By Diana (Foodology),
Special to The Post

It’s good to shake things up, especially when the weather is so grey. In the middle of the week, I wanted to spend a nice night out at a steak house. With their Wednesday Hump Day Date Night Menu, I decided to try out Stake, located at Hard Rock Casino in Coquitlam. 
They have a variety of items that are inspired by local produce and west coast cuisine. The special Wednesday night menu costs $49.99 per couple, and includes: artisan greens for two, dinner platter for two, and dessert platter for two. The dinner platter includes silky mashed potatoes, sautéed baby vegetables, and your choice of Pan-seared Spring Salmon, Braised Lamb Shank, BBQ Whiskey Glazed Beef Ribs, Free Range Chicken Breast, or Pan-Seared Truffle Polenta. The dessert platter includes Mango Cheese Cake or Chocolate Marquise. 
You can even include a few add-ons to the menu, such as a bottle of wine (+$20), Pan Seared Garlic Prawns (+$10), Pan Seared Scallops (+$10), Stake-cut Onion Rings (+$8), Roasted Mushrooms and Garlic with Fresh Thyme (+$8), Glazed Golden Beets with Fresh Thyme (+$5), and Steam Asparagus with Lemon (+$8).
There were not too many people here on a Wednesday evening, but with the holidays coming up, the tables were nicely decorated. We started off with complimentary bread and butter. Next came the Artisan Greens with Golden Ears quark cheese, walnut wafer, shaved carrots, roasted red pepper, and raspberry vinaigrette. It was a delicious simple salad.
The dinner platter arrived with the Braised Lamb Shank and the Pan-Seared Truffle Polenta. There were two balls of mashed potatoes, carrots, beets, asparagus and gravy.  It was a good size for two people to share. I found it was actually quite fun having it all on one platter. Instead of having our own individual meals, we had fun fighting who gets the last bite of lamb, which was very tender and fell apart beautifully. The polenta looks like an omelette but it’s not. It is very delicious and quite fluffy, and one of the best polenta dishes I have ever had. 
We decided to add on the Stake-cut Onion Rings (+$8). They looked more like donuts than onion rings and were very salty with lots of batter. We didn’t like these very much.
Onto the dessert. The Mango Cheese Cake was very good. The Chocolate Marquise was very hard to cut through. 
Overall, the food and service was good and the food came out at a good speed. 

 Foodology is a top ranked food blogger on UrbanSpoon. These are the tales of her dine-out experiences. Read more at www.foodology.ca. 

We Rate Stake: 3.5/5

2080 United Boulevard, Coquitlam
www.hardroccasinovancouver.com