Can a vegetarian get satisfaction in Cowtown?
The home of the Canadian Centre for Beef Excellence, Calgary is synonymous with great steaks. Top restaurants like Major Tom crow about their “beef programs.” A slab of something beefy (or bison) seems like a must have.
While I love a well-charred, medium-rare ribeye, I am eating far less meat these days. Creeping cholesterol levels prompted the switch to a Mediterranean diet a year ago. Fish is my main source of animal protein and about 70% of my meals are vegetarian.
I went to Calgary, the biggest urban centre in a province where cattle out number people. My three-day mission was to eat only vegetarian. Could it work? And more important, would it be good?
Veggie Cowtown exceeded my expectations. I could have easily stretched that experiment to a very tasty week. From funky diners to white-tablecloth dining rooms, the dishes were varied and creative, with a focus on local produce.
Vegetarian dining has been growing consistently here since Dalia Kohen opened Calgary’s first non-ethnic vegetarian restaurant, The Coup, nearly 20 years ago. Kohen sold the business in 2020 and moved on to another booming market with Wild Folk, making a line of alcohol-free botanical craft cocktails sold in cans.
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Canela, Calgary’s first vegan bakery, was opened by Veronica Amaya in 2018, where locals line up for signature cinnamon rolls. And two of the city’s most popular indie ice cream shops, Made by Marcus and Village Ice Cream, have rotating vegan flavours.
“The thing that people don’t realize about Calgary is it’s time to shake off everything you thought you knew about [it]. We’ve gone from cowboy to cosmopolitan,” said cookbook author, food writer, and local food expert Karen Anderson, founder of Alberta Food Tours.
The former registered nurse and nurse practitioner has lived in Calgary for 40 years. She shows her passion for Alberta foods with her car. It’s covered in decals of Alberta’s best, from beef to beets. Anderson points out Calgary is the third-most diverse city in Canada. Veggie-forward cuisines from Asia, the Middle East, and India are well represented.
“People from here travel all over and everyone’s eating less meat,” said Anderson. She includes herself in that number. “I want to eat a lot lighter.”
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Calgary chefs have plenty of non-meat products to showcase, including Alberta root vegetables, which are extra sweet thanks to cold nights and warm days. Red Fife wheat, a nutty, heritage grain, is used exclusively in sourdough bread made by Sidewalk Citizen Bakery. Its bread is also on several restaurant tables.
There are two million acres of pulses under cultivation in Alberta, along with delicious chewy barley for both craft brewers and the table. Half of Canada’s honey supply comes from the province. I fell for golden milk-inspired, Calgary-made Drizzle Turmeric Gold Raw Honey. It blends Alberta wildflower honey with turmeric, cardamom oil, and a hint of black pepper.
About 50% of Canada’s commercially packaged wild foraged food comes from Alberta, said Anderson, naming producers like Untamed Feast and Canadian FunGuy Foragers.
“You don’t think people in Calgary say, ‘I’ve got a mushroom guy,’ but I do,” Anderson added.
Many also have a lettuce guy. Urban aquaponics farmer Paul Shumlich founded Deepwater Farms nine years ago on an industrial site across from a railyard. The company grows tender lettuces and baby greens, including kale, chard, arugula, and basil in nutrient-rich liquid. The rotating crops shoot up quickly in 20 chest-height, hydroponic grow beds. They’re harvested twice a week.
Shumlich said the greens are on shelves in 30 local stores and in about 50 Calgary restaurant kitchens within 48 hours. They’re more colourful, tender, and fresher than imports, he said.
Mushroom grower Trafford Farms, founded by siblings Charlie and Sya Trafford, is also on the Deepwater site.
Both businesses were started to address food insecurity and the need for Calgary to do more to feed itself, needs that were underscored by the 2013 Alberta floods and the global pandemic.
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Here are highlights of the best things I ate on my Calgary veggie cuisine tour.
Diner Deluxe
The most important meal of the day takes a vegetarian turn at this quirky favourite in the Bridgeland neighbourhood. The Community Breakfast Bowl came with plenty of protein: marinated tofu, locally made vegan veggie patty, feta and quinoa, plus avocado, roasted peppers, greens, and rosemary hash. And because we’re in Calgary, home of the Shaft cocktail, enjoy a can of Park Distillery’s Mountain Joe with your breakfast, made vegan with espresso, Kahlúa, and oak milk.
