Egg ‘n Bacon Pizza for $9 at Coco Brooks

Calgary, it seems to me, has always been a fairly pricy place to eat out. Even through an oil crash and pandemic, it’s not uncommon to still spend $15 and more for lunch. And while it’s good to support all local restaurants, a lot of people who have lost jobs or are otherwise struggling through this pandemic perhaps can’t afford these prices.

Thus I’m reviving a much-earlier series on cheap eats in Calgary. Specifically, these are restaurants or food counters where you can get a good lunch for $10 or less. A number are places I’ve reviewed before, and even if their prices have inched up in recent years, they still haven’t crossed the magic $10 threshold. Others are new to me but offering great deals.

As always, if you have a favourite cheap eats place or two of your own, let me know through the comments section of this blog.

It’s been at least 15 years since I was introduced to Coco Brooks, in an industrial part of southeast Calgary. They’ve since moved to an airier place nearby.

Coco Brooks is in an industrial district in southeast Calgary

But not much else has changed, especially on the menu: calzones, pasta dishes and a bunch of salads. Nearly everything is under $10.

Through the years, the signature offering has been individual-sized (eight-inch) pizzas, which you can bake at home or buy frozen. But for maximum enjoyment, order them at the counter, grab a seat and wait about 10 minutes for your bubbling-hot box of pizza to arrive.

It’s a little less vibrant during Covid takeout only

There are about two dozen types of pizza on offer, including bacon double cheese, barbecue chicken and pepperoni mushroom. They all start at about $9.

But I always get the same thing: egg ‘n bacon. Sounds weird, right? But it’s a fantastic mixture of scrambled egg, aged cheddar, mozza and smoked bacon. If you didn’t know, you’d swear there was no egg in there, just something light and fluffy. At $9.05, it’s a heck of a deal that I have to be pretty hungry to scarf down in one sitting.

I only seem to visit Coco Brooks about every two years. But I always know what I’m getting.

Coco Brooks
640 42 Avenue SE and two other Calgary locations
Monday to Saturday 9 am-6 pm. Closed Sunday
403-243-2677

The local, independent grocery store, in many places, disappeared long ago. So it’s nice to see a Calgary neighbourhood store, The Bownesian Grocer, in the northwest community of Bowness, thriving amidst a landscape of mega chains.

It succeeds, in large part, by offering lots of organic products from area merchants. Here’s just a short list of such vendors: Valbella sausages, Poplar Bluff Organics, Prairie Mill Bread, prairie girl flowers, Winter’s Turkeys, Onigiri Japan sushi, Gemstone Grass Fed Beef and Rock Ridge Dairy.

Tucked into this fair-sized grocery store is a little hot-lunch counter offering chef-produced meals at bargain prices. The fare the day I visited included a pasta dish and shepherd’s pie.

Yes, the meals were in steamer trays (i.e. not made to order). But that didn’t affect the quality of what I ordered: a big slab of meaty, cheesy lasagna.

I asked for a couple of hefty beef and pork meatballs on the side but ended up with a bonus third one. In all, it fed me lunch and supper for a grand total of $9.

So even if you don’t live in Bowness, this is one neighbourhood grocery store that’s well worth checking out.

The Bownesian Grocer
7948 Bowness Road NW, Calgary
Daily 9 am-9 pm 403-288-2988

Lina’s has long been a standout Italian market in Calgary. The problem is the flagship store on Centre Street North is sufficiently removed from my regular city travel routes to fall off my radar.

That is until a third Calgary outlet, Lina’s Italian Mercato, opened in the Britannia neighbourhood, around the corner from my sister’s place. It’s a modern space with all the gleaming equipment and provisions you’d expect in an upscale Italian market.

But my great discovery was all the delicious fresh and prepared meals you can order, mostly at fantastic prices. Indeed, with a few more visits, it could well become one of my top cheap-eats places in all of Calgary.

How cheap? Consider my first purchase: an eight-inch wild boar bacon, mozza and marinara pizza for only $8. Four thin-crust, slightly spicy slices, nicely blistered after a few minutes in the big, domed oven.

It’s a perfect size for lunch, one of a dozen pizza ensembles on offer, including a breakfast version with a fried egg on top.

My second purchase was an even better steal-of-a-deal: a humungous, made-to-order breakfast sandwich with scrambled egg, porchetta and provolone cheese for only $6. Honestly, it could have satisfied two modest appetites, weighing in at perhaps a pound—though I certainly wasn’t waiting to get home, and put it on the scale, before devouring it.

My third purchase, a slow-roasted Italian porchetta ($10), was a little fatty and the accompanying veggies from a warming tray. It was a reminder that, whenever possible, it’s best to go for made-to-order dishes; they’re fresher and hotter.

But overall, I defy you to find this quality of food at these prices, especially in such a fashionable neighbourhood.

Lina’s Italian Mercato
5108 Elbow Drive SW, Calgary
Daily 10 am-7 pm

The ATCO Blue Flame Kitchen Café in southwest Calgary is one of my favourite eating spaces. I say space, instead of restaurant, because that’s what it is: an architecturally gorgeous building with high, vaulted wood ceilings, tables scattered throughout its 100-metre length and light streaming in the side windows.

It’s a terrific place to just savour a cappuccino by a fireplace on a snowy December day, surrounded by tall Christmas trees. The breakfasts and lunches are also first rate and inexpensive, such as the voluminous steak BLT, a bargain $10 when last offered.

