Blog

  A food tour is a great way to get to know a place, its people and their way of life – especially what foods they enjoy. In this post we’ll not only look at what is a food tour but also the who, what, when, where and why of our company. The Who We’re Alberta Food Tours and we’ve been in business since 2006. Our president, Karen Anderson, is an award-winning cookbook author and co-author of Food Artisans of Alberta- Your Trail Guide to the Best of Our Locally Crafted Fare. We have over 20 members on our team and operate in four cities in our province. We have 90 plus partners and together we support about 150 farms. When you support us, we pay all our partners and team members and we all create a great food culture….

Summer has arrived in the Canadian Rockies and summer in Canmore, the gateway to the rockies, means picnics for us. A picnic is the best way to celebrate the long nights and warm temperatures. Canmore is teeming with idyllic picnic spots and foodie stops to fill up your picnic basket. Picnic Spots Riverside Park Just…

Helping plan private and corporate events has created wonderful connections in our community. DIRTT is a great example from Caglary’s corporate community. The client relations team at DIRTT calls on Alberta Food Tours to provide an experience of Calgary’s culture to the many returning and prospective clients they host each year. We are flexible in creating the product they desire and at times they need it. Their guests are happy, after their very intense time at the DIRTT training facility, to have a break to experience our local culture and vibrant city with our team. We, in turn, love that we get to learn about DIRTT’s state of the art environmental design manufacturing. We also show our appreciation of their business by contributing to the fundraising efforts they undertake for Calgary charities, with gift certificate donations. Today, we got a…

 For sure, we are a small business but if you check out the page devoted to our tourism partners, you’ll see that our reach and ability to support many other small businesses in Alberta’s tourism industry is exponential. We exist to build value for soil, food and people and with every tour ticket you buy, you are helping us build Alberta’s food culture and a healthy tourism economy filled with great jobs and food for our visitors and locals to enjoy. We love this video from Travel Alberta which features some of our great partners including the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel and Eau Claire Distillery. Watch it and enjoy a little glimpse behind the scenes. Better yet, come on out and experience it for yourself.

  by Matilde Sanchez-Turri Jodi Willoughby (left) and Carolyne McIntyre-Jackson (right) are sisters and co-founders of Crave Cupcakes. They’re one of our guests’ favourite stops on our Craving Kensington in Calgary and we are proud to have them as a food tour partner. Raised on a ranch near High River and trained by a long line…

 Spending time with Jason Carter and Bridget Ryan is a breath of fresh air. Carter is a painter, sculptor and graphic artist. He practices his art seven days a week. Ryan is a singer, writer, actor, producer and TV host. Together they are respectful, fun and energizing. I met them at a tourism conference and fell in love with their passion and willingness to experiment and collaborate. In Carter’s artist statement he says, “In the world we live in, there is much to be cynical about, but I have found an outlet that I, myself, gather much joy and light, and am so fortunate to be able to pass that joy on.” He also says, “I am aware that much of my craft comes from an innate ability that I have been born with, and believe this to be a…

They say that the average “overnight success” takes about 14 years of effort. As we enter our thirteenth year of serving Calgary with fun – EAT. ENGAGE. EXPLORE. – food experiences, it feels like we are getting closer to fulfilling our purpose of building value for the soil, food and people in our city, province,…

Thanks to our friend Liane Faulder of the Edmonton Journal for including our Anti-Freeze food tour in her most recent Eat My Words Blog post. You can read it here. The details: Friday, March 2, 2018 – 5 – 7pm, $89/person plus GST and ticket fee. Price includes all food, beverages, tax and tips to the vendors. Please note: Because we sold out our March 2 tour, we’ve added a Thursday March 1 tour – same timings, same places. Thank you Edmonton!  We meet at The Marc for a surprise French appetizer treat with wine, go to Wishbone to enjoy chef Brayden Kozak’s famous Napa Cabbage Slaw and finish with meat treats with Kitchen by Brad’s Brad Smoliak. There will be beverage pairings with each stop and everyone leaves with some Jacek Chocolate to ensure sweet dreams. With this much camaraderie…

More items are being added to the menu that is Edmonton’s food scene all the time. Thanks to our dedicated team of food loving tour leaders we are always investigating the new offerings around town. We do a super fun tasting of food and beverages at five “downtown delights” along Jasper Avenue downtown on weekdays in the summer. We have a year round Sunday brunch offering coming in the Strathcona district this spring AND, we will create custom tours by request year round. Recently, we developed a tour especially for the Young Presidents Organization. We started with beer, pretzels and a tour of Situation Brewing. We visited Porc Sale to learn about the art of charcuterie and sausage-making with chef Mark Kalynchuk, nibbled on sweet delights from Amy Nachtigall at her newly opened Sugared and Spiced bakery and finished with…

  by Callandra Caufield What a winter. Crunchy snow, a blizzard or two, and more than our usual share of grey days. There’s only so many nights one can read a book beside the fire. If you are ready for a change, put on your warmest boots and your oh-so-Canadian toque, and come on out and join in the fun of our Calgary Food Tours’ Craving Kensington neighbourhood food tour. “What exactly is a food tour?” In brief, a food tour is an eating, sipping, guided walking tour with just enough history, culture, and food stories to make you sound really interesting at your next dinner party. The ulterior motive of all of our Alberta Food Tours is to help you fall in love with our local farm to table food scene.  When you buy a ticket to come on…

Ready, set – SHOP. Time is of the essence. Callandra, our operations manager, and I had some meetings in Canmore today AND we managed to sneak in a little holiday shopping too. We are talented that way. What follows are some of the fun things we found. We hope these ideas will inspire you to…