paulinelee.com

Tonight was my first visit to Niche, a quaint little restaurant that seats about 30 people, located on 11011 – Jasper Avenue, Edmonton, AB.
http://experienceniche.ca/default.aspx

My dining companion and I were both very hungry when we arrived, and upon viewing the menu, our excitement grew.

Walking into the quaint decor, low lighting, you can see that Niche is an intimate affair. Seating for 30 patrons, we decided to sit at the end of the bar as there were no tables left. Perfect for quiet conversation. Greeted by a waitress who was wearing many hats as bartender, hostess and waitress, we were given our menus and asked us what we wanted for libations.

I chose the red pepper soup, and my companion chose the mussels as our appetizer.
The kitchen was out of mussels, and offered us clams as a substitute. All good. We were fine with clams.

Arriving at 7:15 PM, we arrived during their rush. With all the tables filled, we waited about 25 minutes for our appetizers. No bread, nothing to fill the time.

We observed the 20 something year old chef in the kitchen through the cooking window with a seemingly young helper as he prepared the dishes.

When the Red Pepper Soup finally arrived with the clams in white wine and garlic sauce, we were excited for another delicious fine dining experience.

The first thing I noticed, was that my Red Pepper Soup was steaming hot – first mistake. Fine dining never serves soup steaming hot. I thought perhaps the steam billowing off the surface was an illusion, perhaps the bowl was hot?? Nope, my first spoonful – even after blowing on the soup burned my tongue.

Alright, I thought to myself, perhaps they were just in a hurry, I decided to wait a few minutes for my soup to cool down so that I could actually taste it.

My companion meanwhile had started taking the clam meat out of the shells and tried his clams. They were tiny, barely the size of half a beer nut. Incredibly salty and every second clam had the lovely “crunch” from sand, dirt, or something being inside the meat.
After 5 minutes or so, I thought I would give the soup a second chance, and I would actually taste it.

Now, this was Red Pepper Soup. Upon first taste, all I could tell was that it was pure acidic tomato puree with crème fraiche in a swirl pattern. No hint of smoked paprika was evident in the taste of the soup. The crème fraiche was solid, and did not blend into the soup. Can we say disappointment? Nom, nom, definitely NOT! Oh, and the biggest problem, no hint of red pepper, or evidence of said item could be found in the soup. They did call is Red Pepper Soup, right?

Now, at this point, over 30 minutes had passed, and our waitress, had not even bothered to ask us what we wanted to order for our main course. Although there were 2 waitresses on that evening, they were unable to keep up to the 15 or so patrons in the tiny restaurant.
Perhaps the terrible appetizers should have been the hint to just cut and run, but we believe in second chances, so we decided to finally flag down the other waitress and ask to order our mains.

We chose the Duck Confit and the Swordfish.

Again, after another 20 minutes or so, our dish arrived. By this time, there were only a few patrons left in the restaurant.

The first bite of the Swordfish was ok. It had a nice light taste. No black olive tapenade, and no tomato basil salsa accompanied my dish. The couscous with citrus was the most bland couscous I had ever eaten in my life. Imagine, orange rind and non-salted couscous underneath swordfish. Clearly not a compliment. To make matters worse, within two bites, the swordfish began to take on that dry, hard, gritty texture of overcooked fish. The only highlight was the tomato mushroom accompaniment to this meal.

The Duck Confit on the other hand arrived sans apricot cranberry chutney, and was just a plain dry duck leg with no accompaniment, the sweet potato dumpling was conspicuously MIA, and my companion could not tell whether it was chicken or duck. It looked absolutely dried out, and had very little flavor, and even upon tasting, he had to ask me if it was chicken or duck. Served with this dish was risotto – a little too tangy and salty for an after taste. However, we must give credit to the well prepared asparagus that came with this dish.

When we were almost finished our meals, our waitress did ask us, how we liked, them, I responded, it’s okay. She simply nodded her head, said something like “oh” and turned back to cleaning wine glasses at the bar.

I can credit three things that I liked at Niche, the décor, the wine recommendation of Reisling wine, and the preparation of the asparagus.

Total bill at the end of the evening, a little over $89. My companion felt bad for our waitress and left her a descent tip.

Can we say failure??? I do not exaggerate; this was incredibly disappointing for one of the featured restaurants in this year’s Downtown Dining offerings. Putting Niche in the same group as Share, Wildflower Grill, Tzin to name a few is shameful.

Décor: 4.5/5
Service: 3/5
Food Quality: 1/5
Food Tastiness: 1/5
Value: 1/5

As we walked out, we were hungry and honestly would have traded our meal at Niche for a meal at MacDonalds. That would be saying something as MacDonald’s is a maximum twice a year event of desperation for us.

Final thought:

Niche… making MacDonalds look like fine dining.