Why your next foodie trip should be Edmonton

By Jim Byers, Special to Postmedia Network,  First posted: Tuesday, June 20, 2017 10:12 AM EDT | Updated: Tuesday, June 20, 2017 10:31 AM EDT, http://www.torontosun.com/2017...p-should-be-edmonton

EDMONTON - At Rostizado I gobble up roasted cauliflower with garlic and dangerous, deep red chilies. Next door at Baijiu I snack on Chinese sandwiches and outrageously tasty pie. Over at Rge Rd, I wolf down wonderful bison with a side of perogies made with local gouda cheese.

Edmonton has been undergoing tremendous changes the past couple years. The new Rogers Place downtown (and perhaps some of the success of the NHL's Oilers) has sparked a growth in new restaurants and shops in the so-called Ice District and a new vibrancy in the city. 

You can see it in the fancy chocolates at Jacek Chocolate Couture on trendy 104th St. NW, where some of the goodies are hand-painted with earth designs that look like a Chris Hadfield photograph. Next door is Ono Poke, a new restaurant specializing in the Hawaiian marinated seafood dish that’s popping up in hipster neighborhoods all over North America. Across the street is Habitat Etc., which sells cool Edmonton t-shirts, cocktail mixing kits for airplanes and other cool items.

“Hipster scene” isn’t a phrase many folks associate with Edmonton. But it’s there. And the food scene might be the best proof.

“A lot of the focus in the past in Edmonton has been on places like The Keg or Cactus Club,” says Nick Martin, general manager at Rostizado, a Mexican restaurant and roast chicken place in the historic Mercer Building at 104th St. and 104th Ave., right across from Rogers Place. “Those places make good food; don’t get me wrong. But they’re pretty much the same anywhere you go. Now folks are coming downtown and they’re looking for individual restaurants and interesting, new tastes.”

Martin says it’s nice that the restaurants complement each other.

“Baijiu is Asian and more of a late night place than us. Mercer Tavern next door is a great bar. And there’s a lot of camaraderie, too. We (folks from all the various restaurants in the area) were all sitting here having a drink the other night and talking about the city and about food.”

I sip a wonderful cocktail at Baijiu, with rum, aperol, guava and absinthe. And I love the slow-braised cabbage with crunchy, fried garlic and the Chinese bao (soft, fluffy pastry filled with all sorts of goodies, like a smaller, softer taco). But it’s the one-off pie they made with blueberries and local rhubarb that really sets me off; a luscious pastry that chef Alexei Boldireff seemingly whipped up on a whim.

“I spotted a deep-dish pie pan at a thrift store and thought, “Why not,” Boldireff explains. “My girlfriend’s parents had the rhubarb, and I got some blueberries. But we’re an Asian restaurant and I needed an Asian touch, so I added miso.”

It’s not a combination you’d expect, but the mix of sweet and savoury and the fantastic pastry (he said he learned it from a fellow in Edmonton who runs a food truck and that it involves proper folding) make it perhaps the best pie I’ve ever had. The fact it came from a trendy Asian restaurant in Edmonton just adds to the mystery of it.

I’d wanted to try the Brussels sprouts at Baijiu but Boldireff says he didn’t like the quality of what he was being given in late spring of this year, so they were temporarily taken off the menu.

“We were going through a hundred pounds of them a week,” he tells me. “One of the chefs even got a Brussels sprouts tattoo.”

Over at Clementine, on the western edge of downtown Edmonton, I stop for a cocktail. A bartender/mixologist with a perfect beard and a snazzy bow tie is pouring drinks for a couple of a certain age. The husband is asking him for the secret to one of his recipes, which the bartender gladly reveals. 

“But you still have to come back,” he says with a smile. “I need my job.”

It’s not all happening in the downtown core. South of the Old Strathcona District, an upscale, bright and modern building called Ritchie Market features a great coffee shop, the well-regarded Acme butcher shop, a bike store and a brewpub called Biera that features craft beer made right on the spot. 

“It’s a vibrant area with a real cross-section of the city with a lot of artists and professionals,” says Greg Zeschuk, who runs Biera and the Blind Enthusiasm brewery.  “It’s often rated one of the top communities in the country.”

Zeschuk says the coffee shop, Transcend, has been known to train baristas for weeks if not months, making sure they get it just right. They also work directly with coffee growers and engage in fair trade practices. Not only that, a number of Edmonton baristas have won world awards using beans roasted at Transcend.

“Pretty cool for sleepy old Edmonton.”.

Zeschuk says he calls his beer Blind Enthusiasm as he knew almost nothing about the beer-making business prior to making the leap. He worked in a previous life as a medical doctor and in the video game business; not quite the average career path.

The businesses at Ritchie Market could’ve located downtown. But Zeschuk says they stayed in the Ritchie neighborhood “because we want to be a local place that surprises people.”

Part of the site occupied by the market was an old garage. There also was a place that sold stationery and rubber stamps and had a sign on the side of the building saying “Stamp-A-Doodle.”

While Zeschuk knew almost nothing about beer, some of the folks at Hansen Distillery in north Edmonton have a long history of making alcohol.

“The family was moon-shiners way back when as a way to make money and survive the Depression,” says Kris Sustrik, who runs Hansen with his wife, Shayna Hansen. “I learned how to shine from my wife’s grandfather and grandmother. Her grandmother only recently stopped making moonshine.”

Today Hansen makes a nice, smooth vodka and a gin that his wife designed with honey and rhubarb. The whisky has to age a little longer before it can be sold under that label.

Sustrik says all the grain they use comes from just outside Edmonton.

On a more intellectual note, the Art Gallery of Alberta, which looks to me like a swooping Frank Gehry design, has been wowing critics since its opening in the winter of 2010. I was hugely impressed when I was there five or six years ago, and I was equally happy with my visit in May. 

I found cool modern art as well as luscious photographs from legendary Frenchman Henri Cartier-Bresson, and wonderful old photos showing folks gathered at Niagara Falls without a guard rail or wax museum in sight. Some of the more gritty photographs showed an old man in Shanghai covered in soot and a young man from Pennsylvania with a haunting, Grapes-of-Wrath-style look in his eyes. This being Edmonton, they also have an Andy Warhol print of Wayne Gretzky.

The old Royal Alberta Museum , which was located a few minutes from downtown in a parkland setting, is being moved to spacious new quarters new Rogers Place, which should do even more to spark new life in downtown. Likewise, a gleaming new JW Marriott hotel with residential condos– one of the most luxurious models in the Marriott chain – is going up a few meters away.

Most definitely a city on the rise.

JUST THE FACTS

The Union Bank Inn is a lovely, boutique property in downtown Edmonton; a short walk from both the Ice District and Winston Churchill Square, where you’ll find the Art Gallery of Alberta. They deliver wine and cheese to their guests every evening. 

DEAL OF THE WEEK

Sure, it’s almost Canada Day north of the border. But Marriott has Fourth of July specials at hotels across the U.S., including properties in San Diego, New York, Las Vegas and Orlando. 

Jim Byers is a freelance travel writer based in Toronto.

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