(This restaurant is now *CLOSED* )

10354 Whyte Avenue NW, Edmonton

WARNING! I messed up really bad on photos. I just started blogging. I am so… so very orry hahah.

I’ve been sitting on this post for a little while now, but decided to finally post it. One reason I didn’t really want to post it was because this was one of the first places I’ve gone since starting to blog, and the photos that I took were atrocious. I’ll try to blame it on the lighting, but it’s also because I was somewhat inexperienced at taking good(ish) photos. I figured I’ll post it any way, just in case anyone wanted to look this place up.

The main reason I went here was because I had a groupon. It was 30 dollars for 60, so me and my friends really had 60 dollars to spend here, which is a pretty hefty amount! The pourhouse is a small pub on Whyte ave, It has a relatively narrow entrance and can be easily overlooked if you’re just walking quickly down Whyte. The atmosphere inside is pretty standard for a pub. They had some cool decorations on the walls. It’s a German-influenced pub so there were some German flags, and other German-cultural things around.

Their menu is relatively simple and short. Typical pub appetizers like nachos and chips, a little bit lacking in choices though. Otherwise they just have burgers here, with a variety of sides. Since we had a groupon for 60 dollars, we decided to start off with the Dip Trio, and the four of us got one burger each (We had a few drinks each we made more than the 60 dollars worth).

So their Dip Trio comes with their Green Goddess dip, hummus, and chipotle salsa. Green goddess dip is usually a dressing made with mayo, sour cream, chives, anchovy and pepper. It’s named after its colour. All throughout the menu you can see that they add it everywhere and it’s one of their staple sauces. I found it to be really strong, and have a little bit of a bite similar to a raddish-heat. It was tasty with the crostini chips but it was pretty powerful. The hummus was pretty typical. The best of the three dips would have to be the chipotle salsa. It was really fresh and had a nice flavour to it, almost a little bit smokey. It was a nice appetizer to eat and share amongst us. The ratio of chips/crostini to dip was really poor though and we ended up having to ask for some more.

One thing that I can say about Pourhouse is that they actually have a lot of vegetarian options. Most places usually have one vegetarian burger and that’s it, but here you have the option of 3 different kinds of burgers. One of my friends are vegetarian and she is used to not having many options. She got the ZLT. It’s smoked and seared zucchini, with their house hummus, and veggies. I had a bite of it, and it was okay as far as vegetarian sandwiches go. The hummus made the sandwich a lot more enjoyable. It gives it a little bit of a savour-ey unami taste. The bread was crispy and it was overall a light sandwich.

My other friend has gotten their bacon wrapped splitter a few times and I had some of that as well. It’s a bacon-wrapped hot dog served with melted cheese and a garlic-aioli sauce. It’s relatively good. The garlic-aioli sauce is my favourite part. It’s nice and light and gives the rest of the hot dog nice flavours. We both got the loaded backed potato as the side. It’s loaded with their Green Goddess sauce. Both of our potatoes were undercooked and hard. It was poorly executed. And I understand how the Green Goddess sauce is like one of their signature sauces, but it was a little bit overkill on the baked potato. I don’t like to leave food on my plate (no matter how bad it is) and I couldn’t bring myself to finishing this.

My sister got ‘La Lucha’ It’s a spicy chorizo pork patty with smoked jalapeno cream cheese. Mmmm the description of it is much tastier than the burger itself. Overall it’s okay, not the greatest. It’s a little bit bland, and they warn that the burger is quite spicy but overall the flavours were underwheming. The bun came out a little bit burnt (which actually isn’t the first time I’ve seen, someone turned it back because of that once, ours was just mildly burnt).

Last but not least, is the Lamb Burger. A nice thick patty served with goat cheese and their pickled beets. This was definitely the best burger out of the bunch. If I come back here, this is the one that I’d get. The burger was a nice size and well seasoned. The star of the burger would be their pickled beets. This was actually really nice, and complemented the burger nicely. I’m not a huge fan of beets, but these were well done. Usually I find that the flavour of beets is really strong, and even after pickling, it’s a strong overwhelming taste, but these are really mild was a great addition to the burger. There was a generous amount of goat cheese. I’d still prefer the Lamb Burger at The Sugar Bowl, but this was really well done.

Overall, this was a pretty enjoyable experience. The service was okay, we did have a little bit of slow service to start, but it kind of picked up in the middle. They have a large selection of beer. (I’m not a huge beer-drinker, but they have two tasty ginger beer there, and they don’t even taste like beer). The food is average. I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to come back here (unless I had a groupon), but at the same time, if my friends wanted to go here I wouldn’t say no (though I might recommend The Next Act, which is only a few blocks away). At the end of the night we ended up paying only about 70 ish dollars for four burgers, an appetizer, and 2-3 drinks each, so that is actually really cheap. Worth a try if you have a groupon for sure.