Blog

Alberta Food Tours showcases restaurants, chefs, local producers and food artisans that feature and celebrate Alberta ingredients. We can’t take you on a food tour right now, but we can still help you find and support local food artisans. This list of great food Alberta businesses will be updated regularly. Note: As the COVID…

15 years! Alberta Food Tours (AFT) has thrived for 15 years in business. That’s right. We started in April of 2006. That’s an incredible achievement by any standard but given Alberta will lose almost half of all tourism businesses because of the devastating effects of Covid-19 on our sector, the fact that we are staying…

2019 – The Year of Canadian Signature Experiences for Alberta Food Tours (AFT) 2019 was a fantastic year for our company. Why? Because, Destination Canada designated both our Inglewood Edibles: Made by Mavericks in Calgary and our Eat the Castle in Banff as Canadian Signature Experiences. So, that means Tourism Canada recommends them as “Must-See, Must-Do” experiences. They are recognized because they help visitors understand what Canada – and Canadians – are all about. Magazines, bloggers and content creators also loved us this year. We ran some seriously fun contests. And, our team of 20 talented guides delivered hundreds of tours around the province. Read on for a summary of all the action. January Writer Don Nichols featured us in his Private Clubs Magazine article: 5 Good Reasons To Visit Calgary We signed an agreement with Classic Vacations to become…

For our 2022 India trip – We are pleased to offer this 20 day experience of South India’s Ancient Tastes and Temples  Led by Alberta Food Tours’ President, Karen Anderson, this experiential travel covers a lot of territory and goes off India’s beaten path to deliver a deep dive into the ancient cultures of three…

Join Alberta Food Tours in September, 2020 for this once in a lifetime Alberta road trip There are as many ways to explore Alberta as there are range and township roads criss-crossing the province. But, how many of us have the time to plan a trip to truly get to know this beautiful place? We dream of meeting Alberta’s leading edge food artisans and tourism entrepreneurs but don’t know how to make the connections? We search for meals brimming with Alberta’s signature foods and end up settling for roadside fast food. We long to slow down and soak up the beauty of this land but are too busy navigating life to take it all in. Finally, here’s a trip where you just have to show up and every detail has already been taken care of for you.   DAY #1…

We are celebrating! For six summers now, we’ve kept two beehives with the help of our mentor Eliese Watson the founder of Apiaries and Bees for Communities . Five years ago we moved the bees to the garden of our business partner Rouge Restaurant in Inglewood and both the garden and the bees are better for it. Rouge owners Paul Rogalski and Olivier Reynaud say that the bees have clearly doubled the pollination and harvest yield of their garden. Last year, we harvested 80 pound of honey from our two hives and left that much more for the bees to overwinter on. Beekeeping is a skill that requires mentoring.   As president of Alberta Food Tours, I was moved to start keeping bees when I heard that although large commercial scale bees were suffering colony collapse disorder, urban bees, with…

Someone asked me recently, what is Alberta Food Tours’ competition in Edmonton? A light bulb went off over my head. I realized our competition in Edmonton isn’t other food tour companies. Edmonton has lots of room for others to join our celebration of the local food scene. Nope, that’s not it. Our biggest competition is…

2019 is a year where Alberta Food Tours is recognized for our ability to create unforgettable moments for visitors. First, in February, Destination Canada designated our Inglewood Edibles: Made by Mavericks tour as a Canadian Signature Experience (CSE). Now, in partnership with the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel (FBSH), our Eat the Castle tour has just received the same designation. This means that these tours are part of Destination Canada’s permanent collection of must-see, must-do experiences for visitors to Canada. Travel Alberta explains that “CSE is a curated collection of over 200 unforgettable travel experiences offered by Canadians who are passionate to share their extraordinary part of the country with international visitors. The program helps change international perceptions of travelling within Canada and broaden the view of what Canada has to offer.” Marty Eberth, Vice President of Travel Alberta adds, “Visitors…

This is it! It’s time to ramp up our food tour season across Alberta. Here are the top five things we’re looking forward to sharing with you this year. We’ve got three new world-class chefs to work with – Robert Ash, Ashley Cawdle and Dwayne Ennest. Murietta’s Mountain Grill has joined our newest tasting experience on our Canmore Tasting Trail. Our Inglewood tour in Calgary is designated as a Canadian Signature Experience by Destination Canada. We are going to host our first ever #EatAlbertaFirst dinner in partnership with Rouge Restaurant and ABC bees in July. It’ll feature a multi-course honey-themed dinner in honour of the two beehives we keep at Rouge. Soon, we’ll announce a four night, five-day #EatAlbertaFirst trip to discover the secret gems of Southern Alberta. It’ll be October 3 – 7. Subscribing to our newsletter will get…

There is no offseason The nicest thing has happened. We don’t really have an off-season anymore. In the photos above, you see our guide Nora Comerford-Seto with Santa on our last tour of 2018 at the Fairmont Banff Springs on December 21. The photo beside it is a private tour we did for ATB in Canmore on January 6. Hallelujah! It was great to only have three weeks as our offseason. Quiet activities Overall, November to April are quieter than May through October when we are in full swing. That’s important for me as a business owner and serial entrepreneur. I also have a writing and publishing company and a spice box importing company and am currently working on a new South Indian cookbook. I need some balancing time to pursue these other passions and to take care of myself….

THE MAKING OF A CANADIAN SIGNATURE EXPERIENCE – YOU’VE GOT TO START SOMEWHERE When I started Alberta Food Tours in 2006, I focused on tours that showcased the breadth and depth of Calgary’s diverse food scene. I’d hire a van and driver to transport guests to all four corners of the city. We captured tastes…

Tantalizing Tastes of Thailand – January 12 -26, 2020 – NOW SOLD OUT! ATTENTION: this tour is now sold out. Watch for other tours coming soon. Join Alberta Food Tours’ guide and Edmonton Journal writer, Liane Faulder for this sumptuous taste of the food and culture of Northern Thailand. Thirteen nights of luxurious accommodation, 38…