Our new restaurant columnist digs in and dines out
New restaurant in Sheraton Eau Claire aims to become a standalone destination
This is the space where readers are used to seeing John Gilchrist’s byline, but as many of you know, the Herald’s longtime restaurant columnist retired at the end of June. My name is Elizabeth Chorney-Booth and I’ve been trusted with the task of continuing the Herald’s weekly guide through Calgary’s evergrowing community of new and exciting restaurants as well as general food stories. As a lover of food both high and lowbrow and a lifelong Calgarian, I’ve written periodically for the Herald and other local and national publications, am a regular contributor to CBC Radio and also the co-author of the two most recent Best of Bridge cookbooks. I hope you join me as I uncover new and delicious spots in the city and introduce readers to the people who run them.
Traditionally, hotel restaurants are not usually destination points — they exist to feed guests who need something familiartasting after a long day of travel or a quick breakfast at the start of the day. Flower & Wolf, the new dining room in the Sheraton Eau Claire is part of a growing trend toward hotel restaurants that actually appeal to locals who aren’t staying within there — something Calgary has already seen with restaurants like Charcut (in the Le Germain) and Yellow Door Bistro (in Hotel Arts).
Flower & Wolf, which opened in late June, replaces Barclay’s, an older school concept that did the trick but had started to feel stale. After Barclay’s shut its doors in 2016 (leaving the still open — and still popular — Fionn MacCool’s alone in servicing Sheraton guests), hotel management took some time to reimagine what would go in its place. Working with the restaurant group behind the Fox and Fiddle chain of gastropubs and The Fortunate Fox in Toronto’s Kimpton Saint George Hotel, Flower & Wolf was born.
A chic and bright room with sleek and colourful furniture, Flower & Wolf looks and feels like an independent restaurant — something much needed in the Eau Claire area.
“Hotels really need to focus on competing with standalone restaurants,” says Chef Cole Glendinning. “That’s the feel that we wanted to convey — just because we’re located in a hotel doesn’t mean that we aren’t a hot place to be.”
To achieve that standalone feel, Glendinning, an Ontarioborn chef who was most recently at the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto but previously worked in the kitchens of the Fairmont hotels in Banff and Jasper (unbeknownst to most, the Sheraton Eau Claire is operated by Fairmont Hotels), was brought in to oversee the hotel’s restaurant and room service program. He worked in collaboration with the Fox and Fiddle group to come up with a menu that reflects the group’s branding while still staying true to Calgary’s food culture. As a result, the menu is full of local products like Highwood Crossing grains and canola oil, Fairwinds Farm goat cheese, Taber corn and Alberta beef.
Glendinning plans on changing his menu four times a year to reflect the seasons, but current diners can expect fun twists on elevated comfort food, with dishes like a foot-long Wagyu hot dog ($18), asparagus-topped pizzas made with a from-scratch dough that takes 11 days to make ($14), ahi tuna tartare with house-made squid ink crackers ($16) and a long list of dry-aged steaks ($28-$150).
Flower & Wolf ’s kitchen also takes care of the Sheraton Eau Claire’s room service menu. The restaurant is open for (a very tasty) breakfast as well as lunch and dinner and also is home to a gleaming bar that serves a good selection of local beers, Canadian wines and four different kinds of an old-fashioned.
Flower & Wolf is located at 255 Barclay Parade S.W. 403-5176666 or flowerandwolfcalgary.com
For those who prefer to cook at home, British cookbook author Anjum Anand passed through Calgary while on vacation last month to promote her line of Indian meal kits, which are now available at all Calgary Co-op locations. Anand’s Spice Tailor line includes kits to help along “homemade” butter chicken, Delhi black makhni daal, and tikka masala. Each kit includes sauces, spices and, in some, cases lentils or chickpeas and can generally be cooked up in five to 10 minutes.
Anand’s personal mission is to school people on the complexity of flavours and variety of food within the realm of Indian cooking. Her packaged products serve as a gateway to learning the ins and outs of Indian home cooking, as laid out her latest book, I Love India. The book helps budding Indian cooks take their from-scratch cooking beyond easy curries and into the world of Goan pork pies, Bengali fish head rice and sticky saffron dumplings. It’s available at most major booksellers.