Eating Edmonton: High Level Diner

High Level Diner has gotten significant praise in the past couple of years. Given the close proximity to campus, many students may wonder if it’s worth the trek over, or would they just be disappointed after wasting valuable time. Two of our Arts and Culture writers give you their thoughts on this diner!

Non-Vegetarian Meal

The moment I stepped into High Level diner, I knew the place was an old restaurant that still had a good business. Looking through the menu, the first thing that popped out to me was the grilled cornbread. Then I searched and searched for a main dish until I settled for a dish with salmon.

My Organic Chinook Salmon plate was small and beautifully arranged with rice, salmon, cornbread, and a veggie sauce on top of the rice. First, the salmon was well cooked. It had a buttery taste and melted in my mouth. The salmon and rice had the perfect texture. The veggie sauce added a rich savoury taste. However, the dish would have benefitted from more sauce. Honestly, I feel this way about most food with little sauce. The dish needed more sauce to make it more savoury as a way of balancing the buttery flavours of the meal.

The cornbread, which is usually the most exciting part of the meal for me, could have been better. I like my cornbread dry, but this cornbread was grilled with a moist middle. It left an after-taste that I didn’t like.

After my quick meal, I ordered the fruit shake made with strawberry, pear nectar, and banana. In my first scoop, I decided that I didn’t like the shake. The shake was watery, although it did taste a little like the fruits in the menu description. Because of how watery it was, I couldn’t finish the shake.

Overall, the meal was delicious. However, the portion sizes were slim. At the end of my meal, I wished I could have more on my plate because I still had an appetite for more.

— Seyitan Olaifa

Vegetarian Meal

For my main course, I got the diner’s vegetarian burger. I was feeling fancy, so I got a couple of toppings to go with it. With the burger, I ordered cashew cheese and tofu egg. 

The fries were perfectly cooked: crispy on the outside and super soft on the inside. In fact, I liked them so much, I ate the majority of them before I ate my burger. That was a grave miscalculation on my part. 

While I was distracted by my fries, my burger slowly became soggy underneath. Much like the fries, the burger patty is crispy on the outside, and super soft on the inside. When I lifted the burger to my mouth, the bun underneath sagged and the burger broke apart in several places. The cashew cheese went everywhere. Eating the burger was a messy, nightmarish experience. Every time I tried to lift my soggy burger to eat it, I got cashew cheese all over my hands and more pieces of my burger patty fell out. Regardless, I trudged on, determined to finish my burger regardless of the consequences. 

I liked the addition of the cashew cheese, although, it tastes strongly of nutritional yeast. If you do not like nutritional yeast, I would not recommend it. The addition of the tofu egg was unnecessary, as the flavours got lost in the burger. If you’re wondering what the tofu egg is, it’s just strips of tofu which are battered, fried, and then seasoned to taste like an egg. Spoiler alert: it does not. 

Overall, the High Level Diner is an average restaurant. However, if you’re bored of getting food from the usual places on campus and you don’t mind walking, it can still be a decent option. They have plenty of vegan options for their lunch and dinner menu, but have limited vegan options for their brunch menu. 

— Vivian Poon