Entertainment, food pave the way for new resort Casino

By Colleen Isherwood
Editor

CAMROSE, AB - Mayfield Hospitality, the company that brought you Stage West Dinner Theatre, has completed phase I of its first venture into the casino area in Camrose, Alberta. The casino and food and beverage parts of the Camrose Resort Casino opened last June. Next on the agenda is a 500-seat banquet facility, 120 room hotel and spa, workout area, and retailers including a post office and dry cleaners.

Camrose is a community of 72,000, located closer to Edmonton than Calgary. While the casino does get some Edmonton business, their market is largely the surrounding farming communities, ranging from Red Deer and Westaskawin all the way to the Saskatchewan border.

The casino currently includes five foodservice areas, along with cocktail and coffee service on the casino floor. The poker area has a separate menu. Then there are two bars, one on the upper floor offering foodservice and the one on the lower floor called Smokey Joe’s Lounge.

Smokey Joe’s is a relaxed bar, in the old piano bar style, with comfortable, heavy sofa chairs and low tables. The stage, 24 feet by 12 is the main attraction. It can accommodate 96 people.

The food court is unique in that there are two open kitchens. On the first side is a grill for steak and club sandwiches. The other side is an open-style Asian wok kitchen with an authentic Asian cook-to-order operation. "Customers can hear the sizzling and choose their own combo," says general manager Frank Kaan.

The main buffet room is also known as the "white room", because when they were almost ready to open they "grabbed the next paint available which just happened to be white. I myself and the owner were involved in painting it. We just can’t get ‘white room’ out of our vocabulary."

This buffet, which can serve 120 people, is "a unique style of buffet," says Kaan. "Normally buffet tables have salad bars and the food is presented on the table. We have an open kitchen with the food prepared right there for the buffet line. We have a separate wok station, beef carving, and chefs who service the buffet by cooking fresh food and keeping it moving."

There are three resident chefs for the buffet - one for salads, one for hot food and one for desserts.

"In August, we started Seafood Fridays. They have been steadily growing in popularity, and the word around town is that we have the best seafood," Kaan adds.

They are also famous for their Wor Wonton Soup. This is traditional wonton soup, along with vegetables, barbecued pork and shrimp, with noodles and home-made broth - for a price of $10.

On the gaming side, they have 200 slots including Monopoly, Top Guy, Deal or No Deal and progressive games. There are 12 table games including Extreme Blackjack, Blackjack, Mini Baccarat, Caribbean Step Poker and Roulette.

They host three poker tournaments a week on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday, and at the end of each month there is a big $100 minimum poker tournament.

On Sunday afternoons at 4 p.m., they hold poker lessons - some for ladies only and some for couples only. While their husbands are watching football on the lounge’s big screen TVs, ladies can learn how to play, finish their lessons, and start a game with a very low cash limit such as 50 cents to a dollar a game.

When the hotel is completed it will have a separate dining room, more upscale with white table cloth service, along with a lobby lounge and room service. It will also feature a waterslide park. Like many projects in Western Canada, the construction of the hotel and convention facilities have faced delays due to a shortage of trades.

But the casino didn’t have any trouble getting staff, according to Kaan. "They say that employment is tough in Alberta, but one month before we opened we filled 150 positions in two hours." The key, he adds, is in the message from Mayfield president Jason Pechet: "Our philosophy is not to treat everyone really well for just one day, but for every day of the year."

Mayfield was contracted to run the River Rock Casino near Vancouver when it opened, and is also working on the Stoney Nakodo Resort Casino, midway between Calgary and Canmore, set to open soon.