Dinosaur Provincial Park, near Brooks, Alberta, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site
From a tourist perspective, Brooks is best known for its location on the Trans-Canada Highway, between Calgary and Medicine Hat, and for its proximity to Dinosaur Provincial Park, a World Heritage Site famed for its dinosaur beds and badlands. In recent years, Brooks has grown from a southeast Alberta farm town into a small city (population 14,000), with a considerable workforce from sub-Saharan Africa at a large meatpacking plant. The city’s cuisine has also expanded to include reputable Thai and sushi restaurants.
It’s hard to see the Brooks Hotel front behind this monster sandwich
But I’m in the mood for the old-time hotel bar scene that Alberta’s small towns are famous for. And the Brooks Hotel (“Established since 1909”) doesn’t disappoint. The wood paneling’s dark, the lighting dim, with the only glow coming from a row of automated gambling machines. Early-afternoon patrons are nursing bottles of Bud, Miller and Kokanee and digging into mountainous sandwiches. Which is what I’m here for. The waitress rattles off half a dozen varieties, and I pick a loaded roast beef, stuffed between two ridiculously thick slices of fresh, soft French bread. It’s $6 for a pound of food, $1.25 more if I add soup. While I’m waiting for my takeout, she asks if I want a glass of ice water or soda: “Slice of lime or lemon with that?” Unpretentious, friendly, incredible value and the kind of roast beef sandwich your mother used to make. What’s not to like?
Where’s the roast beef? Buried inside these massive slabs of French bread at the Brooks Hotel
Brooks Hotel
111 1 Street West, Brooks
Daily 10 am-2 am, except 1:30 am Sunday
Billy, I love that you loved it too!! Thanks for asking Carrie to pass this along! Try the turkey sandwich next time you’re down there, it will not disappoint. Mmm – those sandwiches are sooooo good. I need to head down to Brooks soon! Take care, Lisa
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I’d had a sandwich there a number of years ago while updating my Day Trips From Calgary book. Just as good this time around.
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The Brooks Hotel believed in the quality of their sandwiches so much, that they BOUGHT THE BAKERY to keep it going with it was struggling to stay solvent.
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Ummmmm……They shut down the bakery. That’s how much they don’t believe in their sandwiches. They ship in the bread.
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my fav sandwich if i could bribe people to move here just to eat it i would lol something about it just makes it yummy…. w2g brooks …
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great review! any chance we could run this in our local paper?
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Sure. Just let me know when.
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Ok! I’ll pass it along to the editors of The Brooks Bulletin, and if they run it, I’ll let you know the date?
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Ok. Let’s get one thing straight….this unremarkable bit of grocery store sandwich meats placed inbetween two overly large slices of unremarkable bread is NOWHERE near as famous as some people would like you to think it is. Just google it. This is the first hit….and it’s on the third page! Hardly famous. It is all store bought and slappped together by the next bartender the can convice to hire. People think it’s so big, but it’s all bread. Not so smart, those people are. It reminds me of that old Wendy ‘s commmercial, “where’s the beef?”.
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Next time I would definitely recommend hitting Wasana Restaurant, now that’s a small business in Brooks that’s dishing it out!
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I have an ashtray with the phone # as 34. It is a Brooks Hotel ashtray with the name Alf.W . Curran on it. Any info would be great. Thanks.
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