Sunterra’s breakfast sandwich a delicious, made-to-order bargain
Here’s a quick hack for finding lunch in Calgary that’s under $10. It’s called breakfast.
Not that it’s a slam-dunk strategy, not when I’ve recently spent more than $20 twice for a highfalutin Calgary breakfast. But a “breakfast burrito” is generally going to be cheaper than a regular burrito, just because of expectations.
Nowhere is this labelling more apparent than the breakfast sandwich: a layering of egg, melted cheddar and meat on a biscuit. You may have first experienced it as an Egg McMuffin.
A regular lunch sandwich, while generally more substantial, will likely cost you upwards of $12. By comparison, it’s not hard to find a decent, sufficient breakfast sandwich in Calgary for considerably less than $10.
For my penny-pinching money, the best of the bunch for price and quality is Sunterra Market‘s biscuit breakfast sandwich, a hefty concoction featuring a house-made biscuit and cured ham. It’s made to order, meaning I get to watch a chef prepare it in a little sauté pan and slide it onto a plate about three minutes after I order it.
The price: $5.79. Can’t beat that.
Oh, Sunterra does offer some other killer lunch deals that put the lie to my earlier claims. For instance, you can get a prepared, pastrami sandwich on ancient grain bread for $8.50 and a hefty tandoori chicken wrap for $9.29.
The prepared sandwiches and wraps are also a bargain
Sunterra Market 2536 Kensington Road NW and numerous other Calgary locations Daily 8 am-7 pm 403-685-1553
An overflowing tostada for only $5 at Sabores Mexican Cuisine in Calgary Farmers’ Market West
Here’s one way to get lunch for less than $10: Order an appetizer.
It’s obviously not a full meal. But if you’ve got a smaller appetite or are seeking a snack, an appetizer might be just what you’re looking for.
That’s certainly the case when I dig into a scrumptious tostada at Sabores Mexican Cuisine in Calgary Farmers’ Market west location. For only $5, I get a large, crispy corn tortilla loaded with chicken, beans, shredded lettuce, cheese and crema. Throw in some sides of hot sauce and guacamole, and you’ve got a big, open-faced taco.
A bit messy to eat, with plastic knife and fork or your hands, but that’s what napkins are for. Heck, you can order two of these tostadas for a full-sized, $10 lunch.
Sabores has a full range of Mexican dishes
Sabores also offers a short list of Mexican breakfasts for $10 or less: burritos, chilaquiles and huevos revueltos (scrambled eggs with sausage and beans). My lovely, huevos rancheros is a big, soupy plate of over-easy eggs, pureed beans, corn tortillas, side cups of spicy salsa and cooling guacamole, along with corn chips for scooping. Good stuff that won’t break the bank.
There’s two over easy eggs lurking in this $10 huevos rancheros
My only, mild, complaint is the amount of disposable dishes and cutlery. Though that’s true of most food courts.
Sabores Mexican Cuisine Calgary Farmers’ Market West 25 Greenbriar Drive NW Wednesday to Sunday, opens at 9 am, breakfast till 11 am 403-240-9113
In our post-pandemic world, it’s hard to find any Calgary lunch stop offering a worthy meal for less than $10. But here goes, starting with To Me Vietnamese Submarine, a little drive-through kiosk on Calgary’s busy Macleod Trail. In three years, prices have shot up from $6 to $9, but it’s still a bargain for a honking big, scrumptious chicken sate sub, delivered in two minutes and polished off almost as fast in the parking lot.
My new backpacking guidebook, hot off the Amazon press
After six-plus years, several thousand kilometres on foot and countless hours chained to a computer keyboard, I’ve finally finished my latest (last?) guidebook, Best Backpacks in the Canadian Rockies.
Random camping, Stone Mountain Provincial Park, northern B.C.
The book provides all the information you need to plan for and undertake more than 50 gorgeous backpacking trips, mostly in the Canadian Rockies. They range from world-famous classics—like Jasper National Park’s Skyline Trail and Kootenay’s Rockwall—to those no one’s heard of, like southern Alberta’s Cabin Ridge or Banff’s Sawback Range Loop. They range from one-night trips, especially for families and novices, to week-long treks featuring long stretches of trailless travel. They range, geographically, from the Montana border to northern British Columbia, where the Rockies’ peters out.
Window Mountain Lake, High Rock Trail, southern Rockies
So why this book? After completing the summitting of all the 50-plus 11,000-foot peaks in the Canadian Rockies (and writing a history and guidebook of those 11,000ers), I found myself doing more and more backpacking and far less mountaineering. The good news is the backpacks took me through equally spectacular terrain, without the toil and exposure to loose rock and receding glaciers of going up big peaks.
Opal Range Traverse, Kananaskis Country
The other reasons for embracing backpacking are tied to two trends. One is the widespread availability of lightweight gear (tents, sleeping bags, packs… you name it), that sheds some 10 pounds off the load you’re carrying and puts a spring in your step, even on a week-long journey.
The other trend (partly tied to this lightweight revolution), is the booming popularity of long-distance treks like the American Appalachian and Pacific Crest Trails and the Alberta-B.C. Great Divide Trail, which take months to organize and complete. Which got me thinking: Why not divert some of that long-distance focus to the multitude of gorgeous, much shorter trips in our mountain backyards? Especially the many trips that don’t require booking six months in advance; just show up and go.
Monkman Trail, northern B.C.
I’m probably most proud of the routes in this book that are off the beaten path— in places like the southern Rockies, including Alberta’s magnificent Kananaskis Country, and northern B.C.’s Monkman and Stone Mountain Provincial Parks.
Incredible line of hoodoos, Wokkpash Circuit, northern B.C.
Will a more detailed description of such places make them more crowded? Perhaps. But I like to think we need as many enthusiastic backpackers as we can to advocate for preserving these special landscapes.
And I believe some marvelous destinations will never attract much attention. Like an off-piste trip this summer, one valley removed from a popular highway, where we saw one other group in two days.
Panther Lake, Sawback Range Loop, Banff National Park
Best Backpacks in the Canadian Rockies is self-published and is available online through Amazon.ca (paperback) and Kindle, Apple Books and Kobo (all ebooks).
Places that lack the brand-name recognition of much bigger players. Places that might have a few tables/seats or none at all, where delivery or pickup may be your only options. But places that put a premium on quality and freshness, where the “best-before” date is definitely not six vacuum-packed months down the road.
I obviously have a few busy months of sampling ahead of me. But in the meantime, I keep going back to Devil’s Head Coffee, which ticks all my boxes.
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.
Roasted on the 21st, delivered on the 25th
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—a critical consideration given coffee is at its tasting peak for only about a week.
I’ve been to the roastery only once (they have a little coffee bar), which is way down in industrial southeast Calgary. No matter. They deliver to every part of the city at least once a week, and it’s free if your order is $35 or more.
If I time it right, the coffee beans arrive a couple of days after I order them. And yesterday set a record; I ordered in the morning and had a parcel on my doorstep that afternoon. Beat that Amazon!
Like everything, prices have gone up a bit and now stand at about $22 or $23. But that’s for a full pound, not the three quarters or less you often see. So I figure it’s good value, especially considering the free delivery.
A couple of other things I like. If you’re shopping in person, you can bring your own bean containers and receive a discount… and reduce waste. And as a former mountaineer, I appreciate the owners’ (Chris and Tanis) climbing background in the company’s name (a recognizable peak in the Ghost Valley) and the bean offerings.
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
Marathon Mouth 