East Coast Inspired Food in Calgary
The Blowers and Grafton pub is located just south of downtown, a couple blocks South off busy 17th avenue along 4th Street SW in the historic old Lester Block building. The name of the pub seems like a strange one to anyone who isn’t from Halifax, as it actually refers to a corner where 2 streets intersect, Blowers Street and Grafton Street (hence Blowers and Grafton). I have never been out East, so I have no idea what makes that particular corner worthy of naming a Calgary pub and restaurant after, but perhaps some Easterners reading this can enlighten me about that.
Blowers & Grafton in Mission
The location on 4th Street SW in Calgary was the first in the city and was also the first I had heard of this place. I happen to have some East Coast friends and family who were having a social get together and this is their preferred place to go. Although parking down in that part of the city is a challenge due to the combination of so much permit only parking around all of the apartment buildings, and the general lack of paid street parking for the commercial businesses, you might need to drive around and often park a block or two away if you can find a spot. Calgary parking anywhere in the beltline neighborhood or nearby it is generally pretty shitty for businesses and residents both. This location of the first Calgary restaurant is apparently new, I believe the location was formerly an Original Joes restaurant which closed down during the c-19 years
The food at the pub includes a lot of fresh East coast fish and seafood. There are all sorts of crustaceans and fish that a flatlander like myself has no taste for, but those who grew up eating that type of fare all seem to love it there. The also have a wide range of donairs and dishes made with donair, such as donair pizza and donair quesadilla. Of course they also have basic Western pub food on the menu as well for those who don’t share the taste for aquatic critters.
The drinks in this Calgary pub are much the same as you would expect at any pub in the neighborhood. Yes, you can get a Keith’s beer if that’s your thing, but they do also serve local beers and other spirits.
Overall our food was good and the service was excellent. Our server was fast and friendly and remained attentive to our group the entire visit. Prices were not bad, pretty much inline with what I expect to pay at any of the popular pubs on 17th avenue in Calgary. Since this first visit, I have returned here to this location twice more, not by choice but by pure chance of having other social friends suggest it or want to try it out for the first time.
Blowers & Grafton Creekside (North Calgary)
As luck would have it, this same week I had opportunity to attend a birthday party for an East Coast friend that was hosted at the new Blowers & Grafton location way up on the far North end of Calgary, North of the ring road and near the community of Evanston and Sage Hill for those who know where that roughly is. This particular area had several businesses close as the residential construction was slow to catch up to the commercial construction and so there has been a general lack of population to keep the local stores busy enough to operate. There is lots of new apartments, condos, and houses being built nearby now, so hopefully that will be good news for the local stores in those communities.
There is lots of parking at this location and the building is modern. They also have an adjacent patio which looks fairly sheltered from the wind and sun.
The interior of the place is nice, they can fit a lot of customers, but that might also be their biggest fault.
How’s the Blowers & Grafton Food?
The food is a bit unique and I highly recommend you read the description on the menu well for each item you order as many of them have some East Coast flair to them or may not be as typically styled as you may be used to at other pubs. This image above is of Donair Nachos, which are described as being on house made chips, as you can see means potato chips not nacho chips. You will also notice the abundance of sweet donair sauce, if you don’t enjoy it you will need to be aware that you always get a large amount of it on anything donair related unless you specify you don’t want it.
Some of the portions are okay, but I ordered the Donair Quesadilla and was disappointed that it was quite small, when laid on the saucer plates it didnt even cover the small 5 inch plate, so don’t order this if you are even moderately hungry.
The restaurant was empty when we arrived at 4:30pm on a Sunday. Our server started out good but struggled as the place got much busier. Our group had a few issues that I don’t want to blame squarely on our server, as some were not entirely her fault, but overall the dining experience wasn’t good, like not good at all.
Here are the issues we had, they might not bother most people or all people but in the interest of being fair in my reviews I will describe them in detail and you can make of them what you wish.
Our party had all arrived before 5pm and we all placed beverage orders. No problems at all to start. They even came quickly.
Our server started taking orders for appetizers and also some entree orders, I don’t think she communicated well and so people were ordering both at the same time. In taking the order in this mixed way it was chaos. 2 people didnt get to place an order at all, some ordered appys, some entrees, some not at all. Unfortunately, there was no ordering process, consistency, or structure. About 30 minutes later random food items started coming to the table while some were still requesting to order. Some appys, some entrees, completely random order. This continued for over 30 minutes while the table struggled to convey that not everyone had even ordered.
Drink orders were always taken, but the delivery time on them was about 15 minutes or longer. It was bad. At 6:20pm the restaurant was full, my mini donair quesadilla arrived, literally 80 minutes after ordering it. Half our table had ate and finished thirty minutes ago, half still didn’t have food yet. It was a mess. Whatever ordering system they use or whatever kitchen system they use it is a disaster. (This disorder and chaos is not one person’s fault, there’s no way any kitchen can so randomly send food out not in the order which the orders come in. Definitely not with a one full hour variation in food orders placed at the same time.)
My Opinion
. The final straw in making it a terrible experience was that the Birthday girl who had ordered Lobster, didn’t have her food after 90 minutes, turns out they didn’t even submit that order. Unhappy Birthday.
Now to be objective the restaurant did make its best attempt at resolving the poor experience after it was over. They did bring the Birthday girl her Lobster dish and didn’t charge her for it. They also brought her a cake. And, they did discount many food items that arrived very very late for the table too. This was appreciated and I realize there is little else they can do after the fact.
I don’t want to write a bad review for any business because it’s difficult as hell to navigate the challenges of operating in this economy and with current staffing problems in the market. However, this place needs to sort out their ordering and kitchen management system badly. If they can’t competently serve 100 guests at once, don’t seat 100 guests.
The contrast between the Mission location and the North location was night and day. We will return to the original beltline restaurant I’m sure, but much of our group will likely avoid the Creekside one for awhile. Hopefully they can get their system working better. I will try visiting again before the year ends and see if they can work the kinks out.
~ King Calgary
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