ChowTown.ca
Culinary & Travel Adventures from Calgary and the World
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Blistered, Shattered, and Braided: I Found the Trifecta of Stuffed Fried Dough in Doha The global street food scene is a wonderful, grease-stained map of global human migration, and there is no better proof of that than a certain humble, deep-fried triangle. I have a confessed, borderline-obsessive love for every single iteration of these pocket-sized…
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The Gospel of the Spinning Cone: A Four-Decade Love Affair with the World’s Most Beautiful, Greasy Soul I’ve come to believe that there is a profound truth written in grease on the back of a paper wrapper: people are never more united than when we gather around food. Specifically in this case, staring over a…
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Clam Chowder in a Tuxedo Look, full disclosure, I have a problem. A deep, borderline-pathological obsession with clam chowder (among other things). I’ve chased this particular dragon all over the continent. Sadly, I’ve never actually made it out to New England itself, but I’ve more than made up for it. I’ve burned my tongue on…
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Food, family, and the story of Alberta The Alberta table isn’t just a place to eat; it’s a timeline written in smoke, soil, and survival. My own ancestors didn’t just come to this land; they dug right into it. When the first members of my family arrived, back when this vast expanse was still the…
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Beyond Merely Sustaining Life Let’s be completely forthright with each other. A meal brought to you by a gig worker in compostable containers with plastic cutlery is highly unlikely to ever be memorable in any positive way. Given my current situation, I at least am someone to whom this type of meal is, in point…
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The (possible) Resurrection of a Failed Dish Back in the early 2000s, I threw together a fairly simple dish for my niece and nephew. It was a chaotic, mashup of ingredients. I modified it initially by removing the mushrooms to please the obviously damaged palate of my too-young-to-know-better nephew. Emboldened by the recipe having worked…
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Rebirth of the monster: A 30th anniversary remake After more than a dozen years of radio silence, Chowtown is finally waking up from its self-imposed slumber. And if you’re going to relaunch a foodie passion project after over a decade in the dark, you don’t do it with a whimper. If you’re me -and I…
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The Current Titan of Cowtown Comfort You may know my track record here as regards local creations and modifications to existing culinary transplants. —assuming you’re a former reader. Anyway, over the years, I’ve hunted down, unpacked, rebuilt and posted the absolute best home-cooked ways to enjoy the icons of our city’s culinary history—from the crisp,…
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Banzai Sushi & Teriyaki House (Elbow Drive) Let’s establish the baseline first: this was an Uber Eats dispatch, not an in-house seating. A definitive, final verdict on Banzai Sushi & Teriyaki House requires a chair, a table, and interaction with staff. But as anyone who reads my reviews knows, I don’t pull my punches. Every…
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The Resurrection of the Ultimate Nuts & Bolts It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? A dozen years, actually, since I walked away from the keyboard and let the digital dust settle over Chowtown. Life happened, the internet got weirder, and I stopped updating the site. But some culinary ghosts refuse to stay buried in the…
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As I mentioned in my last post—the first one in a dozen years—I originally planned to jump straight into detailing our travels and food-based adventures just prior to moving to Australia. That saga is coming, I assure you. The stories of those trips, the foods and experiences of moving across the planet are locked, loaded,…
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More than a dozen years. A literal lifetime in the digital realm. The last time this dashboard saw the glow of my monitor, Nancy and I were wrapping up our time living in Australia, tapping out what would be the final posts on Chowtown.ca. Then, the screen went black. We didn’t stop moving; we just…