I say all this with more than a pang of nostalgia, because this splendid spot has been closed for more than a year’s worth of pandemic restrictions. Unlike other Calgary restaurants, the cafe didn’t reopen even temporarily, in large part to protect ATCO workers in the attached office buildings.

Well, the good news is the Blue Flame café is once again in operation. True, the splendid space is still closed, but the kitchen is offering takeaway meals from a somewhat different menu.

Here’s how it works. You order and pay online, show up at the appointed hour, announce your arrival by cell phone and then wait a minute or so for someone to emerge from the building and deliver the meal to your vehicle. You then take said meal home, heat and eat. It’s like a meal kit, without all the chopping, sautéing and cleaning. The café also offers delivery within 10 kilometres.

I ordered a $12 vegetarian green Thai curry (heated in a home microwave) and a spicy, hamburger-filled Jamaican patty (a snack-sized $5, heated in the oven). Both were nicely spiced and flavourfully sauced, though the curry’s rice was a little dry.

Larger meals, like braised beef meatballs with pasta ($24 for two-plus) or Peking duck for two ($25), are also available, perhaps chased with a four-pack of local craft beer or bottle of wine.

I certainly miss being inside and chowing down on a fresh sandwich. But for now, this is a pretty good substitute.

ATCO Blue Flame Kitchen Cafe
5302 Forand Street SW, Calgary
Takeaway Hours: Weekdays 9 am-6 pm, Saturday 10 am-6 pm. Closed Sunday

To non-cognoscenti old timers, KFC stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken. But for those in the know, it’s also shorthand for Korean fried chicken, a usually spicy, crunchy take on a classic.

Like the Colonel’s buckets, Korean fried chicken is generally found in fast-food outlets, with the requisite counter orders and plastic furniture. But in the hands of chef Jinhee Lee, northeast Calgary’s Jin Bar definitely takes that concept upscale.

A graduate of Calgary’s SAIT Professional Cooking Program, Lee has earned national renown, winning gold medals at the Canadian Culinary Championships and becoming a finalist on Top Chef Canada.

At Jin Bar, Lee brings those skills to a refined yet comfort-food menu that includes appetizers like sautéed kimchi mac and cheese, crispy chicken skins and braised pork belly tacos. But it’s the fried chicken ($16) that takes centre stage: crispy yet tender boneless thigh marinated for 12 hours. It comes in a variety of flavours and heat, with sauces ranging from sweet and buttery to dragon-breathing hot; my choice was a delightfully savoury Korean chile glaze.

The fried chicken (there’s also a sandwich) shares the spotlight with a short list of Korean-styled, thin-crust pizzas featuring toppings such as beef bulgogi and fried buldak. Bartending guru Christopher Choi rounds things out with an award-winning Caesar and Korean-inspired and ginger-infused cocktails.

Jin Bar is located in Bridgeland’s de Waal Block, a 111-year-old heritage building with red brick walls and an original pressed-tin ceiling. Previous tenants included the celebrated Il Sogno and Whitehall restaurants.

With in-house dining currently verboten because of pandemic measures, I couldn’t treasure eating in this fabulous space. But I was able to step inside and take in the historic architecture while picking up my takeout bag.

I did chow down, however, a couple of hundred feet away in my parked car. There was no way I was waiting till I got home.

Jin Bar
24 4 Street NE, Calgary
Sunday to Thursday 4 pm-9 pm, Friday-Saturday 4 pm-10 pm. Closed Monday
587-349-9008

I’ve eaten a lot of great burritos during my road-food rambles.

The best? Undoubtedly, the family-run La Azteca Tortilleria, in east Los Angeles, with its sublime insertion of a meringue-battered, roasted poblano chile.

There’s a multitude of fine burrito shops in San Francisco’s Mission district, including La Taqueria and Taqueria El Farolito. And I had to track down the so-called California burrito, stuffed with French fries, at San Diego’s La Playa Taco Shop.

But I wasn’t expecting a Calgary spot to be pushing the burrito boundaries. Yet, that’s exactly what they’re doing at Oddball Burrito, in the city’s southwest Marda Loop neighbourhood.

Other than a few sides, Oddball’s menu is strictly devoted to burritos. There are 10 offerings, each an experiment in what you can toss inside a rolled tortilla. A cheeseburger? Why not? Perogies, poutine, mac and cheese? Join the party. Breakfast is even covered with the Loco Moco: fried eggs, grilled spam, ground beef and kimchi mayo… oh, and a side of gravy.

I opt for the Low Country Burrito, boasting the rather unusual combination of jumbo shrimp, Andouille sausage, potatoes, sweet corn, Cajun butter and something called comeback sauce. It’s a holy, two-napkin mess.

The large size is $17 but weighs in at a hefty 1.6 pounds. Half is plenty for a good feed.

It’s going to take me a few trips to work through the menu. Next up is probably the Alabama Picnic Burrito, featuring house-roasted chicken and crinkle fries.

Oddball Burrito is the creation of Tara Barker and Shaun Taylor, who opened last summer after coming to Calgary by way of Kamloops and PEI, where they ran a food truck. It’s another great addition to Marda Loop.

Oddball Burrito
2006 34 Avenue SW, Calgary
noon to 8 pm Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, noon to 9 pm Friday. Closed Monday and Tuesday
2006 34 Avenue SW, Calgary
403-685-1444