Flavours of Alberta

Regional cuisine puts local food and ingredients on the menu at restaurants across the province.

Story by Phoebe Dey •  photography by Ewan Nicholson

Order the pan-seared bison tenderloin at Calgary’s Rouge restaurant and you might get an earful from chef Paul Rogalski. Not only will you hear what ingredients went into the dish, but an account of how the Carmen Creek naturally raised bison roam alongside a picturesque lake in the middle of northern Alberta’s open pastures. If you ask Rogalski what his favourite canola oil is, he might mention that Highwood Crossing, a certified organic grain farm south of Calgary, grows and cold-presses its own seeds and that he would have a hard time thinking of a better oil. Or if you question him about the chocolate mint, lemon grass or creeping marjoram in one of the dishes, he’ll tell you the plants were picked within hours in the restaurant’s own backyard garden. 

This is regional cuisine at its finest. The term describes local, fresh and creatively crafted ingredients and food – a movement intended to blend Alberta’s culture, geography and history.

Rogalski takes the phrase to heart, not just because it is becoming popular among chefs, but because for him it is a conviction.“Everything in our restaurant is influenced by our garden and what is best at the moment,” says Rogalski, who, for example, turned 1,000 pounds of crabapples into juice over the warmer months then used it as his signature vinaigrette during the winter.

Rogalski and co-owner Olivier Reynaud started their garden from scratch in the backyard of a provincial heritage house nestled in Calgary’s Bow River. “It has always been my desire to have flexibility with the foods I use in my kitchen and to harvest my product as close to service as possible. This forces us to celebrate the seasons and what they have to offer,” he says.

Rogalski wants to see Alberta become a culinary hot spot and thinks there is a natural synergy between tourism and agriculture. The challenge, he says, is convincing producers to keep their best at home. “If someone brings in a client from New York who has heard nothing but good things about Alberta beef and if he comes to my restaurant and I’m not serving the very best Alberta beef right here at home, we look bad,” he says. “It’s about being true to ourselves and starting to think a different way. For me, it’s so important to support the small producer while showcasing what we have here.”

Rogalski isn’t alone. Regional cuisine is catching on in restaurants across the province, largely due to a concerted effort by both chefs and farmers pushing to see more homegrown food emerge from sandwich shops to hotel kitchens.

But long before it earned its contemporary title, regional cuisine was a part of our landscape, says Janice McGregor, regional cuisine expert at Alberta Agriculture, Food and Rural Development (AAFRD). It is, after all, how agriculture started. “People simply produced their own food and ate it. The distribution channels weren’t around then,” says McGregor. “It wasn’t until we got into the export market and realized that we could ship food around the world that we lost that sense of using local products.”

The push also comes from a growing population that is more conscious about what it eats, which has forced people to look at who is growing the food, says McGregor. “They want assurances that someone took the time and effort to grow it with care. We’re so disconnected from farming that, believe it or not, some people don’t even realize that the food they are buying is grown on a farm.”

McGregor has seen signs at farmers’ markets indicating beans had traveled 30 miles and had been picked two hours before. “It really gives consumers a good idea of just how fresh the food is as well as more of a connection to the farmer and the land.” More and more restaurants are picking up on that same idea, says McGregor.

The demand for regional cuisine was illustrated with an annual event that saw more than 90 restaurants across the province celebrate “Dine Alberta” in September. In the AAFRD-run affair, chefs showcased Alberta cuisine in their restaurants, something diners should be enjoying year round, says McGregor. “We should always be asking, ‘is this grown in Alberta?’ It keeps the economy going and supports rural development. The attributes Alberta has – clean air, fresh water, wide open spaces – are conducive to growing world-class food. Why export it all? Why shouldn’t Albertans have the luxury of eating our own wonderful products?”

Brad Lazarenko, chef and owner of Edmonton’s Culina restaurant, admits it is more challenging to source local products, largely because chefs need consistency. The worst thing for a chef, says Lazarenko, is having to substitute a menu item when a supplier backs out, but the business relationships between producers and restaurants are steadily improving.

“It’s still worth it,” says Lazarenko, who adds he doesn’t mind charging more if the price reflects the quality. “When a farmer walks through my door and is excited about what they’ve grown, you forget everything else.”

