HALLEY’S CLUB SERVES UP NOSTALGIA FOR CASINO GOERS
‘Supper club’ supper was just OK, but the place is fun
MARTA GOLD
West Edmonton Mall has never been my idea of top entertainment, and casinos in general — even without the Vegas haze of cigarette smoke — leave me cold, so a restaurant at a casino in the mall seems like a poor choice for a night out with my pals.
Yet despite my misgivings, our foursome had a pretty fun time at Halley’s Club at the Starlight casino last weekend, with its kitschy mix of dinner, dance and dazzle.
If you’re looking for fine dining, I would suggest looking elsewhere. That’s not to say the food isn’t good at Halley’s; it’s perfectly fine hotel food. In fact, the whole ‘supper club’ experience felt a lot like a wedding — a fun wedding, in a lovely hotel venue, with a good band and nice food, spent watching your slightly odd aunts and uncles letting loose on the dance floor.
The room itself is quite spectacular, and unlike any restaurant or club I’ve seen in Edmonton. The 1920s/1930s supper club vibe is beautifully executed in a grand, two-storey space full of sparkling lights, colourful rounded leatherette couches, plush horseshoeshaped booths, a chic bar and a second-level stage. A live band plays on each of the three evenings Halley’s is open — Thursday, Friday and Saturday, from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. Even the washrooms are done up in style, with a long row of eight or nine individual, unisex rooms, marble-tiled with gleaming white fixtures and blindingly back-lit mirrors.
Entertainment and customer service are high priorities here, with a cluster of friendly young women in beaded flapper dresses welcoming guests in the foyer, which it shares with the casino and a sports bar next door. Thankfully, the supper club is in a completely separate space from the casino itself, behind a huge set of doors.
Our roomy and comfortable booth on the main floor had a great view of the room, including the good-sized dance floor and baby grand piano beside it, where a pleasant chanteuse and her accompanist serenaded us at the start of the evening. Around 8 p.m., house band The Arkitects kicked in and the party really started. Three lively singers (two women and a man) took turns belting out familiar hits from a dizzying assortment of decades, from the Temptations to Daft Punk. In the late-night hours, DJ Tyco takes over.
It’s a mixed bag of entertainment on any night to be sure, but on the evening we visited the vintage-era supper club was hosting a Studio 54 party on the pre-Halloween weekend. The dance floor was a wacky mix of Halloween costumes from disco queen to zombie bride; we couldn’t tell if one guy in an oversized 1990s tracksuit was in costume or not.
Our extremely friendly and enthusiastic server was dressed in the flapper-dress uniform, embellished for Halloween by a tarantula artfully drawn in makeup
around one eye. Other staff members dressed as a cop, cowboy, and farmer passed by our table, as did a chef who I think was actually the chef. A couple of cheerful young women on staff dressed in bathing suits with fishnet stockings and ostrich-feather headpieces wandered the room (Rockettes? cigarette-less girls?), posing amiably for photos with a group of peppy grandmas on a girls’ night out.
Speaking of grandmas, the crowd, while definitely skewing older than a typical club, was a good mix of young and middleaged date-night couples and groups of friends.
It’s understandable in the midst of this Fellini-esque scene that the food and drink would be secondary entertainment at best. In keeping with the supper-club theme, Halley ’s offers a wide range of cocktails, from the literal Old Fashioned to the more modern cucumber mojito. We sampled a few, including an Amaretto Sour and a bourbon Manhattan, which were all nicely presented in appropriate specialty glasses ($12 each for a 2 oz. cocktail).
The food menu is nostalgic, with appetizers like crab-stuffed mushroom caps, shrimp cocktail and Caesar salad. We tried the mushroom caps, which included five smallish caps, stuffed more with cream cheese and bread crumbs than crab ($12). The moules et frites was a much better deal for $18, with at least two-dozen plump mussels in a flavourful broth, along with a hefty cup of Parmesancoated fries and a lemony aioli for dipping.
We sampled four of the eight entree offerings. The Beef Wellington ($29) was cooked medium as ordered, wrapped in an unfortunately gluey and puffless pastry. The rosemary potatoes and mixed vegetables that came with it were standard-issue banquet fare. The grilled lamb chops ($33) were a tasty and sizable portion of three double chops, cooked mediumrare as requested. They too came with the unimaginative potatoes and veg, as well as a grilled tomato stuffed with herbed breadcrumbs that took me instantly and fondly back to my mom’s special-occasion dinners from childhood.
The chicken Parmesan ($26) was fine but unremarkable, with a generous-enough portion of breaded chicken, spaghettini with chunky tomato sauce and some sautéed spinach. The garlic shrimp skillet ($24) included at least a dozen big, garlicky shrimp with — deja vu — the same spaghettini and spinach sides.
For dessert, we tried two of the three options: a chocolate mousse which was surprisingly dark, rich and delicious. The strawberry confetti cake bore an unsettling resemblance to those rainbowflecked cake mixes, but, dolled up with sliced strawberries and whipped cream it was downright yummy. Extra points for the sparkler on top.
While the food was unexceptional, the experience was certainly memorable. With no cover charge, decent drinks, a glitzy room and all manner of quirky entertainment, it’s hard not to have fun at a Halley’s Club night out.