Avenue Restaurant and Bar — Restaurant in Regina

It’s hard to describe this restaurant as nothing short of excellence. Walking into this Mid Century Modern, meets Historic Regina atmosphere was exactly what this city needed. We chose to sit at the bar for a few reasons: one we didn’t have a reservation (We will now try to do so moving forward, most major cities and top restaurants function in this way and I have no issue adapting to this), and also the Head Chef and Sous-Chefs prepare everything right in front of the bar, so it had significant entertainment value. Ambiance from lighting, to seating, to napkins, and glasses was a 10/10.

Now food, we chose to start with the fresh homemade goat cheese and tempera prawns, both unique in their own way, but again excellent. My partner decided to go with the Beef Wellington, he described this dish as astonishing, the meat was cooked to perfection, and melted in his mouth, and the side was paired perfectly, he is also 6’2” and can eat a lot, he left feeling more then satisfied. I chose to have their version of a Caesar salad, and it simply blew my mind. I immediately noticed the crispness of the kale and the buttery after taste, the dressing was exactly how Caesar dressing should be, fresh and strong, all the added vegetables complimented the dish perfectly and I can’t recommend it enough.

Now the cocktails, I think it is super important to rate this separately as it is in a class of its own. I feel like this art is highly missed when it comes to restaurant reviews and it needs to be talked about. We both started with the 87’ Carat Gold, beautifully created, and every ingredient complimented each other, it was so smooth, and we were both in shock about how incredible it actually tasted. My partner paired his meal with a local Radler which was very pleasant to still see in a restaurant of this nature. I enjoyed my meal with the Mint Condition – their version of a watermelon mojito with gin, from the frozen perfectly cubed watermelon, to the crystal glass, it was beyond satisfying. It was also the perfect drink (when finished) to then top with their sparkling water, I could not let those watermelon cubes go to waste!

We left feeling full, satisfied, and simply up lifted. I personally think the prices are reasonable and if anything could even go up, they are using high-quality local ingredients and the uniqueness is there. Walk into this place knowing you are going to get excellent service, food and drinks, but also walk into this place and really step back and appreciate the creativeness, art, time, and dedication that the entire Avenue team has committed too. We can’t wait to go back, we are so grateful we finally have a dining experience like this in Regina, it will be our go to for quick after work cocktails, for business meetings and date night....

We went to Avenue last evening with a work colleague and had high expectations. We've been to Ayden on multiple occasions and generally always had excellent meals and experiences there. There's a lot of hype around Avenue and we were excited to give it a try. We weren't very impressed.

The old Malt City room has been broken down into sections and it felt a bit cramped but still quite spacious. It was hopping for a Thursday night and most of the seats were full, impressive for a downtown Regina restaurant on a nice weekday evening, even more so because the Riders were playing.

We started with some appetizers. The tempura prawns were basically just cocktail shrimp fried in batter with an aioli unappealing plopped onto the plate. Not great and really unimpressive presentation. The fig and goat cheese platter was tasty but disappointingly they only gave us two pieces of bread. We had to ask for more bread to finish the platter. Chicken wings were over salted but tasty.

The entrees were equally unimpressive. I had the rib eye, which was done reasonably well but wasn't substantive. Multiple steakhouses in town including the Diplomat do a much better job with the meat. Fries were ridiculously over salted to the point where my partner had to send them back. My other two dining companions ordered the truffle burger and again, it was way too salty. My wife ordered hers medium-rare and it wasn't even close to being done right the first time with literally no moisture left in the burger. They tried to graciously apologize and got it right the second time, but it was almost comedic to a degree how the same two people apologized to her like five times. If you want to apologize, just do it once, get it right, and take it off the bill if you want to be really nice.

Desserts were just OK. The raspberry souffle was tasty but again, poorly presented. For a restaurant claiming to be among the province's best, I found the effort with presenting the food to be completely lacking and disappointing.

Lastly, we had a bit of wine left and it had been sitting in a bucket of ice. Our server actually put it in a paper bag of all things, and it soaked through the bottom of the bag on the walk back to our car and the bottle dropped onto the sidewalk and shattered because I was just holding the bag itself. We were mortified.

All in all, for $300 + tip, can't say that we will be back anytime soon. Maybe we just experienced an off night compared to...

Traveling all over North America, regularly dining in finer restaurants, and occasionally in Michelin-star recipient venues, I was excited to see Regina finally having a 'nicer' restaurant open. I've been to Avenue four times, and the atmosphere, service, and cocktails are all great. The tempura asparagus is one of the best appetizers I've had anywhere, and I can honestly say that the Creme de Caramel is THE best dessert that I've ever tasted, with a brilliant blend of saltiness, sweet, rich cream, and smoky nuttiness. Avenue's cocktails are also very well-crafted, with a few being magnificent.

However, the last two times I dined here, my ribeye was significantly under-cooked. I absolutely know how steaks are to be prepared from the standard choices, and mine were close to blue rare from the standard of medium rare. The first time I ordered the ribeye, I sent it back, it returned well done, and just finished my meal and left. The second time, I didn't bother mentioning it and just ate it blue rare. Obviously, this is completely unacceptable for a finer restaurant, but even more egregious than this was the fact that, on my second tripe, the steak was ridiculously over-seasoned. I'm a guy who likes things on the salty side, but my last steak probably was - no exaggeration here - waaay saltier than McDonald's fries. I could, quite literally, only taste salt. It's just crazy that this type of absolute-amateur mistake could happen in a meal that cost me $500 (four people with a few drinks).

As much as I love some aspects of Avenue, I can't justify spending several hundred dollars on dinners that I walk away from being completely disappointed. I'll have to go back to my 'nicer' meals being on my trips to the larger Canadian...