What a GREAT time for local food in Alberta! Alberta Local Food Week is upon us, bringing with it SO many ways to discover the diversity of food and drink produced right here in our backyard:
Alberta on the Plate 2021 Dine Around kicked off this weekend and runs through August 15, with 80+ restaurants across the province offering fixed price menus featuring local producers AND recommended local craft beer or local spirit cocktail pairings. There’s lunch, dinner, gourmet dinners, and takeout – find full details and menus here or follow them on Instagram or Facebook.
Open Farm Days runs this Saturday and Sunday (August 14 & 15) with 100+ Alberta farmers inviting you to see what they do and to taste what they produce. Use the online portal to plan your stops and schedule your visit times.
Farmers’ Markets are bursting with the latest harvest, and taprooms and tasting bars are open at your local craft brewers and distillers.
Need more inspiration? Read “Meet the Producers” and “The Bison Whisperers” in the current issue of Savour Calgary magazine – featuring several ranchers who have knocked the socks off Debra Smith and myself of late. Look for Savour Calgary on these newsstands around the Calgary region.
Let me be upfront: I never read Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun. Never saw the movie. I’m unaccountably indifferent to pasta (and Italian food in general, if truth be told). Yes, I missed the boat completely on the raptures of Tuscany.
Friends who’d spent time in the popular Italian region said this was a gap in need of remedy. Stat.
So I booked a culinary walking tour of Tuscany, offering hillside rambles and an abundance of wine. Now THAT’S something I could commit to…
As financial capital of India and home to Bollywood, Mumbai has long held a cosmopolitan outlook on culture and food. And in a city of 18 million people – well, the possibilities for dining are practically endless.
With the help of knowledgeable locals – and a little sweet serendipity, too – I “discovered” these South Mumbai favourites (including some of the BEST street food vendors on popular Chowpatty Beach)…
I’m here on the water’s edge of what’s considered to be the most beautiful Old Town in Greece. From my vantage point, I see a Venetian lighthouse standing sentry over a narrow harbour entrance and a Turkish mosque – now serving as an exhibition hall – opening its doors to the morning air.
This is Chania, second-largest city on the island of Crete, where the architecture provides just a sliver of insight into a turbulent history…
Photo credit – D. Mulligan (via Creative Commons license)
You’d be forgiven if you didn’t know that Calgary is a great food town. It’s kind of a well-kept secret.
Except to those who’ve been paying attention…
If Calgary hasn’t been on your radar for awhile, find out what you’ve been missing – and the best ways to (re)discover it – in my piece “A Calgary Kind of Craving” in the new issue of Taste & Travel International.
You can read the full story here – or check out the complete Spring Issue of Taste & Travel on Zinio, Pocket Mags, Flipster, PressReader (free from your local library), or with the new T&T app (available on iTunes and GooglePlay).
Stunning Dubrovnik – with its old city walls jutting into the Adriatic Sea and its evocative Game of Thrones settings – is Croatia’s brightest calling card for good reason. Our early morning walk atop its ramparts brings heart-stirring angles across the red-tiled roofs. A gondola ride up Mt. Srd provides even more great photos – plus an opportunity to peruse the passionate exhibit “Dubrovnik During the Homeland War” housed in the Napoleonic fortress.
But it’s the evenings, when the cruise-ship day-trippers have disappeared and the sun shines rosy on the tiled streets, that the Old Town is most magical…
When I came in search of food experiences in British Columbia’s North Okanagan Valley, I didn’t expect to find myself HERE.
Pine forests tumble down the Monashee mountains and cottonwoods throw shadows over the canoe, as I float with seven other paddlers down the Shuswap River. Other shadows flit below the water: Chinook and Sockeye salmon returning to their birthplace to spawn. A Bald eagle whistles from a tall snag, but before I can locate his partner, my guide, Charles Ruechel, sounds his call to stroke hard on my side of the canoe. By the time we clear the “sweeper” – a tree laid low over the water – we’ve left the eagle behind. No matter. Minutes later, another eagle splits the October sky.
Read the full story in the Summer Issue of Taste & Travel International magazine.
Seems the folks helming the new cafe at Bowness Park are inclined to agree.
Since the epic flood of 2013 saw Calgary’s Bow River rushing pell-mell among the cottonwoods, pushing mud and debris high up tree trunks and across the century-old picnic grounds, the road back for this well-loved park has been a long one. Last summer, after two years of reconstruction that saw roadways reconfigured, river access improved, and regional bikeways integrated, the park re-opened to the public – and to much enthusiasm for the creatively reimagined central square on the lagoon.
Now the concession that has served hotdogs and ice cream, hot chocolate and coffee to generations of paddling and skating Calgarians has made its phoenix-rise at last, with the opening of Market and – in a throwback to the 1920’s tea house that once graced the river channel – a new cafe called Seasons of Bowness Park.
