Destination Pearl House
• 118-1623 Centre St. N.W. | Calgary, AB | T2E 8S7
Average User Rating:
6.42/10
6.42/10
Recommended by:
50%
50%
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"Sticklers For Arbitrary Rules"
Keith
August 2011 — "In what has become a revolving door for bubble tea and cafe houses over the years, Destination Pearl House has taken over the vacant space left by APM Bubble Tea on what you would think is a prime location on the corner of 16th Avenue and Center Street NW.
Gone are the comfy chairs and tv's playing concert dvds of pop-acts and in come slightly less comfortable seating and a wait-staff that appear to be learning on the job.
The drinks here are fine, my go-to pearl house drink, a mango slush is a hard thing to mess up, and Destination does a fine job of things.
Food wise, I ordered a spicy sate-like noodle bowl and some wings (which were on special). The noodles came in a huge bowl that would rival any pho-house, and was surprisingly good. The wings were the real stand-out however. They were fresh, juicy and only lightly fried and tossed in a very specific hot-sauce that my friends and I could not pinpoint the origin of.
Unfortunately the wings and the arbitrary rules regarding them, is why I will never be back to Destination Pearl House. At the start of our meal, one of my friends ordered a basket of fries, as she wasn't initially hungry. As the meal went on, and as the rest of our party received our noodle bowl and baskets of wings, she decided to get a real meal. She waved down our server, and attempted to order a rice dish (which cost approximately $8.50) and 10 more wings. Our server immediately made it clear she would not be able to sell my friend 10 wings, because she hadn't ordered a drink. Keep in mind the rest of our table (there were 5 of us in the party, total) had each ordered a drink, not to mention fries and a bowl of noodles. Furthermore, my friend was about to order another meal. The topper to this whole debacle is that the 10 wings would have cost a paltry $2.50! So essentially, our server risked not just an assured 20% tip, but also 5 repeat customers over $2.50!
Needless to say while the food and drink here is good, I'll never be back. That is until Destination Pearl House closes up shop and its inevitable replacement sets up business."
User Rating
5.67/10
5.67/10
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"Decent bubble tea"
Dolly
August 2011 — "On the request of a friend, we had bubble tea at Destination. This place is fairly new despite replacing another bubble tea and snacks restaurant (APM) which replaced another bubble tea and snacks restaurant (Banana Jaks). As usual, it is the only thing open in the Chinese mall late at night and is open til 2 am which I guess is necessary when it competes with the nearby Bubblemania. The prices were similar to Bubblemani but had different bubble tea flavours such as chocolate bars such as Kit Kat or ones with at least four or five different fruits. The restaurant has extremely high ceilings with floor to ceiling windows, long draping curtains and a movie was playing on a television in the corner. I found the service to be bit slow, it may be that it is cause its quite new and isn't use to large or a lot of customers. We had a table of four people, and one person would get their bubble tea and each sequential one would arrives at least five minutes later. I ordered the Immortality which had orange, mango, passion fruit and another fruit. It was pretty good and I was unable to decipher each fruit. Someone else ordered a taro and sesame bubble tea which was pretty good and nothing I have ever tasted. I didn't like the buttery-ness of the sesame but it refreshing to have such a unique bubble tea flavour. "
User Rating
7.17/10
7.17/10
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DescriptionLocated in the former home of APM Bubble Tea in Central Grand Landmark at the corner of Center street and 16th avenue, this casual cafe offers choices of signature beverages, soups, noodle dishes, baked goods, wings and other Asian-inspired choices.
Location Information118-1623 Centre St. N.W.
Calgary
AB
T2E 8S7
