Rosewood Foods — Restaurant in Central Core

The Rosewood is a fastfood experience in some ways, but a very good experience in other ways. You enter and line up like you would if you were going to an Arby's. But the ambiance is hipster, not fast food - but the structure of ordering is similar. While in the venue it is clean, and has a nice vibe. I liked what they did to the limited space they had. 👏

Once you order, you take a number cafeteria style and your order will be brought to you. The food was prepared quickly and people were fine. But it is hard to be more than superficial in this regard. Had I asked for advice on the menu, it may have been different. But how do you ask questions when there are people behind you? So it is hard to rave about the service.

So how was the food? I had a fried egg sandwich. If I recall, it was on a brioche bun. But regardless, it was light, soft, and fluffy. I would bet dollars to donuts it was in-house made. It was also substantial enough to hold the moisture from the yolk of the egg. It was tasty and well done.

The home fried potatoes were the bomb. Crispy outside and amazingly soft and fluffy inside. You need to experience these. I am still wondering how they nailed that so perfectly. Again, you are going to a place that knows how to prepare good tasting comfort food.

My meal was $16. For me that is a bit expensive, but I feel I got value. It was that good.

The coffee - a latte - was very well prepared. It has really good coffee.

My guest had a salad and enjoyed it. It was fresh and tasty I am told.

Third, this place has great crullers I am told. A testament to that is they were sold out at 12:30. So go early for those.

Parking in the area is a mess. Contruction everywhere. Rice Howard Way should be a beacon but it had construction fences and bins up around there, and it was sad to see. But the restaurant doesn't carry that.

I struggled on a rating. I enjoyed it, but felt 4 ⭐️ was fair. But if you said it was a 5 ⭐️ experience, I wouldn't argue with you. If you said a 3 ⭐️ experience, for what I had, I would bicker with you about that.

I will share a few pictures. Some are of the food, the venu and some are the surroundings. But I want to be clear. I wasn't expecting to review this place so the food pictures are not a good shot. I am also sharing pictures of the area around it. I am sharing more to say to #yegcc, get your act together. These great business...

I’ve been here a few times now and I must say that I’m actually disappointed. It’s a cute space on the corner of Rice Howard Way, offering quick breakfast, brunch and lunch fare. Rosewood Foods refer to themselves as a dinette…and in my experience this means more of a causal type dining. “Easy-going” as they say. When reading the menu, there is a sort of flair or twist to the meal, something you’d expect from a more experienced chef who understands food and flavour. Though when it comes out, it’s just rather upsetting. The plating itself is sub par, like someone is in a hurry and just needs to throw it onto a plate. Then you begin to eat and things just don’t make sense. I’ll speak to the two dishes I have had so far. First the breakfast sandwich (mine with chicken sausage) and crispy potatoes. The sandwich itself was rather umami and needed something to help cut through it more, because of that it became rather bland and hard to finish. The crispy potatoes were heavily fried in oil, leaving them taste more like a frier rather than anything else. Next up I had the brunch bowl (again with chicken sausage and crispy potatoes). The proportions were off and the flavours were imbalanced. Again, a rather heavy umami flavour. The sausage itself is already heavily seasoned with herbs and begins to clash with the other items in the dish. Followed up with greasy potatoes and a chili jam that you would expect to help pull the flavours together, but instead just adds more of that savoury which there is already too much of. I must also mention that this dish had a very unappealing presentation. With the sausage cut up and basically laid on top in a star shape with radish circles in between. The coffee they served was ACE. A very familiar roast in the city. I ordered a cortado. The barista made it beautifully, however this last time the espresso was not dialled in properly. Although previous times it has been much better. I would like to see some changes with the food menu, a bit more understanding when it comes to flavours and presentation. Unless your “dinette” actually means diner…and you are wanting to serve bland, boring food. Where’s...

The service is very good and friendly. The food is excellent probably the best breakfast in Edmonton in my opinion!! I’m not even a crueller guy but the curlers are so tasty!

However the way they do seating and ordering is very inefficient and confusing especially if you have not been before. I’ve seen many groups of 4-5 people just leave because of the seating set up.

The menus is a regular sized menu but it appears they only have two to look at and one of them is at the till where you order. It would be much better if they had a big chalk board style menus by the till so you could figure out what you want while you are in line waiting and not have to panic order when you are up at the till with 12 people behind you.

The seating is easily the worst part of the experience and if this were to improve the result would be beneficial to customer’s experience and probably the bottom line of the restaurant. Many times I have been and had to sit next to the water jug at the bar seating and have people brushing up against me getting their water the whole time. Other times I have seen a single person sitting at the only 6 person table in the restaurant and groups have to sit at the bar or leave.

I would honestly rather have a host tell me to wait outside for 20 minutes rather than deal with the awkward free for all that is the seating here.

All in all the food is very tasty and it’s worth all the weird haste but the experience could easily be so much better I would love to see this restaurant be the best...