If Lazarenko consistently uses food from certain producers, he will credit them on the menu; otherwise he makes sure his servers are well-schooled on the items’ origins.

In terms of flavour and taste, there is no comparison between a properly grown tomato picked fresh from an Alberta farm and one that sits in a crate as it is shipped from Florida, says Lazarenko, He can sometimes have spinach or lettuce in his kitchen within an hour of when it was pulled from the ground.

“Aside from superior taste, you are supporting small businesses and the local economy. In general, it’s just good karma.”

If Lazarenko can’t find exactly what he’s looking for, he turns to Lori Menshik at Full Course Strategies. Six years ago, Menshik realized the food industry was missing the connection between the producer and restaurants, so she filled it. Acting as the go-between, Full Course Strategies caters to more than 60 restaurants across the province and will fill such custom orders as nitrate-free bacon or bison pastrami –  all from animals that are naturally raised.

“We don’t have a huge warehouse, but we do have a great network of good farmers who have good products,” says Menshik, who says her business has saved farms from going under by offering a new outlet for their animals. “And consumers are now becoming more concerned – they want food less traveled.”

Linda Baong is happy people are thinking more about where they spend their money. As the owner of Sunridge Greenhouses in Lacombe, Baong and her husband, Fred, are only in their second year of selling vegetables directly to chefs, yet they can barely keep up.

The Baongs used to work with a packaging business that sold their vegetables to a wholesale food company, but the couple found the dropping prices being paid by grocery stores meant they needed to find an alternative market. They started with one restaurant in Ponoka. “The owner told us how awesome our tomatoes were; before he bought them from us, people were always leaving tomatoes on their plates. Now there are never any left behind,” says Linda.

She then sought help from AAFRD and took part in “Look What’s In Your Backyard,” an event designed to connect Alberta chefs, producers and food processors. After a difficult year of phone calls and networking, business is booming. Today, Sunridge Greenhouses’ clients include Red Deer’s Capri Centre, the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald and Culina in Edmonton as well as the Calgary Golf and Country Club.

Aside from many varieties of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers, Sunridge recently tried bok choy at farmers’ markets and it sold like crazy. “If the chefs find out about that, we’re dead,” says Linda, with a laugh. “We won’t be able to keep up.”

Tim Wood joined the regional revolution long before it became trendy. In the 1980s, he and his wife Deborah owned an Edmonton restaurant called the Moveable Feast and they would hit the Strathcona Farmers’ Market every Saturday as well as the local butcher and baker to stock their kitchen. Today, as owner and chef of Pigeon Lake’s Eco Café, Wood incorporates the idea on a much grander scale.

He raises his own ducks, lambs and chickens and turns to local producers to make up the balance of his menu. Wood says at least 80% of his products are locally sourced. But he must still find a balance between serving homegrown dishes and making money in rural Alberta where simple, familiar meals such as hamburgers and pizzas are popular. To appease the restaurant’s many tourists – and Wood’s creative juices – he adds hummus and tabouleh or a lamb satay to mix things up, all while using regional cuisine.

And has that affected the cost of his meals? Not at all, says Wood, who has managed to keep prices below average (a bowl of soup costs $2.95) by using what is available to him. “You learn to get a lot more respect for the farm and for the product and make sure you carry that respect through the whole process and you are proud of what you are serving,” he says.

So, the next time you are dining out at a local restaurant, ask your server where your meal is coming from. If your potatoes are from Ponoka and your chicken is from Cochrane, you might be sampling some of Alberta’s finest regional cuisine. Wild rose soup, anyone?

An Original Endeavour

Jessie Radies doesn’t want to see independent restaurants go the way of independent bookstores or coffee shops, so she is fighting to make sure they not only stick around, but become the first place hungry diners consider. That’s why Radies formed Original Fare (Food and Restaurant Entrepreneurs), a collection of independent Edmonton dining spots that have banded together as one advertising voice.

Radies, who owns the Blue Pear along with her husband Darcy, came up with the idea when she was ready to grow but didn’t have enough money for a marketing blitz. But put 15 restaurants together and she discovered what could happen. Since its inception, the group has been better able to spread the word through ads and postcard campaigns. The concept works, says Radies, because the restaurants, which include sandwich shops and cozy bistros, are not fighting for the same dining experience.