Where to watch sports in Calgary?
The Shark Club Sports Bar & Grill is one of the few remaining and successful pubs that is still focused upon the theme of being a Calgary sports bar. There was a time that this theme was the default pub business model and the recipe for pub success depended upon have twenty 60″ televisions in every wall. Well most of those Calgary restaurant have closed now and there aren’t nearly as many places you can go that display the full range of global sports. Of course during any playoffs series for the Flames or Calgary Stampeders you will still see non-sports pubs jump on the bandwagon, but for the most part there are not many sports bars left.
I’m not sure how many of these are even are still around either, this might be the last of the Shark Club restaurants in Calgary, although Google maps says there was 2 and another 4 scattered around western Canada, a few of which are definitely showing up as permanently closed. On this day I happened to be up on Barlow Trail in the NE part of Calgary around 5pm and didn’t want to fight with the rush hour traffic on Deerfoot, so I detoured into the Shark Club and decided to have an early meal instead. I was surprised to see a few tables of young sports fans enjoying afternoon games on the big television screens.
The menu for the food and the drinks has changed a bit since I last was at this restaurant many years ago. Keeping with their target crowd of sports fans, the menu fare definitely caters to this demographic. They have daily specials on both food and drink, I will share a Pic.
Food & Drink
On this day I was wanting food but not really a meal because it was early. I decided upon the nachos, but convinced myself that the $25 Keg of Nachos size would be ideal in case I was hungrier than I believed. The menu description sounded good and the “1LB of cheese” convinced me it’s what I needed.
Overall the nachos appeared to be pretty massive but that’s largely due to the huge steel keg top which they are served on. They were kinda like described, but if you look at the picture you will be hard pressed to notice any green peppers and dice tomatoes, there wasn’t even a handful of them combined on the entire dish, combined with the tablespoon of feta and 20 jalapeño slices decorating the top. As for the 1LB of cheese, not even close. There’s no way even a half pound of cheese is on these. Possibly the most sparsely topped nachos I have had at a restaurant ever. The only good part was that they used good chips and the jalapeños were ripe. Overall, extremely disappointed in the fact that the menu description is greatly exaggerated and/or that the kitchen performance in making the order suffers from so much shrinkflation that they now use less than 50% of the toppings. Very disappointing food for $25.
Wok Da Heck?
My partner has some sort of noodle bowl dish which she said she enjoyed. It was flavorful and spicy, send to be good quality food although also what appeared to be a pretty small portion to me. Take a look and tell me what you think. Is that saucer sized portion acceptable for a main course item?
Restaurant Service
Our server was Morgan, she was pleasant and did a good job. She refilled our pop, checked on us a couple times and brought the bill promptly when we finished. Both the service and atmosphere were excellent, it’s just the food that was a let down.
Have to say that we can’t recommend going to Shark Club Sports Bar Grill for the food, it might be okay to go watch a game but we won’t be considering it again on our list of Calgary restaurant dining options near on this experience.
Have any restaurant suggestions? We want to try them all, feel free to message us anytime. ~ King Calgary
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King Calgary: I am a living in Calgary, enjoying exploring and experiencing the city and sharing it with others through words, photos, and videos. I like to write about the places I visit, the venues and businesses I go to, and the things that give Calgary its own unique character. With your support and suggestions I will continue to document cool things in the YYC area. Please help a local guy out by hitting the like or share button on any content you enjoy.