Mister M Calgary — Restaurant in Calgary

I can't begin to describe this amazing spot. Honestly the BEST new restaurant this city has by a mile.

From the second you walk in the door you are greeted by professional staff, dressed to impress, you come in the door and your jaw drops in the detail the owner has taken to wow their guests.

I had the blessing to have been served by one of their head managers Hugo, was very well informed with every aspect to his job(being a chef for 25 years it was a blessing to have a front of house member that knew everything one could ask him).

Once sitting, Hugo went over our drink menu with us one by one, and explained their drink menu was made by their award winning bartender. We suggested what we like and was able to point us to their suggestions and all I can say is wow they knocked it out of the park with the flaming cocktails, We had the Kilauea rum drinks it had toasted coconut and cinnamon syrup, pineapple,lime and flaming sugar cube.

Hugo then brought our small bites which were homemade crisps and were just right.

As Hugo was going over the amazing new menu the chef AJ brought out the evenings amuse bouche. Simple one bite palet cleanse to start off our meal, it was house made phylo cup filled with house made pico da Gallo, topped with a prawn and guacamole cremé. Just the right mix of sweet, creamy and acidic.

Hugo went over the menu with us and we decided on the charcuterie bird cage to start. And all I can say is WOW this blew my mind it had, Salami, gherkins, aged cheddar, cranberries, pickles red peppers, prosciutto, Brie, walnuts, tomatoes, foie gras, raspberry preserves, ricotta honey beer buns and warm bread. All of it was spot on and paired perfect, this could feed 4 people.

Next for our mains we had the 12oz ribeye, red wine au jus, rock salt. Sides confit mashed potatoes, mixed garden vegetable

Chicken tortellini, sundried tomatoes, house made chicken stuffed tortellini, Parmesan cream.

I ended up dipping my steak in the cream sauce from the tortellini cause it was next level.

And for dessert we decided on Tres lechi, cream, charbroiled pineapple

Strawberry cheesecake mousse, strawberry gastric.

Both were next level and the cheesake was so light and not the dense super filling normal by style.

Overall this restraunt absolutely blew my mind and like I said above being a chef for 25 years and seeing the sub par food coming from this city it was refreshing to see someone bring Calgary to the table FINALLY. If you have the ability to get downtown Calgary do not for a second pass this place up, the atmosphere, the staff, the chef AJ and his team have done and unreal job, and the plateware is the tipping point to it all and made everything that much more exciting and another talking point at the table. Well done, well done. I will be coming back for...

Wow, this place is getting all the hype and I really don’t understand why. If you like being treated poorly as a customer and jammed in like a sardine, this may be your place.

To shed about our experience, we had booked for a large party (which I was a guest, not the person who booked), we arrived and were welcomed in by literally the only two employees that were friendly (the bouncer and the front door staff member). Once we got in, the place was so full of tables it was hard to move and felt very uncomfortable to just “be” there - there was absolutely no space for anyone walking in.

When I asked a server if there was an area that we should be, or that people normally just stand and hang out, she snarkily said “ugh, there’s a cost check over there, and, stand by like, the bar I guess”, and turned around so quickly it made it feel like I caused her great inconvenience.

We looked over to try to shuffle our way to the bar, but the bar was full of the servers getting their orders for the people seated - most of which giving us not the kindest of looks, and there were tables so close to the far end we would have practically been sitting on people. This definitely wasn’t an option for a group of 7+.

As we were waiting for the text of our party to arrive, I’m assuming he was the manager kept coming over to get us to purchase bottle service for a minimum of $300 (of which the alcohol was not worth, and service had already proven not to be worth) and was clear that the size of table was dependant on amount of bottles bought, not party size.

So as we awkwardly stood there, being rudely looked at by staff, and feeling incredibly in the way in the only open portion of the whole establishment the rest of our party arrived - which we found out we had a table reserved, as noted on the multiple email confirmations.

There were multiple tables open, but they refused to acknowledge their own reservations and wouldn’t give us ANY table without purchasing bottle service. There was only one staff member trying to help us figure it out and went to get a manager to help her, who refused to come over - said there was nothing they could do, and told her to push bottle service again…

We didn’t even get a chance to have food or drinks, so can’t rate on that, but don’t recommend, won’t come again, and will openly let others know about the terrible service and how they treated our group...

Mister M used to be one of my Favorite places to enjoy a more low key club atmosphere and get art done. But as of more recently they've made a lot of quality of life changes that really hurt the atmosphere I used to go there for. Firstly, is the dress code and security. Dress code can take literal hours to get through, since the security guard will take their issues with whatever you're wearing one at a time, additionally, the dress code in question bars bags, which is needlessly inconvenient for the guest since bags aren't clothes. There's also issues with recent advertisement for Mister M claiming itself to have a self imposed 25+ age limit. This is absolutely abhorrent anywhere but especially in this province (for those reading from outside Alberta, youth and young adults here need to fight our provincial government to maintain their basic rights, and face even more scrutiny and marginalization in Alberta then they would in other provinces), and finally, the seeming removal of Gogo sets in Mister M hurts the experience, and combined with the prior points makes it very difficult to justify over it's competition. See, Mister M used to implement their gogo in a very interesting way: Gogo dancers were not given a stage, but instead got to roam the floor and interact with guests over their set, almost like a Disney park character dining experience. The loss of such an interesting idea is tragic and without it Mister M is just another fancy dinner joint with a little extra hassle

To be clear, as with my review on Papi's, this is coming from a place of love, which is why the review is 2 stars and not 1 star, every negative listed here is absolutely fixable, and used to be fixed, which is why I want so badly to see them fixed again. I want to be able to once again bring my drawing tablet on my briefcase to Mister M and finish up art while occasionally being interacted with by the gogo dancers (and I think someone younger then me deserves to have that opportunity too), but recently that just hasn't...