Rocky Mountain Icehouse — Restaurant in Edmonton

Read the reviews before coming for a friend's birthday, and didn't expect too much. I was very disappointed anyway. Most restaurants at least have one dish that stands out, this place - nope. Tried cheese mac hushpuppies which were pretty good when hot. Once cooled they were disgusting. The scooby snacks which is basically crushed baby potatoes with bacon and cheese on top with a dip. Edible but boring. The Burger came with lettuce, a not very tasty sauce, and a pickle slice. It should be called the "Plain burger". I think that even if there was a tomato slice and cheese on it, it would still be pretty bland. There is no charbroil taste, there is barely any taste. The potato chips were simply seasoned, cold and nobody touched it even though everyone had beers. It reminded me of how great the cactus club potato chips at BP's are. The side salad was fresh, and the dressing was on the side, very nice. The fried chicken and fritters was disgusting. The breading was super thick and overdone, the fritters some more semi-warm cheese mac hushpuppies.

Service was great. Food was relatively inexpensive.

9 of us were seated at a long table with dim lighting, but I could still see my glass was dirty. The decor is very nice, but that is because I'm facing a wall with backlit wall hangings of tree silhouettes, and nice beige leather seats against the wall. If you're on the other side, you will see a long bar with pictures of mountains underneath, a corner of the room with skis, and some little log cabin thing... but nothing in the menu suggests we're in the mountains. The food you get in the apres ski mountains is infinitely better. There's a confusing explanation of the evolution of the 'icehouse' in north america on the menu. It's all annoyingly gimmicky and I would not...

Short version: slow service, unwelcoming staff, terrible food value. I will never go here again.

Long version: we came as a large group outting, looking for a night of good company and even better food and drinks. Considering the prices they charged on their menu items, we figured it should be decent tasting. Google maps lists this place as $$ (2) but I'd rate it as $$$ (3). Since I ate somewhere else before joining up with our group, I simply ordered the creole calamari and a 20oz beer for $29. Of place the dish amongst the bottom 10 of the 100's of places I've ordered calamari from as it was dry, lacked flavor, and full of crispy filler bits. The 2 sauces that came with the dish were a 2/10 rating at best, basically tasted like canned sauce. The beer was good, as it's quite difficult to mess up pouring a beer. I tried my friends' BBQ wings and buffalo wings, they looked good in the Google photos but didn't taste as good as they looked. When I noticed that some of our table was looking at the menu, I asked if they were going to order something else, and they replied "we haven't even got to order our mains yet"... this was an hour after getting to the restaurant...!!!!!! One guy said they haven't even ordered ANY food yet...!!! I easily believed it since it took the waitress 5 minutes to greet us, 10+ minutes to take a drink order, and 30+ minutes to get a food order in. Not a genuine/fake smile or welcome during the whole process.

Management: Look, us customers can't expect it all, but you can't have bad service, bad food, and high prices, it's just not a working formula. With high prices, we expect okay food, okay service, or even excellent food and terrible service, and...

I visited Edmonton for the June 24th Garth Brooks concert and saw this pub right near the hotel and thought it would be a great place to grab a meal.

I did check out reviews of nearby places and some reviews of the Icehouse mentioned rather bland food but I decided the first evening's dinner would be this pub and was looking forward to dinner. Décor/ambience was quite attractive/good and we were off to a good start. Service was good but I have to agree with the reviews that the food was rather non-exciting. It was not bad, the quality was there but I was not actually very impressed.

I actually found the menu…there wasn’t much that I was interested in that particular day, nothing leapt off the page at us. Maybe just a bad day on our part so will not put blame on the pub for that.

We weren’t looking for burgers and actually ordered the Watermelon Caesar Salad and Thai Chili Chicken wings. Interesting concept, the Caesar salad but it didn’t quite live up to what we were hoping for and the wings, the supplied herb dip was thin and not really that exciting. My companion and I shared the meal and both of us had a similar opinion. Everything was good quality but just not exciting.

Before returning to the hotel after the concert on the second evening, we visited another nearby pub for a drink and a snack. The reviews were not quite as good but we found the chicken wings there better and our other appie was more exciting. Each to his own taste.

My rating is a high 3 stars but won’t tip over into a 4 star rating because...