DINING HOT SPOT
New restaurant preserves vintage elements while revamping space for dining hot spot
Palliser’s new restaurant blends old and new
There’s something to be said about faithfully preserving history and paying homage to the past.
But restaurants don’t always age well, and sometimes even an iconic hotel like Calgary’s beloved Fairmont Palliser needs to do a facelift.
While the hotel’s Rimrock Dining Room was fine, it has been decades since the hotel has been considered a hot spot for locals to go eat and drink.
Knowing that the bar for hotel restaurants has risen considerably in recent years, management decided to let the old Rimrock fade away and started dreaming up Hawthorn, the first major new restaurant concept to come to the Palliser in 60 years.
The new 165-seat lounge and restaurant (designed by local FRANK Architecture) is vintage-y with plenty of weathered brass and marble details, and a gorgeous central bar separating the lobby-adjacent lounge from the dining room. Local historians need not fear: the design has preserved Charles Beil’s 1962 mural, the Heraldic Badge and the room’s original fireplace.
While Hawthorn fits in seamlessly with the Palliser’s existing esthetic, the hotel decided to be bold in hiring a dedicated manager and chef to run the restaurant, rather than letting the hotel’s existing executive chef simply absorb Hawthorn into his list of duties.
Dustin Makarenko, who was previously with Calgary’s Vintage group, is Hawthorn’s GM,
and Bern Glatz, whose experience comes from noted kitchens, including Ten Foot Henry, Anju and Una, is the executive chef. Essentially, they’re letting Hawthorn run as an independently minded restaurant to attract customers beyond hotel guests.
“We want to take care of our hotel guests, but the whole drive is to be competitive in Calgary’s downtown,” Makarenko says, adding the approach is to make the dining room approachable and “not too stuffy.”
This shines through strongest in Glatz’s dinner menu, which features “sociable” plates designed to be shared.
There are classics that pay homage to the room, like a shrimp cocktail with lemon ($19) and a hanger steak with frites ($21), as well as more daring dishes like an endive salad with citrus, cilantro and pistachio ($15) and carrots with labneh, gremolata and basil ($9). Glatz also offers up a small selection of larger-format plates to be split among bigger groups, like a roasted chicken with chimichurri ($24) and lamb sirloin with charred onion, mint and pistachio ($39). “The hotel really gave me the freedom to do what I wanted to do with the menu,” Glatz said.
“They wanted it to be a bit of a brasserie, with small plates and share plates. So that’s what I did.”
Like any modern chef in 2019, Glatz works with local producers as much as possible, with Benchmark Beef, Empire Provisions and Lambtastic Farms all on board. This philosophy extends to the restaurant’s beverage program, in addition to a full wine list and selections of topshelf Scotch and cognac, the bar offers an array of local craft beer and has worked with Last Best Brewery to create a house brew called Our Daily Bread (ODB), a sustainable beer that utilizes the kitchen’s leftover bread. This carries over to the cocktail end of the bar too: Eau Claire Distillery created a hawthorn berry gin to be used in the restaurant’s rotating seasonal cocktail list.
Of course, this is still a hotel restaurant, so to accommodate overnight guests and other downtowners, Hawthorn also serves breakfast and lunch and has happy hour and late-night menus. The restaurant is located in the Fairmont Palliser at 133 Ninth Ave. S.W. For reservations and more information, visit hawthorndiningroom.ca or call 403-260-1287.
In local restaurant news: The Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo takes place from April 25 to 28, and the restaurants at the two Hotel Arts locations will be revelling in the citywide celebration of nerdiness. Oxbow, at Hotel Arts Kensington (1126 Memorial Drive N.W.) will be serving a Borg Hash-brown, and Yellow Door Bistro at the original Hotel Arts (119 12th Ave. S.W.) is cooking up a Savoury Death Star Waffle, with sausage mornay and a poached egg with hollandaise. Both dishes will be available for the duration of the expo.
Posto Pizzeria (1014 Eighth St. S.W.) is best known for its delicious thin-crust pies, but on April 25 they’ll be going super deep dish with their Sammy’s Chicago Pizzeria Pop-up menu takeover. For one night only, go in for pizza so thick that you’ll need to eat it with a knife and fork. Reservations can be made at 403-263-4876.
And congratulations to Scott Hergott, executive chef at Sky Bistro in Banff, who won the Banff portion of this year’s Cochon 555 competition that took place at the Banff Springs Hotel on April 6.
Chef Hergott’s six dishes, all crafted from a heritage hog provided by Bear and the Flower Farms, beat out the bites from four other local chefs and ranchers. Hergott will go on to compete at the Cochon 555 Grand Finale in Chicago this fall.