Bridgette Bar
This stylish Design District restaurant has six substantial vegetable plates on the menu. Although several have some kind of animal protein, which the chef is happy to leave off. Cauliflower, roasted to rich darkness on a wood-burning fire, came with tasty green harissa yogurt and housemade croutons. And the shredded snow pea salad featured Deepwater Farms greens with tahini dressing.
Ten Foot Henry
Vegetarian dishes are listed first on the “vegetable-anchored menu” at Ten Foot Henry, one of Calgary’s favourite veggie-forward eateries. It’s named for the 1930’s comic strip character, which seems a surprising choice for a restaurant, considering Henry didn’t have a mouth. (The cartoon kid was adopted as a muse for Calgary’s creative community in the 1980s.) The tomatoes are a local favourite. Crush multi-coloured, roasted cherry tomatoes into herbed, whipped feta to smear on Sidewalk Citizen Bakery Red Fife sourdough. The ruffled edges of homemade gigli pasta, also called campanelle, captures every luscious bit of creamy kale pesto made with sweet pistachios and Grana Padano.
Vegan Street
“We’re trying to change people’s perceptions on what vegan food tastes like,” said Laine Fedrau, who grew her food-truck business into Calgary’s first 100% plant-based sit-down restaurant in 2019.
She clearly understands the assignment. Kalamari sees thinly sliced local blue oyster mushrooms lightly coated in rice flour and fried to a yielding crisp, served with spicy vegan tzatziki for dipping. I had a hearty taco duo with beer-battered palm heart subbing for fish and shaved mushroom-black bean seitan standing in for beef. Both where topped with chimichurri, guacamole, and mango salsa. Fedrau said her greatest compliment came from a cattle rancher who pronounced Vegan Street’s mushroom-black bean seitan Beaf Dip the best beef dip he’d ever had — roast-beef version included.
Rouge
While elegantly unfussy Rouge isn’t a vegetarian restaurant, the heart of the operation can be found in the one-acre kitchen and flower garden just steps from the kitchen. Fresh-picked herbs, vegetables, and edible flowers are important elements of each dish.
Chefs and proprietors Paul Rogalski and Olivier Reynaud opened Rouge in 2003 in the historic Cross House in Inglewood with a focus on French technique to create modern farmhouse cuisine. It is the only Calgary restaurant to earn a place in the World’s 100 Best Restaurants list, a feat accomplished in 2010.
With fall in the air, Rogalski took me on a pre-dinner walk around the garden to point out the origins of some of the dishes I would later eat in Rouge’s dining room and created by current head chef, Dean Fast.
“The garden grows, gets harvested and the cooks now understand the value of being outside and touching the soil and getting out of the kitchen,” said Rogalski as he showed off massive trailing runner beans, vibrant kale and smooth-skinned yellow pattypan squashes.
My only veggie dining rule-breaker was having the poached lobster dumpling that came with the vivid emerald-coloured chilled mint, pea and borage soup. The chunky, fresh-tasting seafood was perfect against the light, creamy soup made from the garden and studded with sharp-sweet zucchini relish. For our main, slabs of roasted cauliflower were an exceptional sub for a steak, crunchy with a nutty, roasted quinoa exterior and napped with rich, dairy-free romesco sauce alongside a plate of just-picked roasted orange and yellow carrots on top of wilted chard.
For dessert, Fast placed a wooden beehive frame from the garden apiary on our table and scooped out chunks of beeswax dripping with honey to enjoy with spicy housemade chutney and thin wedges of Manchego cheese.
Deane House
From the charmingly mismatched fine china, to the well-tended gardens outside, a table on the white wood-enclosed sun porch at historic riverfront property Deane House is an ideal place for a vegetarian lunch. Helmed by celebrated restaurateur Sal Howell, the focus is on sustainable and seasonal local food.
Red lentil hummus, also a popular item at Howell’s River Café in nearby Prince’s Island Park, comes with seedy housemade Red Fife crackers.
My favourite dish — and probably the most-ordered item on the menu — was ginger beets. It’s Howell’s deliciously playful riff on ginger beef, the sweet-spicy-crunchy dish invented in Calgary in the 1970s by chef George Wong. Here, parboiled local beets are coated in vinegary chili-ginger maple syrup glaze with a hit of star anise, dehydrated and then tossed in almond flour before frying. They’re slightly chewy, flavourful and addictive.
A Map Featuring the Restaurants Mentioned in the Article
Vacay.ca Contributor Linda Barnard was a guest of Tourism Calgary, which did not preview this story before it was published.