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…
Elk Island has 800 bison, 300 elk, 200 deer and about 1000 beavers in Canada’s only full fenced national park. The park is only a 30 minute drive from downtown Edmonton and is 194 square kilometres in size. One of our country’s oldest parks, early naturalists recognized the unique character of this land in what is known as the beaver hills. Formed by a collision of three glaciers, rolling hills and thousands of sloughs and ponds were left behind in this small district which is completely surrounded by Prairie otherwise. Our Edmonton Food Tours team – Karen Anderson, Liane Faulder, Cindy Lazarenko, Suzanne Dennis, Howard Kowalchuk and Debra Anzinger – pulled in on a windless, 25 degree Celsius Saturday evening. It had been a dry summer so there were no mosquitos to pester and only the promise of a dinner laden…
Edmonton’s 104th Street is a magical place in the summer. With numerous cafes spilling out onto the sidewalk, it is a hot spot for people watching, while also offering the perfect opportunity to indulge in a range of high-quality food and drink. You can sip cocktails while sampling tapas at Tzin Wine and Tapas, relish a craft brew with poutine at Blue Plate Diner, or choose from a selection of Canadian and international cheeses at Cavern, paired with a glass of thoughtfully curated wine. Perhaps the best way to get a good sense of 104th Street is to visit the bustling City Market held every Saturday between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. between the May long weekend and Thanksgiving. Some 20,000 visitors will join you of a pleasant day. All of you will be able to pick up a great…
It is time to stop and taste Alberta’s food again like you are tasting it for the first time. That’s not as easy as it sounds because when something has been right in front of you your whole life you don’t see it – let alone taste it – for the truly unique thing that it is. On our food tours we ask our guests what is Alberta’s food? Beef is the first thing they think of. They are surprised to learn that cattle have only been in Alberta for about 160 years. We explain that they are an exotic Scottish import. Before there were fences, Montana cowboys “drove” them here in search of grazing lands. Bison is the animal that was formed with this land. There is archeological evidence that the first bison crossed from Asia over a land bridge 120,000 years…
There are some cities you just don’t want to miss. Chicago is one of them. From Thursday, October 12 to Monday October 16, 2017, Alberta Food Tours and our guide Liane Faulder travelled to Chicago with a small group of devoted food adventurers to experience one of the great eating – and entertainment – centers in the United States. Liane has had a distinguished career with The Edmonton Journal and had led 10 previous culinary excursions across Canada, the United States and Europe. Chicago had been on her bucket list for a long time and Alberta Food Tours, Inc. president Karen Anderson designed this itinerary after three research trips in 2015 and 2016. With some 2.7 million residents, Chicago is big enough to be home to a large number of innovative chefs experimenting with new food trends while continuing to nurture…
By Liane Faulder, Edmonton Food Tours guide and writer for The Edmonton Journal The definition of a romantic meal varies widely. Some couples can feel dreamily alone in a noisy and crowded space like El Cortez Mexican Kitchen and Tequila Bar (8230 Gateway Blvd.) and others like a padded banquette in a dark corner at the Red Ox Inn (9420 91 St). One duo might find a grilled cheese eaten while perched on a stool in a trendy sandwich joint like Farrow (8422 109 St.) to be gooey and gorgeous. Another needs champagne in the Confederation Lounge at the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald (10065 100 St). If you’re of the cheap and cheerful persuasion, look no further than the aptly named Café Amore (10807 106 Ave.) The tables for two are tiny, and it’s easy to have an intimate conversation, especially…
From Arctic to Atlantic to Pacific and every place in between, Canada, the world’s second largest country, celebrated its 150th birthday in 2017. Lonely Planet thought that was a good reason to name Canada the number one place to travel to next that year. The tipping point for that decision was the fact that access to all of our national parks were absolutely free for the whole sesquicentennial year. We have a lot of national parks – 44 of them to be precise. Our 150th birthday may be over but our great country and province are still here. Alberta is blessed with some of the country’s most magnificent national parks. (We think they might actually be the best in the world.) Waterton stands guard at our Southern border. Banff and Jasper cover vast territory in the West and Wood Buffalo looms in the…