three boars eatery

9 out of 10. don't get me wrong, i really want to like three boars - it was certainly something different and i take my hat off to them for trying to do something different with local in-season ingredients, which isn't always easy in a place like edmonton (i've tried!). first, let's talk about the good points - the food was really really tasty, well presented and very unique...and there were so many varieties of tasty beers!

we ordered -
smoked pork jowl (very interesting - too much mustard though)
panzanella salad (nothing special really)
carrots & beets (very very good, vegetables were cooked to perfection, loved the goat's cheese foam!)
foie gras (loved the tomato kimchi, but there's not enough of the foie gras to be substantial)
lamb sirloin (the lamb was perfectly cooked, but just not enough of it)
lamb croquette (absolutely loved this dish, great combination of components)
scallop carpaccio (interesting texture, but waaaayyyy too fishy, needed something acidic to cut through the fishiness)
pork belly (loved this, meat was tender, the combo of oats and poached egg really worked)

now, let's move on to the one thing that bothered me about three boars - and it's actually a major thing - my problem is the satisfaction factor. there just wasn't enough on the plates and the food took a looooooong time to arrive. i understand that the concept of the place is for people to share the dishes and food this good takes time to cook, but it really left a bad impression with me because my friends and i left the place hungry, considering how much we paid we expect to be full. i can't remember any time that i went to a restaurant and left hungry, we always joked about going to a nice restaurant and going home to cook instant noodles - saddest thing is that we actually had to do it this time.

did i mention the lamb?. when you go out for supper it should be an event, it should be exciting, maybe thrilling. these guys got that covered. we were given a recommendation from a friend to try it out, i asked what to try. he said don't eat for a week and eat everything.
when we arrived starving, got a place at the bar(super cramped) and started going through the menu. the bartender is truly a competition level mixologist, i appreciated the recommendations and would have drank his drinks until i couldn't see if i wasn't dd that night. as for the food, we ordered 7 of 9 choices, a gallant effort on our part i think. as a whole the meal was very good, the highlights included the house made mustard and pickled veggies, stellar. the foie gras salad with kimchee sauce turned my world upside down, unforgettable. until the next dish i thought the foie gras dish could not be topped. that was until i tried the lamb. one of the best dishes i've had. sexual would be the closest thing i could say to describe it. i'm not a gastro buff so i won't breakdown what i thought their angles were with these dishes, but i trust their creativity and would follow them any culinary direction they decide to head. fork in hand.

the lowlights of the evening were the bar size, that sucked hunching over a 6" bar on little chairs. worse yet the "entertainment of the evening" was a homeless man drunk out of his mind fighting with some other nefarious characters across the street. kind of funny, but it didn't go down well with the pork belly and steel cut oats. i should mention, a couple people seemed to think the pork belly was underdone. i disagree, done nicely just in a different manner.

it's definitely not a cheap restaurant but i believe it's worth the cash and you can spend a lot more on a meal in the city.(plus you don't get to try as many things)

to summarize, go there and get wildly drunk then eat everything in sight. did i mention the lamb?

one of my favorite. true professional service may be lacking at times but i don't go to be wowed by service... this place is relaxed, sometimes too cramped but what i adore is the playful menu, i still haven't gotten enough of their smoked olives...and their shrub egg white cocktails are nothing short of awesomeness. go with out any expectation and a laid back attitude and enjoy it. i hope some the staff become a little more attentive but hey it's our right to tip accordingly as well and i don't say that to be harsh.

not sure...?. we've been here a few times in the past 3 or 4 weeks, the first time our server kept forgetting our drinks so the the hostess/manager? sorted it out (we recognized her from one of our previous haunts so knew she had it all down). our food was good, the lamb was excellent as were the chicken hearts (who knew chicken hearts could be good???). my complaint is that the service doesn't match the menu. for an $80 meal between the two of us i expect better service. our server was cold and uninterested, i didn't need her to put on a show but she seemed really unsuited for what she was selling. this wasn't a one off either, every time i've been there the service has bordered on rude except for the one time the hostess helped us out (we haven't seen her since then). they don't seem to be trained properly or have the right attitude. a little professionalism and a smile might change it.
i don't think we'll be back, they don't have the whole package and for that kind of money i expect more.

after the 6 dishes between the 4 of us, we left still hungry and unsatisfied. although three boars has very intricate dishes with a lot of attention to detail, the only dish that impressed our palates was the oyster braised beef chuck. the rest of their dishes did not taste special to me. in addition, their service and decor was average. apart from a few beautifully presented dishes, three boars is an average tapas restaurant with nothing special to boast.

i've always had a great time at 3 boars. it's impressive what they can do with the limited space they have. clearly it doesn't have the room that the tin palace earls does... so go there if you can't handle the tight spaces. i love the pork belly and i think there may come a day when i overdose on their liver bombs

poor service, expensive appetizers.

