Tekarra Lodge Jasper

Unicahome Hits Southern Alberta | Unicaworld Blog

The 400 miles from Missoula, Mont., to the Canadian border is one of the world’s great drives, skirting forested peaks, scenic towns and the perimeter of Glacier National Park. The last stretch, north of St. Mary, Mont., is a culinary wasteland. If you’re lucky, only in summer, for the road is closed after September, you might find a slice of homemade pie at a roadside truck stop.

But then you cross the Canadian border, at a station so underused, you might be the only car in the vicinity, and the July landscape turns into a carpet of gold, from the local mustard growers who have blanketed their fields with mustard plants and flowers. From there, it is only a short hop to Cowtown, Calgary AB, a colossus of a city that I liken to a Texas Metropolis like Dallas or Houston. Oil and gas built this place. Alberta is Canada’s richest province, with enough petroleum to light America’s fires for the next 40 years.

Calgary has a lively food scene; three enclosed Farmer’s Market’s, great ethnic dining, and even an alternative food paper called City Palate. It’s also home to Rouge, one of the country’s best restaurants, good enough to have been singled out as one of the San Pellegrino Top 100 in the World, the only such Canadian restaurant to be included.

Rouge is located in an attractive wooden house, that not surprisingly, is red clapboard. The Executive Chef here, Michael Dekker, is somewhat of a wunderkind. He’s only 29, but he cooks with the confidence of someone much older, and the sophistication of one who has traveled well, and learned quickly.

We sat on the patio, sipping champagne from faraway France in flutes, facing a completely sustainable garden where the restaurant grows much of its produce and fresh herbs, while the July night air turned cool and hospitable.

Dekker plied us with a menu that began with duck prosciutto as a amuse, and continued with a spectacular piece of olive oil poached salmon from neighboring British Columbia, fish hued a deep orange/pink, with an intensely wild flavor that makes Atlantic salmon seem like Spam by comparison.

The second course was called a bison crepe on the menu, but what we got was similar to the Catalan Xmas dish canelons, a word we know as canneloni in English. Bison is a major product in Alberta. It’s lean, healthy and tasty. The dish couldn’t have been better.

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