| With the recent arrival of two hip diners, the Belmont and Diner Deluxe, as well as the continued multiplication of Nellie's locations, I thought it would be worthwhile to take a trip back to the early ’70s, to Trudeaumania and Exile on Main Street, and visit two Calgary diner institutions, the Lido and the Lion's Den. Happily, I found what I'd hoped for (minus cigarette smoke since March 1): decent food, good conversation, vinyl vinyl vinyl, and a blaring television.
THE LIDO
The Lido has stood unwavering on 10th Street N.W. in Kensington since I took judo next door in 1971, watching the neighbourhood blossom around it. Its Asian-themed sign speaks to an earlier era, when restaurants had to serve hamburgers if they were going to serve Chinese food.
The Lido is a genuine greasy spoon – and I mean this in the most complimentary way possible. There is a long counter with oval stools, numerous booths, and everything is covered in off-white vinyl, so the place looks a bit worn. This is what you'd expect from a diner that's 40 years old or so.
The Lido is an excellent place to go if you're planning to fall off a diet. They've got an excellent milkshake made from ice cream, syrup and milk (I watched our server make it), served in a large steel cup. The shake is thick without being like concrete, and it tastes natural. The hot hamburger sandwich was appropriately trashy – three pre-made patties, fried, served on brown toast with gravy and a side of fries. There's nothing like good prairie diner food to clog your arteries.
Still, the food was hot and wasn't greasy, and our server was very pleasant and professional. The chicken salad sandwich at the Lido is also totally respectable, with chicken, cucumber, celery and mayonnaise on brown toast.
Best of all, each booth has a little jukebox, so you can crank up something appropriately Canuck-ish, like Triumph, while you're diggin' in. If you want a real no-frills diner experience, the Lido is the best place I can think of.
THE LION’S DEN
The Lion's Den, on the corner of Macleod Trail and 17th Avenue S.E., is a step up from the Lido, if only because Rose Festa, the cook, makes everything herself. The fries come from Hutterite potatoes, which they age and soak before deep-frying – with a little salt, they're without question the best I've had in a restaurant in town (they're as good as the ones from the fry van in the south Home Depot parking lot).
Rose makes homemade pies every day – the day we were there, I had the last piece of homemade rhubarb pie, which was so good I just about cried. The banana cream was equally decadent and fantastic.
The Lion's Den also thrives on character. Rose's husband, Enrico, looks a bit like an Italian Gabe Kaplan, and is the chattiest man on the planet – he knows everyone personally by the time they leave the Lion's Den. As he told us, they butcher all their own meat on the premises (Enrico was sporting a large bandage to prove it), chop all the vegetables and make all the soup from scratch – this sort of dedication to quality and refusal to succumb to shortcuts is something other, more expensive restaurants could emulate.
Besides the usual burgers, fries and sandwiches, The Lion’s Den menu has numerous specials, like roast pork, a hot roast turkey sandwich that’s to die for, and even pizza. It's a little treasure, where the coffee's always on.
Both the Lido and the Lion's Den are open every day, usually from about 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.
MONTREAL BAGELS
You can find real Montreal-style bagels – boiled in honeyed water and then baked in a wood-fired oven – in a strip mall on the corner of Elbow Drive S.W. and Heritage Drive, of all places. The baker at Montreal Bagels (103 — 8408 Elbow Dr. S.W., phone 212-4060) used to work at St. Viateur Bagel in Montreal's Mile End, and his bagels are really good – chewy, slightly dense and a bit sweet. With cream cheese and tomato, and a little salt and pepper, you're in paradise. |
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