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

Happy Hour Tacos in Calgary at Native Tongues

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That’s me ordering $1 food-truck tacos near Walla Walla, Washington

In my early days of road-trip dining in the southwest U.S., I’d occasionally stop at a rusty Mexican food truck for a paper plate full of tacos at a picnic table. Little envelopes of goodness, such as grilled pork pastor, often for as little as $1. Four bucks was a big feed, even in U.S. dollars.

Times have certainly changed, with upscale offerings often commanding prices of $5 or more. But I’ve found a way to partly turn back the clock, at Native Tongues Taqueria in Calgary’s Britannia neighbourhood.

It’s called happy hour. Between 2 and 4 pm weekdays, the Mexican restaurant offers its delightful tacos for 25 per cent off. And I must confess, they’re considerably better than any of my bargain tacos of yore.

Fabulous happy-hour tacos at Native Tongues

So on a quiet midday Thursday, I ordered a small meal of three tacos. One was a barria: braised beef in adobo sauce. Two a cochinita pibil: braised pork with achiote and pickled onions. Three, deep-fried haddock with chipotle mayo.

Fabulous, messy stuff, with a cloth napkin to wipe up the spillage. All for the happy-hour price of $12.67.

Native Tongues Taqueria
829 49 Avenue SW and two other Calgary locations
Daiy 11:30 am-10 pm
403-454-8976

Best Vegan Indonesian in Calgary

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Padmanadi co-owner Maya: it’s a family business

Want a unique Calgary dining experience? How about a vegan take on Indonesian cuisine?

That’s what Padmanadi delivers at its immaculate restaurant, in a busy Macleod Trail mall. All its “meats”—chicken, beef, mutton— are plant based. There’s lots of veggies to round out savoury curries, stir fries and stews.

I go for a lunch special ($18), choosing a mildly spicy curry chicken that comes with two spring rolls and a large mounding of rice. While the plant-based “chicken” pieces taste great, it’s the yellow coconut curry that’s the real star, soaked up by all that jasmine rice; for $1, it’s probably worth upgrading to coconut or brown rice.

Vegan “chicken curry lunch special

Co-owner Maya explains that Indonesian food is distinct in, for example, typically not using any onion or garlic. The vegan focus at Padmanadi is not integral to the cuisine but reflects how her family eats.

A spotless place in a busy Macleod Trail mall

And this is certainly a family business, stretching back several generations to Jakarta (her grandmother’s name translates into English as Padmanadi). Maya’s parents opened their first Canadian restaurant, in Edmonton, more than two decades ago, eventually turning it over to her sister and brother-in-law. About a year ago, Maya and her husband traveled south to open the Calgary location.

In a largely carnivorous city, it’s nice to see a fine vegan addition, let alone something this unique.

Padmanadi Vegan Eatery
100, 8835 Macleod Trail SW, Calgary
Daily 11:30 am-9 pm
403-300-2270