More reviews and a brief note on my first court appearance in two years.

Okay, first thing's first: I lost. Bigtime. I have never seen a chambers application before when one side was not called on to speak, and neither had opposing counsel. There. Done. That having been said, I don't think I would have brought the application if it had been mine to make, but it was already in progress when I arrived, and I inherited the file.

On to more important matters: Reviewing independent eataries in Spruce Grove and Stony Plain.

First, Honshu - a sushi and Japanese cuisine joint in Spruce Grove.

How good could it possibly be, you ask? Better than Tokyo Express, better than T&T market sushi counter, better than safeway or 7-11. All in all, pretty OK. Better than anywhere I ate in Vancouver or Victoria? No. Not really. That having been said, it is a Sushi place in Spruce Grove, and better than one might expect. I give it three 500 ml cans of Kirin Lager, but the kind brewed in Canada for export to the US, not the kind from Japan.

Second: Linda's Kitchen.

I discovered Linda's kitchen because I assumed that there would be some kind of food court in the Mall in Spruce Grove. I was right, in a sense. There are the appropriate tables, and two food outlets next to each other. One is a Grandma Lee's. The other is Linda's Kitchen. Linda was (incidentally) cooking. The menu runs to all day breakfast, sandwitches, burgers, perogies and kubasa, and an evening choice of pork chops, hamburger steak, or pork cutlets with boiled veg and a baked potato. The place is like a cut rate diner right there in the food court. It even had real plates instead of paper, and the fries were hand cut right in front of me. The downside of that was the fact that the fries were not pre-blanched, so they weren't super crispy. A large fries, incidentally, is two and a half POUNDS of potatoes.

My fries were uninspiring, but the burger was terrific. It was a hand-made patty just like my mom used to make from scratch. Frozen patties just don't come in that shape. The thing about this place is that all the food appears to be made from scratch, which is odd in today's world of eating establishments. I had no notion of a real handmade burger patty today, but there it was sitting in front of me. This place is as authentic as it gets, but maybe not as good as it might be. Therefore it gets five pints of old-fashioned homebrewed beer made with a can of blue ribbon malt extract and a lot of table sugar and bakers yeast. It's super authentic, and just what you remembered from years ago, but a modern touch or a little more attention to detail might not go astray.