Lil’ Empire Burger - Annex Ale Location — Restaurant in Calgary

I'm not gonna lie to you. This was underwhelming. I prioritize food a lot. The place can look perfect but I'm not going back if the food isn't worth the money. The service was great and the ambiance was a blend of modern industrial and enjoyed the atmosphere itself. However that just reaches an overall rating of 6/10 and nothing special. Here's what had.

Drink - Manchester Libre - not particularly sweet, not particularly boozy. I didn't think a carbonated drink could be flat but it was, and it was boring

Burger - the Empire Burger with cheese - It was boring and not particularly beefy in flavour. It's saving grace was that at least the meat was tender. Mildly fresh ingredients. Wilted lettuce and cheese whiz. Marginally better than McDonald's.

The Dirty fries - The dirty fries had a jalapeno relish which added a slight spicy pop in flavour. And I was not a fan of the cheesy flavour either personally. Each flavour was too strong and tried to overtake the other instead of being harmonious. Which lent itself to being a boring eat aside from maybe when I'm feeling under the weather or mildly sauced. The texture was okay but the mouth feel and crunch could have...

We ordered the empire with cheese and the classic chicken crunch. The empire with cheese was a lil slice of heaven in burger form and we gobbled it up incredibly quickly and wished we ordered more. Unfortunately we found the classic chicken crunch to be on the oiler side and a bit salty. Despite the chicken crunch not being the best, I couldn’t ding them any stars due to the fact that they’ve crafted such an amazing burger 😭

I wish the other reviewers that dinged them due to price took into consideration what the owner has communicated (pays their employees a fair wage, top notch ingredients,etc) and realize that they aren’t ordering from a typical fast food restaurant paying their employees minimum wage and using god-knows what as beef.

We can’t wait for things to return to normal for us to dine in person and explore the rest...

So my wife and I are trying to cut back on the high calorie but we decided to have a little sampler at one of our more favourite restaurants. We asked the server to cut our burger in half not that we can’t afford to buy more than one burger they’re just quite a spoil to say the least. The server and the cook acted so strange about it and then told us no! because of gluten cross contamination we were the only people in the establishment and our burger was the only thing that she was preparing. we did order french fries. They weren’t ready with the order as she didn’t charge us for them ?They gave us a plastic knife to cut it ourselves I just found it very strange. Someone would say no to you over cutting a sandwich in half they made us feel very unwelcome. Not sure if I’ll come back. I’ve been quite a regular over...