Fakesgiving at the Hilton

When I was a kid, American Thanksgiving used to get on my nerves. As Canadians, we celebrate the holiday in October, but then come November we're forced into a week of TV repeats and football games for no good reason! We don't even have a turkey dinner to distract us from the lack of new Golden Girls episodes, we just have to wait for the Americans to finish up their holiday and allow us to resume our lives again. Well, this year it wasn't so bad.

A Canadian teaching family invited all the Canadian teachers to their home for a big turkey potluck back in October and it was awesome. Some of their American friends were there too, and invited us to the American Thanksgiving dinner at... the Ritz. Now, Melodie and I don't get to the Ritz very often. We have much more experience with Ritz crackers than with the fine dining and luxury hotel chain, but we were really excited to be fancy for a night in probably the only country in the world where we could afford to.

On Thursday night we met at the subway stop near our school and took the subway to the Convention Center Station where the Ritz is located. Over 50 teachers and their kids went to this dinner. Basically we took up two thirds of the restaurant!

It was niiiiiice inside the hotel and restaurant. We'd been seated for about 30 seconds before we headed directly to the carvery station. There was lamb (the sign was labeled "lamp"), ham, prime rib, and turkey. Dude thought he could get away with only giving me one slice of turkey. Don't trip, Ritz!

Fancy ketchup.

My first course: one of each meat, mashed potatoes, sausage stuffing, and french bread. Obviously, I'm watching my weight. In addition to this traditional holiday food, there was a crapload of lobster, sushi and seafood available that everyone seemed to really like. There was a noodle station, and lots of other chinesey dishes, too.

While we were getting our first plate of food, flutes of champagne appeared at our table!

 

The wait staff was very attentive. Everytime I stood up to get more food (which was often), I came back to my cloth napkin being perfectly re-folded. I tried to crumple it up and even hide it, but it always looked like it had been pressed and ironed by the time I got back.

This is only one fourth of the desert table. They were torching fresh creme brules!

I took one of almost everything. The plate's only so big, right?

After having the traditional turkey dinner and gorging on dessert, I decided to have another savory course. They were BBQing meat to-order, so I got a grilled steak, mashed potatoes and some salad. Yes, I'd been so indulgent that I ate a guilt salad.

Located directly behind us was this, a chocolate fountain. We could smell it the whole time we were eating, and I'll have you know that it smelled amazing!

Cookie skewers + chocolate= a fine ending to a meal.

And here was our group at the table. It was a great night with great company.

With Kerry and Kathy in front of the Ritz Christmas tree.

Canadian Thanksgiving was in October, America's was this month, I'll have Christmas dinner in December... now, which country celebrates something in January that I can pretend to celebrate too for turkey-related purposes?