Famoso - Red Deer, AB

Oh Famoso, everyone in town was super excited when you were opening a year ago. A year later and I'm still not a fan.  I've had a few bad experiences, chalked up to the first month or so they were open and no business will run smoothly without any mistakes when they first open.

In the beginning, I found that they were overstaffed and there was a lack of communication between the staff. I have many examples of what i find demonstrates this but that was then.. this is now. And the most important aspect of a business is of course, the food.
Everytime I go here, I always find my pizza a little burnt... I understand that its flat bread and its pretty hard to cook/keep it consistent. But because of the couple burnt pizza's I've had, I'm not really a big fan. Overall, the apps, the pizzas and the dessert's I've had aren't anything special to me...
The desserts, most of them are overwhelming sweet. Definitely can only handle a couple bites, but they are pretty good to look at and good to share... especially with other women when its a certain time of the month ;)

Overall, I'm not a big fan of Famoso, on a recent trip there was hair in the pizza. Working in the restaurant industry, I know these things happen but personally just from when they first opened and the mishaps I've had with them... it's not a place I frequent when I'm dining out. Side note, other then the first month or so of opening, the service is consistently friendly and the owner is usually always there and is very genuine in knowing how your meal went.

Joey Chinook Calgary

Stopped by Joey's since we were at the mall and ready for food but didn't feel like going to the food court.

First off, rant: i'm probably the only person to complain about this but I must! I'm a petite person. And i find the seat/table height ratio at Joey's bothering. The booth/chair thingys are comfy and my feet do firmly touch the ground but when i first went to sit down, I underestimated how low it was and basically just flopped into my seat. The tables are rather high compared to the seats,  halfway past my chest high.
I'm use to tables being halfway up my stomach and barely any inches between my thighs and the table top. But there was a good 9 inches from my thigh to the table. I thought it was an awkward position. Why must you put those chairs so low and the tables so high up?

Putting aside that, the food at Joey's is pretty good. Worth its price. The service on the other hand... could be a little better. 
They were adequately staffed, by that I mean i saw plenty of hosts/servers wandering around especially regrouping at the host stand. I don't mind if they're chatting and all but they could have actually been more attentive towards the guests. We were seated right away, but our drink orders took a good while. At first we thought our server was going to stop by asking for our drinks but then after a while a different hostess came by to take our drink orders (three waters). A while longer, our server came by with our drinks. And i noticed the same thing happened to other tables. It wasn't too busy in there...
Other then the table/chair heights annoyance (First time this has happened) , I get annoyed when my water/drink is constantly empty. I drink a couple cups of water during a meal and if I have to ask multiple times for more water, especially if they have looked at the table a couple of times, i'm not overly impressed. Nor am i impressed when hostesses are wandering around that are capable of filling drinks/collecting plates, or when we asked a different server for a refill but she never did return with water...

... maybe i'm a little anal about my water. :P But seriously, our glasses were empty during the entire time of our mains before we could finally get our server to refill them.

FINALLY, the food part! 

We had the Lettuce Boats with Chicken to start. They will give you extra lettuce boats if you want them too. They were pretty good, nothing that made it different for me then any other restaurant with lettuce wraps. Slightly spicy sauce, nice crunchy noodles.

I had the Steak frites as my main. Loved the seasoning and the parsley butter on top. It was very tender. Only thing is that I asked for a medium rare steak and i found it to be ... pretty rare for a medium rare. Not complaining, as long as it is not blue or well done, I will eat it! Because it was pretty rare, it was pretty juicy as well. Love the fries that come with the meals, it reminds me of the fries at earls... thin and crunchy. Mcdonalds fries except 10x better.

(after some googling on Joey's Tomatoes I found out it is part of the earl's family, which explains those fries!)

Steak Frites

Medium Rare Steak

Panang Prawn Curry Bowl

 Had a bite of my friend's Panang Prawn Curry Bowl, I didn't find it too spicy but then again I do love spicy.. or maybe my bite just didn't have any since the others did say it was spicy. Nice creamy curry. I find the plating to be a little odd with that tower of rice...

My other friend had the Chicken Souvaki and said it was decent.. the chicken was well seasoned. Personally, I didn't see it to be worth the try...

Chicken Souvaki

To conclude, pretty good dishes, the chairs and table heights bothered me, it seemed the hostesses don't do much from my point of view, my server or rather the whole team could be a more attentive. Worth the go.


Joey's AB Menu