A rather rough Rant.
I think I hate Yellowknife.
I have been in town working out of a hotel for a few days. A city without friends is more isolating then a camp. It has the down sides of the north without the advantages of a camp's simplified living. Out here its cold, I am in a hotel room with a barely functional kitchenet. So I am faced with trying to cook or going out or calling out for food. There is a second side effect to this posting I eat alone. At camp even though there were days I did not want all the company that was there eating alone was not enforced.
After the before mentioned few days in town I now have a biased and under informed opinion of the dining situation in this town. Firstly its a small city, there is not room for more then a couple shops of any type and many shops have no competition so service can be slack. The basis for my biased and ignorant opinion is that this town is built around Newfies and central canadians. Everyone comes here for work, many are or were miners. With them comes simple meat and potatoes eating habits.
To support this I will site that I have for the first time seen buckets of Naval cured salt beef in grocery stores, with the island of newfoundland stamped on the side of the bucket. The other thread of evidence is the unhealthy number of eateries offering, Specializing in Chinese and Wester.
You know the type of eatery, cheap plastic and chrome chairs next to formica covered tables, which were looking dated by the mid 60's. Often ran by a family who at one point were the token asians in the town. And I am sorry but you can not specialize in Chinese and Western foods, either you are a specialist in one or the other.
One last thought, feel free to take offense to this if wish. I will freely say that I am poorly traveled. But I will also say that of the places I have been Yellowknife is home to more natives then any other town I have visited. So the thought crossed my mind, why is there not a single native eatery, serving traditional food. I want to see the Dead Dog Cafe, serving 1001 things you can do with a Cariboo.
2 comments:
When we were there we looked at some of the places catering to tourists and they looked quite nice, with seafood, cariboo burgers, and so on. Across from the famous old log cabin place, I forget its name, Wildcat Cafe? there is a hotel with a restaurant overlooking the water. The menu looked good. And the WildCat place has its charms, though it was a bit pretentious. You have a car there, and you could even take a taxi, why not Google? A Google shows French and Japanese, it can't be all bad! Are you there now?
I am not currently in town and was posting things written a week or two or more back as I uncovered forgotten files
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