more things on the menu.