Calgary’s Best Balkan Bakery: Erina

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Erina Bakery owners Melihate (l) and Milahim

I’ve driven past Erina Bakery countless times without noticing its presence, next to a bottle depot on busy 37 Street in southwest Calgary. I finally pushed open its colourful doors and discovered a world of Balkan baking I didn’t know existed.

How about you? Have you heard of pitalka, Nordic rye or Albanian breads? Didn’t think so. Or burek, a cigar-shaped phyllo pastry filled with your choice of potato, cheese, meat or spinach. It makes a delightful appetizer, with or without a dip.

Burek: a stuffed phyllo pastry

The prices are low, such as $2 for a chewy little pitalka loaf. Slather on a red pepper spread called avjar and you might be transported to Kosovo.

This pitalka loaf would make a huge sandwich

The quality and distinctness of Erina’s baked goods is more than matched by the charming couple, Milahim and Melihate, who opened the bakery some four years ago. Meeting lovely owners like these is the reason I do this blog.

The full Balkan bakery experience

Okay, on with the quiz. Kifle? Gjervrek? Like me, you’ll have to visit to find out.

Erina Bakery
Unit 28, 2835 37 Street SW, Calgary
Daily 9 am-7 pm, except 5 pm closing Sundays
403-686-2900

Best Calgary Ramen: Shiki Menya

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The chili goma ramen at Shiki Menya is as flavourful as it is gorgeous

I hate waiting in line at restaurants. But I’d been warned that if I wanted a celebrated bowl of ramen at Shiki Menya, in Calgary’s Bridgeland neighbourhood, I’d better join the line before the doors opened. Or risk them running out of liquid gold.

So to my surprise, when I showed up in parka at 11 a.m. sharp on a winter weekday, I was the first in the door, with no one behind me. Let me tell you, it was well worth the (non) wait, with the day’s first cauldron of chili goma ramen sliding onto my little table.

To my surprise, the wildly popular restaurant is empty when I arrive

Now, you might consider $22 a tad steep for a bowl of soup. But here’s why you should splurge. The bowl is humongous and gorgeous, brimming with house-made ramen noodles and an artful topping of ground pork wrapped in scallions. The real secret is the sesame, pork-bone (tonkotsu) broth that’s been simmering for 24 hours. It yields a complex, rich broth that rivals just about any soup I’ve had.

Here’s where the magic happens

Shiki Menya can be challenging to get into… and out of. That’s because it’s dine in only, with no takeout containers offered. In a world awash in takeout and delivery, it’s refreshing to read: “For quality reasons, ramen is designed to be enjoyed immediately upon serving.”

These doors can be hard to get in and out of

But lest you think they’re a pretentious lot, the website offers a few reviews, including this: “Food wasn’t what I expected, choice of music is horrible, poor service, can’t split the bill, bathroom music was even worse.”

Shiki Menya
824 1 Avenue NE, Calgary
Monday to Saturday 11 am-3 pm. Closed Sunday
403-454-2722

Best Calgary Coffee Roaster: Devil’s Head Coffee

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Devil’s Head Coffee has a wee coffee bar in front and roasting gear in the back

Devil’s Head Coffee had me (a former mountaineer) as soon as I walked in the door of their little Calgary roastery and saw photos of owners Chris and Tanis climbing rock and ice routes in the Ghost Valley.

But then they checked all the boxes of what I’m looking for in a roaster. First and foremost is the excellent quality of the coffee, featuring a dozen single-origin and custom-blended beans from farms and co-ops around the world. Those beans are small-batch roasted several days a week.

And Devil’s Head does what every coffee roaster should do but usually doesn’t: print the roast date right on the bags. That way you know the coffee is fresh.

The sign of freshness: the roasting date right on the package

So far, I’ve been to the roastery and little coffee bar only twice; they’re located way down in industrial southeast Calgary. No matter. They regularly deliver to every part of the city, and it’s free if your order is $40 or more.

Several times, I’ve ordered in the morning and had a parcel on my doorstep that afternoon. Beat that Amazon!

Devil’s Head Coffee
Bay 5, 5700 Barlow Trail SE, Calgary
Monday to Thursday 9 am-5 pm, Friday 9 am-4 pm. Closed weekends.
403-561-8274

Best Calgary Sandwiches: Scozzafava’s Deli

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Scozzafava Deli’s turkey pesto Italian hoagie: 22 ounces of goodness

Scozzafava’s Deli is the latest volley in the Italian sandwich invasion of Calgary, joining the likes of newcomer Lil’ Black Rooster and longtime stalwarts Peppino Gourmet Foods and Lina’s Italian Market. Italian or not, it immediately jumps to near the front of my Calgary sandwich line.

