I am in trouble. The cards stare me in the face. They are not good. No triplets can be formed, no straights (or “runs”) are coming together. Meanwhile, across the table, Jennifer tells me how bad her cards are, and it will be many turns from now before she can have anything resembling a decent hand.
Jennifer is a bad liar.
We are sitting across from each other in Diced, the new board-and-card-game cafe on 124th Street, in the spot formerly occupied by Northern Chicken. (It’s still hard to write “formerly” and “Northern Chicken” in the same sentence.) A few weeks back, the editorial staff downstairs — from here on known as the “cool kids” — found out that Jennifer, who works upstairs, is a board-and-card-game aficionado. She and her partner even went to Las Vegas to attend a board-game convention.
So, back to the cafe. Enthused by the idea of a new board-game cafe opening just a short walk from our office, Jennifer and I meet for a game of cards and to try some of the items on the menu. The game we choose is Phase 10, which is like rummy, except, each time you win a hand, the rules slightly change. First hand, you might only have to put down two threes-of-a-kind in order to be able to lay cards on the table. Next time, it’s four-of-a-kind. Win another hand, and you’ll need extended straights. And so on.
And Jennifer is throttling me. She’s winning hand after hand. So, when our food arrives, it’s a welcome break.
I get the Moroccan Stew, which, I am told by the server, is one of the most popular dishes in the cafe’s very young existence. I don’t know if a place that just opened can call anything it serves a “signature dish,” but this is clearly what’s being promoted as the best thing to order. The meal is not snack size; there’s a generous heaping of couscous on one side, and cubes of lamb on the other, in a rich sauce. Mix it all together and you have a hearty stew. The lamb cubes are soft, and this is an earthy dish that definitely moves into the comfort-food category.
Jennifer’s meat loaf slice is Borg-cube big. It sits atop a corn-and-potato croquettes, and it’s coated in a very sweet barbecue sauce. The meat loaf flakes apart nicely, but the best part is the croquette; it’s nice and crispy, perfect for dragging through the sauce. The corn flavours come out really well.
Sure, there are are burgers and sandwiches, nachos, too. But there are attempts here to elevate the menu, and it should be noted.
After we eat, the cards turn. I start winning hands. And, as I pass Jennifer on the scoreboard, I recognize the fatal flaw with Phase 10. Because the rules gets harder the more hands you win, it’s better to lose hands early, then stage a giant points rally as the person who was ahead struggles to try and put cards on the table. They lose big-time points as their opponent rallies from behind.
No, I was not smart enough to figure this out from the start. My victory was a happy accident.
But, now I sit downstairs in my office, knowing, above me, Jennifer is plotting revenge. The next visit to Diced may be rather unpleasant for me.
Diced
Westmount | 10704 124 St NW, Edmonton | 780.249.7006 | dicedyeg.com
