The Caesar: raising a glass to Canada’s favourite cocktail
Calgary was the unlikely birthplace of a drink that mixes tomato juice with clam broth
In a city best known for cowboys, landlocked Calgary seems an unlikely birthplace for Canada’s national cocktail: the Caesar.
Tomato-juice-based with the key addition of clam juice, it balances sweet, salty, sour, spicy and bitter notes so well that 400 million Caesars are consumed annually in Canada alone (that’s 10.5 per capita).
Different origin stories for the Caesar circulate, but most agree Walter Chell played a central role in its development and its final iteration happened in Calgary.
In 1969, Chell was the manager for the former Calgary Inn (now the Calgary Westin). Some say he was asked to create a signature drink to celebrate the hotel’s new Italian restaurant. An Italian, Chell drew inspiration from one of his favourite dishes, spaghetti alle vongole (spaghetti with clams), and experimented with tomato juice, clam broth, vodka, Worcestershire, hot sauce and spices to create the new cocktail.
Rachel Drinkle, organiser of YYCaesarFest (YYC is Calgary’s airport code), offers a different origin story. “Actually, he was making spaghetti alle vongole in the kitchen, but the sauce was too thin and couldn’t be saved so he brought it out to the bar to see what he could do with it there.”
Regardless of the version you believe, the creativity that fuelled the drink’s conception is undeniable. And Calgarians continue to reinvent this beloved cocktail with increasing whimsy and virtuosity, which is why Drinkle created this two-day festival (taking place this year on May 19-20) celebrating the Caesar cocktail.
Forty local restaurants, pubs and distilleries are taking part in this inaugural celebration, overlapping National Caesar Day (the Thursday before the long weekend in May), which was declared in 2009 to commemorate the cocktail’s 40th anniversary.
Drinkle rattles off Calgary establishments that offer Caesar flights, Caesar trolleys (old-school dim sum-style) and even DIY build-your-own Caesar bars.
At Cleaver, the Caesar Stack (C$25/HK$151) is so stacked that the cocktail is listed on the food menu, not the drinks menu. It’s top-heavy with fried chicken, jalapeño waffle, jalapeño corn dog, beef slider and house bacon, all made fresh in-house.
Each “garnish” is made to order in such precise detail that proprietor Barbara Spain secretly wishes people would stop asking for this labour-intensive cocktail. But it’s a fan favourite. The Caesar is bright and acidic with a hefty kick to it thanks to the addition of horseradish and sambal, and lighter than most others in town.
There is one highly contentious point that divides all Caesar enthusiasts: which Caesar mix to use? The two main tomato and clam juice mixers are Mott’s Clamato and Walter Craft Caesar Mix (named after Walter Chell). Clamato is thinner in texture and brighter in taste, whereas Walter is more “authentic” to the origin story in that it’s richer in tomato flavour, thicker in texture and seasoned with oregano.
No matter how you prefer your Caesar – stacked, pickly, zeroproof or classic – it’s a taste of Calgary, any way you serve it.