Owner Nick Scozzafava has created a short list of tightly wrapped Italian hoagies bursting with flavourful goodness. My turkey pesto is an abundance of shaved turkey, fior di latte, arugula, pesto, pepperoncini and aioli, all stuffed inside a sesame seed bun. It weighs in at 22 ounces, enough to satisfy all those young’uns arriving off 17th Avenue for a late-night Peroni and sandwich.

It’s also a late-night 17th Avenue gathering spot

Me? I’ll be curled up at home in a food-induced coma.

Scozzafava’s Deli
1004 17 Avenue SW, Calgary
Tuesday to Sunday, opening at 11 am. Closed Mondays

Best Calgary Eats and Drinks

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Fresh-baked pitas are just the start of the excellent shawarmas at Beirut Street Food

A new year, a new project. Inspired by this resolution: Schedule more spontaneous acts into my day.

The project is to discover and celebrate the best eats and drinks in Calgary. The best burgers, the best croissants, the best coffee roasteries, the best brewpubs, the best Lebanese poutine. It’s a long list.

Sought X Found is arguably Calgary’s best combo roastery and coffee shop

The rules: Calgary-based, independent places, serving up excellent fare. (small, regional chains are okay). Bonus points for interesting, even quirky spaces; hello Cold Garden Brewery! I’ll try to stick to one “best of” pick per category, though there will be instances of runners up and “also recommended”.

Cold Garden is certainly Calgary’s quirkiest, dog friendly brewpub.

Prices. I’ve pledged to banish “cheap eats” from my vocabulary, since they scarcely exist anymore. “Affordable” isn’t much better; affordable for who? I try to steer clear of high-end places but am no doubt fighting a losing battle against $20 breakfasts and $25 burgers and fries.

Subjective as hell? Maybe. I favour IPA beers and darker-roast coffees, which may prejudice some picks. The good news is you can comment here on my choices and offer superior alternatives and maybe gems I’ve never heard of.

There’s enough potential best-of categories to make a weekly pick last a year or two. I’ll try to restrict my posts to a paragraph or two. So let’s dig in.

The world’s best carrots beckon

Every couple of weeks, for the past 15-plus years, I’ve made a pilgrimage to the Calgary Farmers Market to pick up a 10-pound bag of Beck carrots. Yes, I’m seriously addicted to this Innisfail-based (central Alberta) grower’s super sweet Nantes carrots.

Ten pounds of the world’s best carrots

Indeed, I defy you to just eat one. Once you’ve been introduced to Becks, you’ll never go back to grocery store imposters that taste like wood. You can thank me later.

Beck Farms
Available at Calgary Farmers’ Market south (Thursday to Sunday) and west (Wednesday to Sunday) locations, opening at 9 am

Butter Block Delivers a Blockbuster

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A butter croissant and a sweet scone at fabulous Calgary pastry baker Butter Block

I came for a simple butter croissant. I left with so much more.

Butter Block & Co. makes arguably Calgary’s finest butter croissant, albeit with stiff competition from the likes of Manuel Latruwe, Black Sheep and Yann Haute Patisserie. Butter Block certainly delivered, for me, on all that a winning croissant promises: requisite multiple layers of butter-dripping, crispy yet pillowy pastry.

Yet I couldn’t stop at a single croissant, given the creative diversity that beckoned from Butter Block Café’s display case. I tacked on to my plate a lovely, crumbly sweet scone but could only wistfully gaze at the pain au chocolate, an unusual sesame croissant and the pastel de natas (Portuguese custard tarts), which I once swooned over in Lisbon. Future visits are certain.

The display case kept being replenished with fresh, innovative pastries

What knocked Butter Block out of the park for me was a holy grail quest finally answered—an exceptional bakery paired with an excellent coffee shop. Sometimes you get one but rarely both.

Yet in this cozy midtown Calgary café, everyone else was sipping on lovingly produced pour-over coffees. So of course, I added this to my tab and was rewarded with a smooth, earthy brew. It turns out, Butter Block has worked with David Kim in a Calgary roastery called Paradigm Spark.

The pour-over coffee bar. Soon to disappear?

Is all this too good to be true? Perhaps. Paradigm Spark is leaving the location December 31 in search of its own space, with Butter Block stepping in to fill the coffee void. We’ll see how it goes. But before I left, I made sure to snag a bag of Melody beans roasted less than a week ago.

I snagged some fresh-roasted beans while I could

Butter Block was established in 2017 by Karen Kong, a graduate of SAIT’s Baking and Pastry Arts program. The bakery is across the hall from the café, in the historic Devenish building, and it’s where you can pick up frozen croissants, to be baked at home. That’s because the best croissant is one just pulled from the oven.

Butter Block Cafe
Unit 110, 908 17 Avenue SW, Calgary
Weekdays 7:30 am-4 pm, weekends 9 am-4 pm