Cold Lake Restaurant Tips by Bwana_Brown

Backyard BBQ: Home Cooking is Hard to Beat

The day after our lakeside swim, we decided to take advantage of the sunny weather by having a traditional Canadian backyard barbeque. Our daughter and son-in-law have a large deck that suited our needs perfectly, and his sister was also on-hand to join in on the festivities.

Favorite Dish: We prepared a whole bunch of brochettes, with half featuring shrimp and the other half chicken cubes. Both had alternating sections of red, green and orange peppers as well as baby tomatoes, mushrooms and chunks of Spanish onion, with the entire combo basted in Teriyaki sauce. Served with rice and a great garden salad, these things were delicious!!

In the late afternoon sky, the half-moon became visible and it was great to haul out Kevin's major telescope to actually see the many craters on it's surface as their shadows were accented by the sun's rays! I was surprised at how fast the moon was moving across the sky as we had to continuously adjust the telescope to keep track of it.

Comparison: less expensive than average

Price: less than US$10

Rating: 4

Theme: Barbecue

A & W: A Classic Canadian Fast-food Chain

The American & Western (A&W) chain of fast food restaurants was actually started in western Canada 50 years ago, and now spans the country. Their original restaurants were drive-in affairs where you parked your car under large awnings and the food and drinks were brought out to you, served on trays that attached to the roll-down car windows. The speciality was root beer soft drinks served in frosty mugs to go with the typical burger-type meals (Papa, Momma and Baby burgers). I have always found their food to be quite tasty because of the open-flame cooking process.

However, on this occassion, I decided to try their breakfast fare and it was quite good too. The two eggs, bacon, hash-brown potatoes, toast and a mug of coffee only cost US$5.50 and the service was very quick. However, I had to settle for white bread toast instead of my usual whole-wheat, so I'll have to subtract a point for that!

Comparison: less expensive than average

Directions: At the junction of the main highway through Cold Lake and the Air Force base access road.

Price: less than US$10

Rating: 3

Theme: Fast Food

Panago: Great Pizza!

Although we were royally fed by our hosts, we decided to take some of the pressure off by ordering take-out pizza from Panago one night.

This is a chain that I had not heard of or seen before in the far east of Canada, maybe I just lead a secluded life? The bottom line is, I was very impressed with the flavour and quality of their pizzas!

Favorite Dish: We ordered two large pizzas, one vegetarian with all the fixings and the other based on shrimp. These came with a garlic dipping sauce that really added to the flavours. It was enough to make me keep an eye open for them on the remainder of our trip!

Comparison: about average

Price: US$11-20

Rating: 4

Theme: Pizza