Border skirmishes
Dodgy chinatown curry
Szechwan masala?

Scene: Local Calgary Financial Institution. A tanned skinned man enters the bank and takes a seat in the waiting area. Shortly thereafter, a banker approaches and invites him into his office. 

Potential Business Man: I’d like to open an Indian restaurant and need a loan.
Banker: Very good. What qualifications do you have?
Potential Business Man: I’m Indian.
Banker: Very good.
Potential Business Man: Can I have the loan?
Banker:  Well, where do you plan on opening this Indian restaurant?
Potential Business Man: Chinatown.
Banker: How does $900,000 sound? Sign your life away here on the dotted line.

Fast-forward a few months….

Scene: Chinatown. Two men (and the female acquaintance of one of the men) meet for dinner and to review the restaurant.(matt)

When we heard about this place, matt and I knew we just had to go check it out.  I was personally hoping for something like the Hakka cuisine from the Karma Restaurant. You know...a blend of chinese and indian flavours, bringing out the best of both.  (ren)

I never go to Chinatown. I really have no business there. Six years ago, I had Dim Sum at the Silver Dragon followed by a tour through a seafood store full of aquatic life one would only see while watching a Jacques Cousteau documentary. Electric Eel. How exactly do you cook that? As far as Chinatowns go, ours sucks. It lacks the street vendors and music box grinding monkeys found in places like San Francisco, Vancouver or New York. Putting an Indian restaurant in the heart of it, hardly helps. (matt)

I also never go to chinatown. This is mostly because I never leave my house.  My entire life is lived vicariously through matt or virtually through the internet.  In fact, I have never eaten indian food myself, although once I had a gulab jamin thrown at my window.  This webpage is 50% fake.  Mostly I just stay home and watch The Weather Network and drink Butter Ripple Schnapps by myself on the couch.  Heavy rainfall warnings are exciting.  (ren)

I walked past what I imagined was the Taiwanese cultural center, two police cars and an elderly man doing Tai Chi until I came to what used to be Treasures of China. The sign now says Ivory Resaturant.  (matt)

As soon as I arrived at the restaurant I knew that instead of taking the best of both traditional cuisines they had actually decided to take one of the worst (according to matt).  Buffet only.  Boo.  Even though they had lots of dishes up at the front, I could just tell that it wasn't going to be what I was wanting. (ren)

Inside I found a stairwell coated with classic Chinese red berber. At the top of the stairs I walked into a massive room 3000 square foot room which screamed Dim Sum Sundays and/or Wedding Buffet room. Each of the 36 eight person tables were numbered and for a moment, it was like I had arrived early to the College of Pharmacy Christmas Formal, except there was no one dancing on chairs and our friend Bruck wasn’t complaining about the buffet line. Instead there were only 3 tables occupied, with Ren and his friend Cindy being at one of them. There was also a stage with speech podium prominently featured. I imagined a really bad wedding speech occurring about “that time the bride and her sisters went camping and it rained”. That, or Chairman Mao Zedong telling the Communist Party about the kick ass stag he went to. Why do guys always have better stories? (matt)

The buffet had quite a few choices, some pakoras, butter chicken, tater-tots (WTF???), beef and veg curry and of course tandoori chicken.  Pakoras were dry and pretty crunchy.  The tater-tots weren't as good as the ones at taco bell.  The butter chicken was either really tough dark-meat, or possibly turkey.  The beef curry wasn't too bad.  There were a few other things that didn't stand out as good or bad...maybe a lamb dish even. (ren)

Basically, its buffet. They have pakoras which I enjoyed but Ren and Cindy found very dry. I’ll admit they were a little woody. I would say the butter chicken was good but when I like the butter chicken, it’s probably a bad sign. In this case, Ren felt the butter chicken was more apt to be described as a Thankgiving specialty served with cranberries. Then there was the non traditional Indian buffet item of “Potato crackers” (READ: Mexi-Fries). Bizarre. It was like my high school cafeteria had some input on the menu. The mixed veg curry, beef curry and dhals were pretty mediocre. We also encountered that same mystery yellow dish from the Nirvana review. If I see it for a third time, I will avoid it. Maybe the one item that was very good was the Tandoori Chicken. Not too dried out. The naan was nothing to write home about. Although, seeing as my parents are probably gonna read this review, I guess that’s what I’m doing.  (matt)

We don't just write home about it....we write to the world.  Well..at least to the ~1800 people who have looked at the site.  Most of whom are actually return-visits from matt and I.  But hey...good times.  (ren)

As we were settling up our tab, we witnessed the most awkward conversation in the history of spoken language (other then maybe me asking Karen Eminger to grad, circa 1995). A young immigrant boy, maybe 15 years old, of either African or South American descent, stood in the abyss of the dining room waiting patiently to be seated. Surrounded by Chinese colors and the odd Indian drum, he was finally confronted by the waitress. After about 2 minutes, in which translations were clearly a problem, she offered him a seat. The boy looked scared. And lonely. I felt sorry for him. He looked as if having just arrived to Canada, with little money in his pockets, he had saved up his change from weeks of work in some sweat shop, to treat himself to a proper meal tonight. He probably had walked past Ivory dozens of times as motivation, telling himself “only 9 more shifts and I can go for buffet”. I wanted to tell him to save his money. We had just had a very mediocre meal, overpriced at $20 a head and he was going be very disappointed. In the end, when he grabbed a plate and filled one half of it with lettuce only before returning to his table, it became clear to me that he had bartered for either free salad or a reduced buffet fee for what he took.  (matt)

If the food was better it'd be a great place to have a party.  Get drunk, do a speech behind the podium, do a little dance, have a silent auction.  As it stands though, it was pretty brutal.  I'd like to thank Cindy for joining us, next time babe, we'll take you somewhere better, like the YYC.  (ren)

They better hope they get tonnes of wedding bookings or they will be out of business before September and the bank will foreclose on them. Really, there’s a reason there are no pizzerias in Chinatown. Ultimately our experience at Ivory was pretty second-rate. I’d have given the place a 6 but as my Kiwi friends might say, “we’re in the business of ripping people’s sacks off”, so it gets a 5.       (matt)

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