Hot Night Out at Deerfoot Casino in Calgary

Like Las Vegas, but Not

This week we had an invite from friends to go to see an event at the Deerfoot Inn and Casino in the Chrome Showroom. And while this wasn’t particularly an event we would normally have had high on our list for a Saturday night out in Calgary, we never turn down an opportunity to hit the town with friends. So across the city we headed to the SE corner where the Deerfoot meets up with the South end of Barlow Trail, this is where you will find the Deerfoot Casino located.

Tonight’s entertainment was called “Hot Mess, A Night in Vegas” and it was a Drag Show. Ya ya ya, I know this type of performing art isn’t for everyone, but then again neither is a great live theatre show or a top restaurant in Calgary or a party in the park, so spare me the drama if this isn’t an event you would want to read about and I will write Calgary Reviews about the the Opera or a Pumpkin Festival next week and maybe find a topic that YOU like better. Or better yet, send me a message and let me know what event or Calgary restaurant you want King Calgary to put on the list to check out and review soon.

Before the show, we met up with our group of friends in the Deerfoot Casino Hotel restaurant. On weekends they offer a big buffet which is set up in the large common lobby area of the Hotel front desk and banquet rooms. I have to say that this location for the food isn’t the most appealing, it sort of feels like its just laid out in a hallway really.

The diners take their plates from the buffet and then return to sit in the adjoining restaurant or lounge. Fortunately, the menu for the restaurant is still available for guests who wish to order from it instead of having the buffet, and this is what our entire group did on this night.

The highlight of the meal was actually seeing this food delivery robot come out of the kitchen and drive our food over to our table. We had heard about this before but this is the first we had seen it and it was pretty cool, albeit more of a novelty than it was any real observable help really. Still, it was the first robot delivered meal I have had and now I just want all my food sent to me by robots. Wasn’t that supposed to happen by 2020?

The food in the top rated restaurant was surprisingly good. I had a giant chicken quesadilla (i seem to eat a lot of mexican food in these damn reviews, what the hell is up with that?) which was cooked so that the outside was crisped with crunch cheese. The portion size was larger than average and the price wasn’t even too bad. I have to say that this restaurant gave most of the others I have been to in Calgary a food quality target to aim for.

Other members of the group had a sizzling plate of tacos to assemble, and some chose to eat Ceasars instead of a meal. Afterall, the Ceasar was invented in Calgary so it should be maincourse someplace. I would rate the food very high but the ambiance and atmosphere of the place about the same as a Denny’s. (unless you like Denny’s, then imagine a Humpty’s instead).

After the meal we headed to the showroom to watch the live Drag show performance. Having not really seen such a thing none of our heterosexual vanilla looking group of pasty white Albertans really didn’t know what to expect. The crowd in the Deerfoot Casino chrome showroom was definitely a lot more colorful and flamboyantly dressed than we were. The LGBTQ++ community definitely turned out en masse to support this event and the performers as was expected. The doorman said that he thought the show was completely sold out, which I believe is 750 people in that venue at $25/ticket.

The show itself was not entirely like I thought it would be. I anticipated a bit more of a burlesque or comedy aspect to the performance than it had. For the most part, some of the performers didn’t dance a lot but they did all lip sync along to a popular song. I believe songs that night included Brittany Spears, Cher, Madonna, etc. Overall the performers dancing and lip syncing varied in quality, with a couple of the more popular performers really making an effort to dance their ass off for the crowd, who responded in kind by providing both enthusiastic applause as well as cash tips.

I believe a few of the performers were local YYC artists and a couple had traveled in from other cities. As it’s not an art scene that I follow, I didn’t know who the headline performers were, but I believe that they were somewhat of celebrities in the genre. It would have been good if the emcee did a bit more of a detailed introduction of them to the crowd anticipating that not everyone might not know them.

Pretty much exactly what we expected the show to be. Between performers the Host attempted to keep the crowd excited, tried to be a stand up comedian, and filled in the breaks. Overall, the whole thing was alright, nothing spectacular and definitely not worthy of being compared to a Vegas show. The best part of the event for me wasn’t the quality of the performances but the fact that the community showed up to support the artists. That is always good to see.

After the show we wandered back through the casino and checked out the venue a bit more. We found the high limit room, the poker room, and the lounge which had a live band playing up on stage, and if you have read any of this site then you know that any venue that hosts Calgary Live Music events gains my respect and acknowledgement. Of course we stuck around for a few more beverages rather than fight with the traffic leaving the show. We avoided donating any money to the slots on this night, not sure how that happened as its pretty unusual for us.

The Deerfoot casino overall wasn’t bad, there was a lot of seniors up and down the aisles even until the late evening when we left. The lounge and the restaurant were both full all night. Calgary people were happy to be out after all those missing months. We will return for another show soon, looks like they have a pretty continuous line up of events coming up, just nothing that appealed to us on the short term schedule. (sorry, but you can only see Kim Mitchell 30 times before you get pretty tired of the 1 tolerable song he has ever had)

I would like to do a review of the hotel portion of the Deerfoot Inn and Casino one day too, as I have heard they have pretty decent facilities. If I get the chance to stay there on a gambling promo then I will take some pics and videos and post a whole new review here. Stay tunes and thanks for reading. Please share our page on your socials.

~ King Calgary