Last Saturday, we headed over to Atlas at
1000 9 Ave SW. Now, in a regular restaurant review, you'd expect to get a list of everything we ordered, how they tasted, some photos to show off the dishes, and a nice conclusion. Insert humour into a few locations in the review, and you're satisfied. Well, unfortunately, yours truly showed himself to be a true amateur. I didn't bring a camera, so there'll be no photos of the food here, I didn't write down what everyone ordered, and finally, I didn't even try everyone else's dishes! So, I'll do my best here, and promise to do better next time.
We made reservations for 7:00, which turned out to be very lucky, since the restaurant was quite full, and a crowd of other people arrived at the same time as us. We got our table, and spent a little time waiting for the rest of our party to show.
Naturally, we started with drinks. Three of us ordered the
doogh, with mint. I've drunk this before, and in general, I find that it is an acquired taste; personally, I'm used to the gentle flavour of
ayran. Well, I think that this was the best mint doogh I've ever drunk. Perhaps it was more ayran-like than usual.
Next came the food. I ordered the combination stew plate for $12.99, which gave me a choice of any three stews. I ordered the fesenjoon, the bamiyah, and the badinjan. I was satisfied with all three. Fesenjoon is, of course, unique to Persion cuisine, with its pomegranate and walnut sauce. The bamiyah, an
okra stew, was a bit sweeter than I expected, but had excellent texture. Of the three, the badinjan was my favourite, which great
eggplant texture and flavour. Frankly, this was a pretty good deal.
Magic pants also had the stew plate, but had the split pea and beef stew instead of badinjan. He says that it was different than the other stews, and good.
The Taboo Twins ordered a platter of kebaps, and they looked pretty good from my side of the table. Down There also got kebaps, and I think they were the same as the Taboo Twins kebaps. She was full afterwards, so the volume of meat was quite big.
Finally, Dr. DRE ordered a plate of fesenjoon and his Candiru had a plate of bamiyah. They seemed satisfied. I wonder though, a whole plate of fesenjoon seems a bit intense for me. Thinking about it, I don't think I was crazy about the texture of the meat in the fesenjoon, but it may just have been my love of eggplant and okra that biased me against it.
For dessert, two items were ordered. One was a vermicelli and ice dish, with rosewater and lemon. Nice and refreshing. The other was
saffron ice cream. Nice, if you're into that. I liked the chunks of buttermilk mixed in, mmm.
So, overall, I'd say that I enjoyed my evening at Atlas. The atmosphere was nice, the prices were not steep, given the quantity and quality of food, and the service was friendly and helpful. The stew combination plate I ordered was one of the more expensive items on the menu, so others dishes were an even better deal. I recommend Atlas, if you're looking for Persian in Calgary.
