HAFFORD, Sask. Ñ Bob Blakley has a dream, and if it ever came true, Canada could kiss its beef export problem goodbye.
The dream is to franchise his Silver Sword and Chalice Steakhouse to restaurant owners across the country.
That’s significant to beef producers because Blakley’s restaurant is home to 14 pound hamburgers, 45 lb. pizzas and four lb. steak dinners.
“We go from the sublime to the ridiculous,” he said on a recent Saturday night while cooking for a last-minute party of 19 at his restaurant in Hafford.
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“So we start at very small and go up to very big and people will order the big if it’s there for them to choose from.”
If this culinary philosophy was to spread, Canadians could end up eating all of the country’s beef without needing to export any of it.
But alas, Blakely admits he’s a better chef than a businessperson and for now the franchise dream remains on the shelf while he serves up meals that challenge the heartiest appetites.
The restaurant, tucked in between a drugstore and a bank in Hafford’s two-block commercial district, is far removed from Blakley’s childhood. He grew up in a Toronto orphanage and was helping out in the kitchen by the time he was five. He enrolled in a commercial cooking school at 14 and worked for a number of restaurants in Toronto.
His wife Sherl, who grew up on a farm near Norquay, Sask., met Bob while working as a waitress in Toronto. When she decided she wanted to return home to Saskatchewan, the couple looked at a few towns before settling on Hafford in 1997.
From the beginning, Blakley knew he wanted to serve something different from the prepackaged, preportioned fare found in most restaurants.
“I had to work in one restaurant in Toronto where they did nouvelle cuisine where there was little mamby-pamby this and little bits of that. Great big plates and nothing on it. And I said, ‘no, I want some food.’ “
He got his chance in Hafford.
Two lb. cutlets are served on plates that resemble serving trays. The basic pizza sizes are small, medium and large but small is 10 inches, medium is 13 and large is 16. He also makes a 20 inch pizza that conquered his traditional pizza flipper, forcing him to have a bigger one made.
Customers who order the 20 inch pizza are encouraged to eat it at the restaurant because Blakley can’t find a pizza box big enough to hold it.
He has tried cutting the pizza in half and putting it in two 16 inch boxes, but the bigger pizzas, such as the meat lover’s extravaganza with toppings as thick as the table top on one of his restaurant booths, is so heavy it will eventually fall through the bottom. As a result, he won’t send the pizza out of the restaurant if it’s leaving town.
The restaurant’s smallest hamburger, other than the quarter pounder on the under-five children’s menu, is a half pounder that Blakley calls the trainer burger.
The Super Burger is a seven-inch-long pound of cooked meat on a nine inch bun that weighs four lb. with all the fixings.
Ice cream is measured in fists, not scoops, with the smallest cone being a half-fist containing 21Ú2 to three scoops. A one-fist cone is five scoops, the two-fister is 10 scoops and so on.
Despite the gargantuan portions, prices are no more than what would be found in any other restaurant. A 16 ounce Salisbury steak, for example, sells for $9.95 and the meal with 13 perogies and three smokies sells for $8.50.
And then of course, there are Blakley’s jaw-dropping specialties, such as a 45 lb. party pizza that is ordered about three times a year.
His Super Koloso Ultimo Burger is eight lb. of cooked meat that needs to be ordered 24 hours in advance so that he can bake the bun.
It contains two onions, six tomatoes and almost a head of lettuce and weighs 14 lb. when assembled. It is eaten mostly by football teams and church groups.
Only once has one person managed to eat the whole thing: a young man who managed the feat in an afternoon. Unfortunately, Blakley never got the eater’s name.
He sells six to seven of these monster burgers in the summer when tourists are in the area, attracted by nearby Redberry Lake. It’s not much in demand the rest of the year.
“Hafford is only four to five hundred people, and who in their 80s is going to order an Ultimo burger?”
Blakley isn’t fazed by anti-obesity trends that have prompted many restaurants to reduce the size of their portions.
“I believe if the portions are too large, you didn’t bring enough friends,” he said. “We never say one person has to eat it. Who says you have to eat a whole clubhouse? There’s takeout containers.”
Bob and Sherl run the restaurant themselves, six days a week, noon to midnight. Bob takes care of the cooking while Sherl tends to the customers. If one of them is sick, they close. They haven’t taken a vacation since they moved to Hafford.
“We figured it out once that I make 15 cents an hour and Sherl makes about 27.”
Still, Blakley said he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I’d rather do this than work in Toronto where I make millions of dollars for other owners.”
It’s a long way from the big city, but Blakley said he has settled nicely into small town life.
“I had to downscale some of my activities. I used to go to museums, theatre, shows and things, and have all that stuff there and 24 hour 7 Eleven. Now my big event around here is going to check the mail.”