But this is not your grandmother’s tea house.
With its vaulted ceiling, exposed pine beams, and honey-hued wood trim, the new venue is decidedly unfussy; evocative of a contemporary river-fishing lodge. The mood is casual and stylish, with deep blue and black accents, transparent blue plastic-and-chrome chairs, and two long plaid-and-leather banquettes placed back-to-back to divide the airy room into two. A place where you’d feel equally at home in bike shorts and a tech-shirt as in a sundress and sandals (okay, so some of you guys may not feel comfortable in a sundress and sandals). Few of the furnishings are fixed, leaving this a flexible space that can be configured for multiple uses. The feature attraction, of course, is the long lagoon view – and Seasons cafe takes full advantage of this, with a continuous stretch of windows along three sides of the building and a sunny wraparound deck that overhangs the river channel.
The contemporary feel extends to the lunch menu as well. With grab-and-go sandwiches, salads, and snacks covered off by the take-out counter at the adjacent Market, the team at Seasons cafe have opted for what they term “casual fine dining” – an array of globally-inspired tapas and skewers, beautifully-plated salads, and mains that run the gamut from paella fried rice to fried chicken to steelhead trout with pasta (There’s also a signature burger and ribs).
I chose for my lunch the Canadian Falafel plate (made with black and white beans and garnished with herb purée and sumac yogurt, $10)) and a half-order of the Chèvre Chaude salad (toasted goat cheese on artisan lettuce greens, with a vegetable medley and herb vinaigrette, $10). The three falafel balls were perfectly-crisped on the outside, as was the panko-crusted mild goat cheese, and the salad’s vegetable medley on this occasion included tasty shavings of fennel and Asian radish.
In the interest of the most complete research on a single stomach, I chose a sampler platter from the dessert menu, which included bite-sized servings of chewy brownie, iced coconut parfait, and cheesecake with berry compote and honey ($8). A selection of cheeses is also available, as well as French press coffee and local teas by Grounded (the Velvet Mint rooibos proved smooth and sublime).
The dinner menu expands the lunch offerings with selections of pork, steak frites, shrimp, gnocchi, and a choice of seasonal sides. Just this weekend, the cafe launched its Saturday and Sunday brunch, offering elevated renditions of the usual suspects: eggs, French toast, pancakes, fruit, and breakfast hash.
Seasons has an extensive wine list, a short curation of craft beers (from Canada, the U.S., and Europe) as well as seasonal beers on tap, and interesting cocktail options designed for summer sipping. For those who prefer to bring their own bottle, wine corkage is available for $15.
The staff at Seasons are attentive, welcoming, and notably thrilled to share this new Bowness Park experience with you. With its emphasis on casual fine dining as opposed to chips and burgers, the reincarnated tea house is a bit of a risky venture among the wagon-pulling, football-throwing traditional park crowd. But those simply looking for a caffeine fix or a quick bite will find their needs met by the friendly baristas at Market, with a full display counter of fresh and tasty choices (open 10 am to 8 pm daily). And in the under-served restaurant market of Calgary’s NW quadrant, Seasons of Bowness Park may well be a happy venture that’s been far too long in the making.
I’m already planning my next date night there with my Man, to watch the light play golden over the water and the mother ducks – both feathered and human – shepherding their young ones off to bed.
Welcome back, Bowness Park! We missed you.
Check out menus and catch the latest news from Seasons of Bowness Park on their Facebook page. Watch for their website (seasonsofbownesspark.ca) to be up to full speed soon.
Seasons of Bowness Park is open Monday to Friday from 11 am to 10 pm; weekends from 10 am to 10 pm.
Like many Calgarians, my distrust of our local weather runs deep.
(Just ask Leonardo DiCaprio how quickly the weather changes around here. But wait – he thought he was experiencing something new…).
Little wonder, then, that when hundred-year-old high-temperature records were falling like poplar pollen in April, I was seized with the conviction that our city would soon exhaust its miserly annual quota of warm summer evenings.
Call me paranoid, but the feeling was unshakeable. So on a balmy Friday just ahead of a predicted weather change, I made the carpe diem decision to cycle against the flow of bike commuters to meet my Man downtown for date night. We’d been itching to try out the new Al Forno Bakery & Cafe near the intersection of the Bow River pathways and the 7th Street cycle track. As luck would have it, my Man had ridden his bike to the office that morning. The plan called for hauling our bikes back home on the C-train if we lingered past daylight or imbibed too heavily.
