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Ryuko Rocks

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At Ryuko, fabulous lunchtime Japanese spread for only $18

I’ve never been a big fan of sushi, largely because of the cost and the quality. Well, I’ve found a newish Japanese restaurant in southwest Calgary that blows this argument out of the water. Indeed, a recent meal at Ryuko, in Christie Park, is arguably my best lunch deal and experience of the year to date.

It starts when I walk down the long corridor of this tres-elegante space, with soft jazz creating a calm that belies the bustling staff and steadily arriving customers. I grab a counter seat where I can watch three chefs wielding sharp knives and one using a blow torch to blister a sushi roll.

A quiet, elegant spot for lunch

But the highlight is the arrival of a lunch-set special that Ryuko offers from Monday to Thursday. I choose a sushi menu that, for the criminally low price of $18, delivers me the following: four pieces of nigiri (including yellow fin and B.C. salmon), four pieces of California roll, a warm bowl of miso soup and several pieces of yam tempura. I splurge with a large pot of excellent roasted green tea ($5). Bliss.

Wielding a blow torch just one of a chef’s skills

Beyond the lunch specials is an expansive menu ranging from a 48-hour ramen broth to bibimbap bowls, the latter reflecting the owners’ Korean roots. Of course, there’s plenty of nigiri and sashimi choices, starting at $3.50 a piece and extending to premium fish flown in from Japan and then cured and aged inhouse. Note: nigiri is fish and rice, sashimi just fish.

I’ll be back soon, perhaps to check out other set-lunch menus like udon and katsu.

Ryuko
3150, 40 Christie Park View SW and one other Calgary location
Lunch-set hours Monday to Thursday noon-5 pm
403-991-3208

Calgary’s Creme Cream Puffs Blows Up on TikTok

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Sublime cream puffs at Creme

There’s nothing like TikTok to turbocharge the marketing of a wee Calgary bakery. That’s what Crème Cream Puffs owner Carly Hamilton recently discovered when she posted a video of her little industrial-area shop, just off Macleod Trail.

Two weeks later, sales of her inspired cream puffs and macarons had increased 600 per cent, with 105,000 likes and counting. That’s what the kids call going viral or blowing up.

Of course, I had to hustle down to snag some celebrated cream puffs before they sold out for the day. Luckily, I was in time to grab a six-pack box featuring the following flavours: best-selling crème brulee, salted caramel, blackberry mascarpone and chocolate egg cream. I didn’t realize I could be a cream puff fan till that first blissful bite through burnt sugar and vanilla cream.

The macarons are damn good, too

Also as they say, Crème was an overnight success six years in the making. After writing a food blog in Hong Kong, Carly studied at London’s Le Cordon Bleu and worked in a Michelin-star restaurant before returning home to Calgary.

There, she played with cream puff recipes in her parent’s kitchen, testing her product on friends and relatives before graduating to online and restaurant sales. Eighteen months ago, she expanded to a commercial kitchen and walk-up retail sales.

Hitting the jackpot on TikTok is great but only if the underlying product justifies all the acclaim. So how does Carly and her burgeoning crew maintain the chef standards?

It starts with handmake choux dough, topped with crunchy, cookie-like cracquelin and filled with small-batch pasty creams, citrus curds and esoteric things like marshmallow fluff and carrot cake crumble.

A bustling kitchen just off Macleod Trail

Crème’s cream puff menu changes every month, all the better to prompt repeated visits. Just don’t arrive late in the afternoon, when the display cases may well be empty.

Creme Cream Puffs
Unit 2, 5524 1A Street SW, Calgary
Online orders and walk-in sales Wednesday to Friday 10 am-4 pm and Saturday 10 am-3 pm. Closed Sunday to Tuesday
587-429-5846

Hungry Thaiger is a Thai Ghost Kitchen Winner

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Hungry Thaiger is a fabulous family-run Thai ghost kitchen in southwest Calgary

I’m a sucker for ghost kitchens, pop-up restaurants, micro bakeries and pretty much any home-based food joints. Why? It’s largely because I’ve dispensed with the middleperson and am directly dealing, and chatting, with the owner, who is often the cook. In a lot of cases, I’m picking up the meal at the proprietor’s home or little place of business.

So when I hear about Hungry Thaiger, I hustle down to the Oakridge Community Centre in Calgary’s southwest. That’s where they run a second-floor ghost kitchen, preparing delicious Thai meals for pickup and delivery. It’s a wife-and-husband operation, with Bangkok-raised Somp tending a line of smoking-hot woks and Saskatoon-born Travis assembling everything else.

From this compact commercial kitchen, they produce a plethora of Thai curries, stir-fries and noodle dishes, some 25 in all. These range from the familiar green curries and tom yum soups to the lesser-known bird’s nest noodles.

Directions to Hungry Thaiger’s upstairs kitchen in the Oakridge Community Centre

For a first visit, I stick to the conventional pad Thai. Technically, I’m here for takeout, but I never make it past my parked car, wolfing down the steaming meal with a plastic fork. It’s fabulous stuff, a bargain $17 for the quantity and quality.

