By Graham Hicks ,Edmonton Sun

FIRST POSTED: WEDNESDAY, JULY 25, 2012 12:00 AM MDT | UPDATED: TUESDAY, JULY 24, 2012 09:21 AM MDT

It usually takes a while to get things perfect.
But did you have to wait until the very end, Giuseppe Albi?
Giuseppe is the long-time producer of A Taste of Edmonton. The event started under his watch as general manager of the not-for-profit Events Edmonton.
After the 2012 Taste of Edmonton, Giuseppe is retiring. He’ll focus on his other career, as a renowned abstract painter.
This Taste of Edmonton is his best.
Taste of Edmonton is the city’s premier food fest. Forty-two restaurants booths line Churchill Square and are open from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day until Saturday. Each sells two food items, usually at $4 to $5 each.
Taste of Edmonton is now near-flawless. The food choices are outstanding, the balance between yummy grease-o-rama and healthier dishes has been found. There’s also balance in the variety of restaurant booths. All tastes are fulfilled.
The lay-out creates festivity. It’s crowded enough at peak periods to generate excitement, but still breathable. Meanwhile, oasises of sit ‘n’ snack spaces can be found throughout the square and its perimeters.
The growing food truck scene is acknowledged. Five food trucks off the northeast corner play by the same rules as the booths.
The admission-free beer garden in the middle of Churchill Square has great live entertainment, with huge beverage selection at decent prices in the Taste of Beer and Taste of Spirits tents.
On the square’s north edge is the more tranquil, cafe -style Taste of Wine tent, again with excellent choice at reasonable prices.
It’s all highly civilized.
The food! The food!
Decisions are difficult — old favourites, new attractions, the sinfully delicious, the healthy, the barbecue, the classics — that interesting dish you saw just go by, which booth line-up is the shortest…
Just plunge in, buy your tickets, and eat away. Here’s what we tried.
The weird: deep-fried pickles (pickle slices doused in bar-food batter and deep-fried) at The Canadian Brewhouse booth. Quite the combo of hot, sour and crispy… and unusual!
The classic: Palace Banquets has been at Taste of Edmonton forever. This year they have three hot, steaming, fresh big scallops on a stick, wrapped in bacon that oozes aroma and is packed with artery-clogging calories. But so good!
Equally off the tasty dial from the Palace is a delicious light, creamy chocolate dulce cake dessert.
Another sweet is Pazzo Pazzo’s authentic tiramisu, a last indulgence before this feast must be followed by temporary famine.
The healthy AND delicious! Caffe Sorrentino’s chickpea salad cleanses the palate of all that grease. Tzin’s panzanella salad — chopped tomato with crouton-sized soft bread — is another health-conscious winner.
The delightfully new: The calamari at La Pasta Trattoria is light, fresh, plentiful, coated in a whisper of flour and perfectly paired with a scrumptious lemon garlic aoli sauce.
The meaty new: IRIE Foods on Whyte is offering slow-cooked, falling-off-the-bone, flavour-saturated Caribbean jerk chicken with rice in a delicious meaty sauce. The spice is moderated to Canadian tolerance levels, but add the stand-by Calypso sauce and one’s mouth is instantly, pleasingly, on fire! Irie!
Sausage delights: Bistro Praha’s Hungarian sausage on hot garlic bread with saurkraut is garlic heaven. Back at Tzin, co-owner Kelsey Danyluk, with Irvings Farm Fresh meat processers, has created a new, moist-style chorizo sausage. It is out-of-this-world delicious, braised in wine and served with Spanish bean salad.
There’s been grumbling about prices. Most Taste of Edmonton dishes cost four to five tickets at $1 each. Sorry, but the cost of transforming Churchill Square into a foodfest, complete with free entertainment, eats up a big chunk of that ticket price, and the restaurants won’t be long in business if prices are below costs. The value for money spent is most reasonable.
Eat on! A Taste of Edmonton runs through Saturday evening.

Source: HicksBiz Blog 2012

Award of Merit

Metropolis: Edmonton International Winter Festival

Project Owner: Events Edmonton; Giuseppe Albi

Designer: Giuseppe Albi

Artists: Giuseppe Albi and Tyler Tue

Project Description: Since the introduction of Muk Luk Mardi Gras in 1967, there had been a desire to stage a festival during the colder months of the Edmonton Capital Region. Events Edmonton responded with METROPOLIS to create an event to be staged on Winston Churchill Square and the surrounding streets. Artists from the USA and Canada were invited by Events Edmonton to design the pavilions.

The event will consist of nine free-standing, heated temporary structures made from Aluma Systems construction scaffolding covered with white shrink wrap and design to offer shelter in normal Edmonton winter conditions. The upper interior spaces of the structural forms featured artistic, multi-media light and sound shows utilizing 21st century new media.

Source: Edmonton Journal 2011

Column tells a story for future generations about the pioneers who brought a slice of Italy to Alberta

EDMONTON – Carlo Amodio spent many sleepless nights during the last two years as he co-ordinated the building of a monument to honour the work and lives of Italian immigrants in Alberta in the last 100 years.

“When we got the 7,000-pound granite column in our yard, we were really, really concerned on just how we were going to lift it and move it. But we got some great help from the Italian community. It was just phenomenal cooperation,” said Amodio, president of the National Congress of Italian-Canadians, Edmonton District.

From the craftsmen who shaped the column of Quebec granite, to those families in Alberta’s Italian community who donated artifacts to be bronzed and attached at its base, the monument is a testament to the pride, passion and culture of Italian people, Amodio said.

“If this granite could speak, it would say: ‘It is our pride to share,’ ” Amodio said at Saturday’s unveiling.

The three-metre-tall monument, which stands on the northwest corner of the Alberta legislature grounds, was designed by Edmonton artist Giuseppe Albi, whose work was selected out of 21 entries in a national competition.

“May this monument be a perpetual symbol for those who came to this land, and for those will come in the future and contribute to the prosperity of the province of Alberta and the Italian community,” said Amodio, who immigrated to Canada in the 1960s and has been active in his community for the last 30 years.

“I look at this monument today and I must compliment the beauty of its design and the quality of craftsmanship of all those who helped to build it,” he said.

“For the last two years, there have been a number of people who have followed all the aspects of this project, and I can say without hesitation that we are full of pride for this accomplishment.”

Albi said he wanted to design a multimedia piece with the help of Alberta’s Italian community.

“Italians have always talked with their hearts, with their minds,” Albi said,

explaining the inspiration behind his design. “They always put their hearts and souls into everything they do so I really wanted somehow, some way to bring this forward.”

He chose a granite column because in Italy, columns with carvings have been used to tell stories of events in time.

At the suggestion of his wife, Albi asked the Italian community for artifacts representing their culture and some of the occupations of their ancestors when they arrived in Alberta.

These he had bronzed and attached around the column’s base. Some of the artifacts include a soccer ball, a pick axe, a bottle of wine, a wood planer, a shoemaker’s tools, a merchant’s scoop and a violin.

Gabriele Sardo, Italy’s ambassador to Canada, was among the invited dignitaries.

Sardo said a monument is a reminder, not for those who are already here, “but for those who will come next. I would like future generations passing by this monument to see the memories that have been passed on.”

floyie@thejournal.canwest.com

Source: © The Edmonton Journal 2007