for the price of this tapestry style food you think you would at least get outstanding quality service. the fact is you don't. i wasn't impressed with quality of the food either.

my point is, you can make a better choice on your restaurant for the evening.

will be back - too much good stuff for one visit. three of us ended up at three boars because belgravia hub, which we had planned to try out for the first time, was closed over the august long weekend. we arrived around 6.30pm, and after checking out a couple of open spots in the upstairs room, we opted for the patio overlooking scenic 109th street. that turned out to be a great spot for people watching while sipping drinks and perusing the eclectic menu. first of all, just a note about drinks - they have a great selection of spirits as well as wines by the glass. the beers are probably good too, but since i tend to favour grapes rather than grains, i didn't even look. our server was attentive without being overbearing, and was very graceful even when i tried to start the evening off by ordering 6oz of gin (having somehow mixed up 1oz with the price of $6). i can only put this oversight down to being used to ordering 1 'measure' and not thinking about spirits in terms of volume (or something like that anyway!). the 1oz of gin with tonic made in house was just the right balance of botanics and citrus, and maybe i might have managed 6oz after all!

anyway, on to the food. if you are going out looking for an appetizer, followed by an entree, followed by a dessert, all accompanied by fine linens and tinkly panio music, go somewhere else. the concept here is very casual - the food comes when it is ready, and it is meant for sharing. go with good friends, and be prepared to dig into all of the dishes of food as they arrive. between the three of us we ordered the pork bomb (1 each), patatas bravas, brussels sprouts, broccoli/cauliflower with jalapeno biscuit, pork belly and the whitefish banh mi. there was neither rhyme nor reason to the order of presentation, but if you have your mind tuned to the frequency of casual 'go with the flow', it all works out beautifully. i'm not going to review the dishes separately, but i will say that we enjoyed every bite, and came away comfortably sated. my only regret is that we didn't get to try everything on the menu.

horrible!. i went several weeks ago, and will never go back. the food is bland and underwhelming at best, and at worst is inedible fusion failures devised by some want-to-be chefs who clearly haven't taken enough culinary training. the atmosphere is nice, but the staff is rude and patronizing. they talk down to their customers, and tried to maintain a hip vibe no matter the cost to customer service. trendiness is hardly substitute. dishes were overpriced and arrived after an hour wait. needless to say, i didn't leave a tip...awful restaurant.

there was a reason i never heard about this place!. i'll start off by saying that the food was good, different but good. it wasn’t anything spectacular and i definitely expected more after reading such positive reviews. i haven’t and will not recommend this restaurant to friends or colleagues.
i tried booking a reservation for a birthday dinner well in advance however the person whom i spoke with said they were booked well past the needed date. they offered me a bit of advice saying that they leave half of the restaurant un-reserved for walk-ins and if i came early enough i could almost guarantee myself a seat – no problem!
we arrived at 5:00 as a party of three, the restaurant was already uncomfortably busy and of course no tables were available for us at the time. the waitress/hostess asked us if we’d like to put our names down for a table, we communicated clearly that yes, indeed we would. she then wrote our parties name down and said we could sit at the bar until a table was available. we were able to scrounge three empty chairs from around the bar area and place them at the end of the bar right next to where the food comes out of the kitchen. it was undoubtedly the busiest and most uncomfortable place to be, but i had previously anticipated this may happen and it didn’t come as a surprise. the bartender created small talk and asked us if we were just waiting for a dining table, we communicated to him that yes we were. we ordered some subpar appetizers and wine to start. the time kept passing and our drinks kept flowing, by now it would have been about 7:00 we had already devoured three appetizers and were waiting for our fourth to arrive. around 7:30 i began to notice that people who had come in after us also without reservations were being seated. i beckoned the girl with whom we spoke at the beginning of our evening to ensure that we were indeed put on her waiting list. she looked at me with a blank face and said “oh...you were waiting for a table” at this point i was quite annoyed, we had watched her write our parties name down and acknowledge the fact that we would be waiting at the bar till a table was ready! she apologized, i accepted, she left.
at this point we came to the realization we would not be getting a table and we should go ahead and order our mains. we did. the same hostess/waitress came back only ten minutes later to say that a table on the patio was opening up soon and we could take it if we didn’t mind sitting outside. perfect we said! it was funny because we would actually prefer to sit outside! she said she’d be back once it was cleared. i could actually see the table she was referring to from where i was sitting. i had seen her attending to it, and watched the group pay. they stayed to chat after the bill was cleared so i didn’t pay anymore attention to them, after all the waitress said she would come get us when it was ready, right? wrong. only a few minutes later i looked back to see the table occupied by another group! are you kidding me!? after waiting what was now three hours i expect to have a table! the waitress/hostess never came back to where we were sitting at the bar. she never told us what had happened, never cleared anything up, didn’t do anything but leave us hanging. if i hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, i would have been wondering what was going on and when we were getting our promised table. what great service! unfortunately we had to eat our mains at the bar, sitting on bar stools that had no backs. my back was starting to get sore, and it was very uncomfortable. when it came time to pay the bartender was very apologetic for the mistake. we didn’t have to tell him about the whole charade because like i said in the beginning he had asked if we were waiting for a dining table and had remembered that we said yes. realizing the girls foolish mistake he was the one who was apologetic and kind. he took 10% off our bill, which wasn’t much, considering that the prices were outrageous for the quality, quantity, and experience you get. not to mention we ordered, and drank more because of our elongated wait time and forced seating at the bar. i am not one to complain about prices, but if i’m spending that much money on a meal i want to at least enjoy it. unfortunately the birthday girl, her husband, and i all wished we had gone somewhere else.


