Monty's Receives Rave ReviewsRelease Date: 7/4/2007Restaurant revamp yields great night out Dan Healing, Neighbours Published: Thursday, June 28, 2007 Monty's Crab Shack & Grill Quality Hotel Airport 4804 Edmonton Trail N.E. Reservations: 276-2636 Price range, entrees: $10 to $28 Hours: 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily Wheelchair accessible, including washrooms. With etched glass windows, real flowers on each table, a menu filled with neat variations of classic favourites and the cutest little red cartoon crab logo, Monty's Crab Shack is one of the most polished casual dining rooms to open in Calgary in years. There's not much left of its Quality Hotel Airport predecessor, called Albert's Dining Room. Guests are greeted by a colossal glass waterfall and lots of dark wood panelling, with shale counterpoints. They can choose to sit in an upholstered booth, at short or tall wooden tables or at the big U-shaped bar. My wife Wendy spotted the new eatery while dropping off our daughter at the hotel for her Red Arrow bus trips to college. The new owner, residential land developer Medallion Development Corp., is also developing a new ballroom in place of Banditos bar. (Until it's finished, dinner guests have to use the washrooms behind the pool.) The attention to detail extends to the menu, which uses the cartoon crabs as signals to identify which dishes contain the title seafood. It's not a long menu but it includes a wide assortment of entrees, like burgers, fish and chips, ribs, steak, stuffed chicken, lamb chops and pork medallions, along with a few surprises. The most pleasant surprise was my appetizer, crab chowder ($6). This is a great soup, a very meaty bowl of shredded crab claw meat, corn, peppers, onions and Yukon gold potato chunks. Sweet, savoury bliss. Wendy found Monty's shrimp jerktail ($9) -- the Jamaican-inspired version of shrimp cocktail -- almost too hot to handle. The half-dozen jumbo shrimp were hepped up on spice and then served with a very hot green chili sauce. Smokin'! My wife loves crab legs but is the first to admit that it doesn't take a genius to steam a bunch of legs, slap them on a plate and serve with melted butter. Still, she greatly enjoyed her pound of North Sea crab legs ($28), with her only complaint that the succulent meat was a bit hard to extract. Scoring the shells would help. They were served with rice, sweet corn and cornbread. My penne jambalaya ($17) was very filling. It was made up of crab claws, sliced chicken and chorizo sausage, stewed in a tomato sauce and poured over pasta. The crab was overwhelmed by the tangy sauce but the chicken and sausage were wonderful. The meal came with a very dry focaccia bread, which was great dipped in the leftover shrimp jerktail sauce. There was no dessert menu but our smiling and efficient server sold us on the raspberry chocolate mousse ($4.95), a layered cylinder of sweet temptation, served with mint leaves and criss-crossed with chocolate syrup. With a couple of soft drinks, the meal came to $73.09, before tip. dhealing@theherald.canwest.com © The Calgary Herald 2007 |
