Eating Edmonton

April 24th, 2008

You might wonder what a Hertz Rental Car has to do with dinner.

As my train emerged from the Rockies, cell phone service finally kicked in. I called Hertz immediately, to reserve a car at the Edmonton Via station. A woman with a Florida accent confirmed that a rental would be waiting for me there. Not only was her accent odd for northern Alberta. As it turned out, the Hertz location here had been closed for some time, due to renovations. It was late evening. The only rental office open in the entire city was at the airport, a $65 cab ride away, not that the woman in the central leasing office could tell me that.

And though it was the end of April, the weather was behaving like February — minus 10, snowing and blowing like stink, as we used to say on the farm. The weather guy on the radio kept announcing the historical high for the day - plus 26, notched some time back in the 1800s. I used the same expletives for the announcer as I did for Hertz and the woman with the Florida accent.

Then I overheard someone say something about the nearby Chateau Louis having a good breakfast, so I hopped in a cab. The circa 1970 motel was neither a chateau nor was the buffet breakfast any good - unless you enjoy eating at the human equivalent of a feedlot, pounds of tasteless food heaped in a steam-table trough.

I got on the phone to Calgary food writer dee Hobsbawn-Smith. The lower-case all-round foodie, former chef, food columnist and author of Shop Talk, a guide to finding great ingredients around Calgary, knows the desperate voice of a hungry food writer when she hears one. She lets fly with a list of great places to eat in Edmonton: Blue Pear, Normand’s, Wild Tangerine, Culina (“big on local fare, small and funky, one of a kind”).

Then that crazy weather guy came on again, warning folks to stay off the road. The snow was blowing even harder. By noon, I realized I had no time for lunch or dinner in Edmonton, given my next event was south of Calgary, a four-hour drive in clear weather, let alone howling snow. But dee had mentioned the Eco Café at Pigeon Lake, about an hour south of Edmonton, 20 minutes off the highway. It was practically on my way. Chef Tim Wood, she said, sources ingredients from local farms. My kinda place - producers who farm like chefs and chefs who cook like farmers, letting the quality of the harvest lead the dance.

I called, and the waiter rhymed off that day’s lunch specials - a Berkshire pork burger, a game pie with farmed elk, a leek-and-something-else-that-sounded-really-delicious soup. If I timed things right, I could hit the Eco Café for a late lunch, which could double for dinner, since I planned on eating a lot. By nightfall, I would be at the ranch hosting the Alberta launch of my book, with my Diamond Willow Ranchers and River Cafe Chef Scott Pohorelic. Media only event, sorry, but I’ll give you the inside scoop tomorrow.

After securing a Budget rental car, I was off. Outside the city limits, I started noticing an awful lot of tractor trailers, cars and minivans abandoned in ditches. I counted about 30 wayward vehicles when the radio news came on, leading with the story of a farmer who had fallen from the roof of a grain elevator. Snowy roof. Ninety foot fall. Yeah.

I turned down highway 13 for Pigeon Lake. Two kilometers into the 20 kilometre drive, and I had already hit three whiteouts. Though I couldn’t see for about 45 seconds through the whiteouts, the road seemed pretty straight. But the drifts over the road were getting thick. Suddenly driving 20 minutes off the road and back didn’t seem like such a good idea. Even for farmed elk pie.

Back on the highway, I made due with canned pea soup from a truck stop. Then a half hour later, Janet Main, called. She’s Canada’s Erin Brokovitch, one of the Diamond Willow ranchers I wrote about in my book Apples to Oysters. She had bad news, she said. The farmer who had fallen from the grain elevator? He worked with Diamond Willow.