i guess there was a reason i had never heard about this place. it should have stayed that way.

don't ask for pepper. my wife and i enjoyed the food but could live without the pretension of the servers attitude. my wife is a pepper lover not to mention a red seal chef and simple asked for some pepper from our server and she was told she would go fight the kitchen for some as it was not common for a restaurant such as them to provide it. we laughed it off but was only allowed to have the pepper for a supervised period of time! haha my wife felt weird asking for it again so we calmly ate our $75.00 tapas and drinks. when the server asked how it was we did mention we found it uncomfortable that the kitchen does not allow pepper to be handed out?? our server lectured us that it is common for restaurants not to allow this request, like we just climbed from under a rock. we left chuckling and won't be returning. overall the atmosphere is cramped, hot and lack lustre. the food is ok but the attitude is top notch.

worst dining experience. where to begin... the waiting staff act as though you are non existent while you are dining even though the restaurant is claustrophobic small. my girlfriend and i had to wait a good 10 minutes in between placing our drink orders before our waiter came with our drinks, and when he came he rushed off without taking our meal orders (we had to wait another 5 minutes for him to come back to do this). the actual meals are incredibly small and underwhelming, plus my girlfriends meal came out a ridiculous 15 minutes before my meal came out. she didn't want to eat without me, but as her food became colder and colder, she was forced to do so. i ordered the pork belly and found the sides it came with to be bland and confusing and the pork itself was immensely under cooked and almost gelatin like. i was very disappointed and planned to leave a very small tip on account of all this, when the waiter brought the bill (i was paying with cash) he leaned over my shoulder and watched to see how much i'd leave for a tip... which is unacceptable.

on top of all of this, another man named wade had made a reservation for him and 5 friends for 7pm. when he came in the staff informed him that there was no reservation for 6 under the name wade, but rather under the name ray. wade attempted to plead to the staff that it was most likely an error and that they probably misunderstood his name over the phone. the staff wouldn't let him and his party sit down in fear that ray and his party might come. my girlfriend and i were at the restaurant until 7:35 and they still refused to allow wade and his party to sit down at their reserved seats. just ludicrous behavior.

edmonton has a million other restaurants worth trying out... i suggest you try them. tzin, the marc, red ox, the wild tangerine, etc.

three boars is a pretentious, disorganized and self glorifying restaurant that i would not encourage my worst enemy to dine at.

definitely not for dinner. we decided to try three boars eatery because of all the hype. the "eatery" itself is very small and seating is elbow-to-elbow. this place also prides itself on being a "hip/trendy/cool" spot.

the waiter was friendly but a bit slow at taking orders. the two appetizers came out twenty minutes apart. the main course we shared came an hour after ordering it and was not what we ordered.

they do have a great selection of drinks however, the food options are limited. most of the dishes are eccentric and creative. the portions are quite small, especially for the price. we thought the food tasted okay at best.

i might consider coming back to three boars eatery for a quick beer or three and some appetizers but i would never come back by choice for a meal. we left here hungry and disappointed. one of the least impressive dining experiences i've ever had in edmonton.

huge let down. -we were seated across from an open unisex bathroom, my sight line all eve was a toilet with the seat up...10 feet from where i was eating.
-pork belly was way undercooked, and cold. cold, gelatinous, fatty, pork. could not eat it.
-waiter was too nonchalant, we didn't feel cared for.
-waiter brought other peoples food to us, and then said just keep it?!
-the mustard way overpowered the pork jowl, which was laughable small.
-my cocktail was phenomenal, and the grapefruit dessert was too.
-will never go back.
we still shudder at the thought of the raw, cold pork belly....
do yourself a favour, and go to tzin instead, amazing food, service.

delicious tapas!. if you can't decide what you feel like eating..this is the place to go!! you can try an assortment of food at a reasonable price. the drinks are good too! check it out!