Al Forno Bakery & Cafe
Sadly, the Man was delayed for an hour past the appointed rendezvous – leaving me no option but to settle beneath Al Forno’s skylights with a glass of red wine, a bowl of warm marinated olives, and a good book (do I know my Man or what?). The cafe buzzed with happy-hour revelers, laptop-absorbed writers, workweek-debriefing couples, and girls-night-out new moms, and a steady stream of nearby condo-dwellers pushed through the door for a takeaway meal or a coffee to go. By the time my Man arrived, every seat in the house was filled by others who, like us, were drawn by the wine and beer specials and the intriguing list of housemade pastas and bakery-fresh flatbreads.
The servers proved amiable and well-versed in the vino offerings, and the twin delights of gorgonzola/pear and potato/bacon/rosemary flatbreads had us planning a return visit before we’d finished the final bites. When we eventually unlocked our bikes in the pink and orange twilight, weekday worries had dissipated along with the day’s heat. A quick calculation of daylight and blood-alcohol levels deemed us fit for the journey home, so we decided to forgo the C-train option. Forty minutes later, we cycled into our driveway just as darkness descended – a happy reminder of how, even in April, our city is blessed with a long and lingering dusk.
Bike Month made its annual launch in Calgary this week – which got me thinking about other great food and libation venues that are easily accessed from our nearly 800 km of cycle paths. As an unabashedly fair-weather cyclist who rarely ventures beyond the Bow River bikeways, I offer up my favourite trailside pit-stops below.
(The more devoted cyclists among you would no doubt cast a wider net – so please do add to the conversation with your own recommendations.)
And let’s get out and enjoy the summer! We’ve got firm assurances from Dave Phillips (Environment Canada’s ever-popular-and-rarely-wrong Senior Climatologist), it’s going to be warm and dry!
Nothing matches the leafy island location of this city-centre icon for a stellar weekend brunch. And I’ve lost track of how many times the cafe has appeared on lists of our country’s top restaurants for its thoughtfully-crafted farm-to-table Canadian cuisine. Procrastinators who’ve been shut-out of Calgary’s annual Folk Music Festival know that come July the cafe’s patio also provides some great unofficial ringside seats to the folkfest along with your meal.
Simmons Building (East Village RiverWalk)
Another addition to Canada’s Top 100 Restaurants list – though it only opened last year – is charbar, serving up meaty Argentinian-inspired cuisine from its wood-fired grill, as well as an array of vegetarian small plates for the herbivores among us. Sharing the gorgeous unconventional spaces in and around the historic Simmons Building are Sidewalk Citizen, with its artisanal sandwiches and overflowing pitas, and well-loved local coffee roasters Phil & Sebastian (who offer tours of the roasterie on Tuesday mornings). But the cherry on top is the oh-so-cool patio of rooftopbar@simmons with its unparalleled view of Calgary’s river panorama (and some tasty bar bites and gelato sandwiches, to boot).
The Hose and Hound Neighbourhood Pub
Hose and Hound Pub and Gravity Espresso & Wine Bar (Inglewood)
Okay, so these two Inglewood favourites are not officially on the bikeways. But just a short detour off the river paths up 11th Street S.E. lie the sunny patios of two of my fondest places to lock up my bike and while away an afternoon. The Hose and Hound‘s location in 1907-built Fire Station No. 3 lends quirky historic decor to a pub-centric menu and craft beer tipples, while across the street at the Art Block the neighbourly welcome I receive along with my pinot makes Gravity my top choice of venue to write my first novel.
Heading west out of downtown, the river valley’s treasures turn to nature more than structure, but this cozy breakfast place-cum-Asian cafe-cum coffee klatsch is a welcome destination for weekday lunchers and Sunday morning caffeine-seekers. Operating out of a former Robin’s Donuts location since 2002, this family-owned venue offers bubble tea as well as wine and beer with its eclectic menu – and a stone fireplace to curl up near when my pedalling gets interrupted by a sudden hailstorm.
What would a westward cycle be without a stop at Angel’s (whose full moniker is larger than the diminutive interior of this aluminum-sided portable)? More than a source for sandwich wraps, home-baked goodies, coffee, and ice cream, Angel’s is also a godsend of pathside aid. They’ve got bike repair tools (supplied by Bow Cycle), first aid equipment (courtesy of Calgary EMS), and other emergency supplies – from battery chargers for stranded drivers to duct tape for hapless rafters.
Bowness Park Cafe (Bowness Park)
Seasons of Bowness Park
This old urban park, beloved to generations of Calgarians, will complete its phoenix-rise from the 2013 floods this summer – with a new wading pool for the little ones and a lagoon-centred sound system reminiscent of the park’s early-1900’s heydays. The miniature train will be back, too. Top of my discovery list this season will be the new grab & go market and full-service restaurant – Seasons of Bowness Park – scheduled for a soft-opening one day very soon. Can’t wait to check it out!
So tell me – where are YOUR favourite bikeway fueling stops in Calgary?
--- Catherine ---Van Brunschot 