Fabulous pad Thai

Hungry Thaiger has been operating in this leafy neighbourhood for about a year, with area residents Somp and Travis hoping it’s a steppingstone to a conventional restaurant nearby. Me, I kinda hope they don’t give up the ghost.

Travis and mother assembling my steaming meal

Hungry Thaiger
9504 Oakfield Drive SW, Calgary (upstairs Oakridge Community Centre)
Wednesday to Friday and Sunday 4-8 pm
587-229-8386

Late-Night Yemeni Coffeehouse a Unique Experience

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10:30 pm and Qamaria Yemeni Coffee is just starting to fill up

It’s 10:30 at night, and I should be tucked in bed. I’m also 10-plus hours beyond my usual last caffeine hit of the day. Yet here I am, about to order a high-dose coffee and, what the hell, a sugar blast of cake.

Welcome to Qamaria, Calgary’s first entry into the late-night Yemeni coffeehouse craze sweeping the U.S. Here, people often arrive around 10 pm and eat, drink and socialize till 1 or 2 am… or until they get kicked out.

Qamaria is a spacious space in Calgary’s Beltline

And there’s not a drop of alcohol to be found. Instead, the drinks of choice are spicy coffees and teas, consumed alongside desserts. Indeed, these Yemeni coffeehouses are designed as a liquor-free, late-night alternative for Muslims, particularly during Ramadan, when they fast from dawn to dusk.

Rose tres leche cake and pistachio latte

Qamaria is the first Canadian location of a U.S.-based franchise of the same name, started by two Yemeni entrepreneurs. The café’s coffee beans are sourced from small farms in Yemen, which boasts a 500-year history of producing and drinking coffee, beginning with Sufi monks seeking a stimulant.

A Turkish coffee for a late-night jolt

So, too, are the throngs of predominantly young Muslim women who, close to midnight, have filled every table in spacious Qamaria, many commemorating the moment with phone photos. It’s a vibrant, joyous mood, unlike anything I’ve experienced in a typical coffeehouse.

The pistachio latte and rose tres leche cake are delightful. But it’s the late-night people watching that makes this my best culinary visit of the year.

Qamaria Yemeni Coffee
1441 17 Avenue SW, Calgary
Open till 11 pm Monday to Thursday and 1 am Friday and Saturday
403-454-4123

Buchanan’s Still Calgary’s Best Burger

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It doesn’t get any better than Buchanan’s sirloin burger

A $25 burger? No thanks. Unless the same excellent burger and fries can be had for a happy-hour deal of $15. Then sign me up.

Especially if it’s Buchanan’s famed charbroiled Angus sirloin bacon cheeseburger. It was arguably the city’s finest deluxe burger when the elegant chop house and whisky bar opened on the edge of downtown Calgary in 1988. And I see no reason for family-owned Buchanan’s to relinquish that title more than 35 years later.

Buchanan’s is an edge-of-downtown Calgary mainstay

What seals the deal for me is when my server asks how I’d like my burger cooked, from rare to well done; Medium rare, please! It’s been many years since I was offered that choice in germ-conscious Canada.

While Buchanan’s has built its reputation on its beef and extensive lists of Scotch and wine, it’s the succulent burger and a pint of house ale that keeps bringing me back.

Buchanan’s Chop House & Whisky Bar
738 3 Avenue SW, Calgary
Weekdays 11 am-11 pm, Saturday 5 pm-11 pm. Happy hour 3 pm-6 pm
403-261-4646

Best Indian Food in Calgary: Deepak’s Dhaba

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Chef Deepak welcomes me to his outstanding Indian restaurant in north-centre Calgary

Gotta say, Deepak’s Dhaba blew me away. Everything about my recent lunch at this Indian restaurant was exceptional. Indeed, if I include a delightful chat with chef/owner Deepak Singh Kalsi, it’s arguably my best Calgary dining experience thus far in a busy 2025.

Yes, Deepak’s Dhaba offers standard roadside Indian dishes such as butter chicken and beef vindaloo. But in search of something unfamiliar, I opt for dhal Makhani ($14), a substantial vegetarian curry featuring black lentils simmered in a flavourful tomato sauce with fresh-ground spices and hints of cardamom and fenugreek.

Big bowl of black lentil dhal with garlic naan and masala chai

I order two big slabs of excellent butter garlic naan ($3.50), blistered in a tandoor oven, to soak up all the curry goodness. Plus two cups of lovely masala chai to wash everything down. I even find room for an superb, crispy veggie samosa ($2).

A superb, crispy veggie samosa

In all, a substantial, first-rate, scratch-made meal at a most reasonable price.

The stand-alone restaurant is on Calgary’s Centre Street North

Note: Deepak also offers food-court meals at the Crossroads and Calgary Farmers’ (west) markets. Some dishes are only available as frozen takeout.

Deepak’s Dhaba
1032 Centre Street North and two Calgary farmers’ market food courts
Tuesday to Friday 2 pm-10 pm, weekends opens at 11 am. Closed Monday
825-413-2222