By Lauren Kalinowski
Menus of Downtown Dining Week Here
“Before you learn to cook, you’ve got to learn to eat,” chef Adeino Oliveira of Sabor tells me. Sabor is hosting the kick-off of Downtown Dining Week, and this is the week to eat out in Edmonton. The event starts today, March 12, running to March 23, throughout the Downtown core with over 70 participating restaurants. March is a slow month for dining, typically, so the Downtown Business Association (DBA) created a celebration of eating to bring deals to customers and to give restaurants a chance to invent multi-course meals with discounted or new, experimental menus.
With tariff uncertainty and the rising cost of groceries, it’s an opportunity for Edmontonians to get to know local food for $15 to $65 options. There are lunch, dinner and all day options laid out here. Some of the real bang-for-your-buck meals are cheaper than they’d be to cook at home (I’m looking at you, $50 Atlas Steak + Fish steak dinner).
Our downtown is hurting. I’ve heard it called “dead”, “lifeless”, and “dismal.” We haven’t recovered since the COVID shutdowns. But this is a great opportunity to get out with a whole bunch of other foodies to try something new, or maybe visit an old favourite you haven’t been to in a while. Spring has sprung and there’s green grass poking out, the sun is making downtown feel a little nicer these days.
This year there are 20 new restaurants on the list. “The big dream is that someone is going to try something new and it’s going to become their favourite” Quinn Phillips, Director of Marketing and Communications at the DBA says. A few standouts on the list are Edify’s recently top rated Best New Restaurant, Bernadette’s, and Best Overall, Fu’s Repair Shop.
There are some chains participating from the fine dining side of things like Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, but this is a chance to get to know Edmonton chefs. There are 21 new food and beverage businesses that have opened in the Edmonton core, despite the online narrative that restaurants are closing.
Downtown staples food spots Dalla and Filistix both shut their doors this year. It’s a tough industry with cycles of opening and closing. But, Phillips reminds us, “we also have new restaurants like Lauren Kyle-McDavid’s Bar Trove coming soon.”
“It took five years,” Chef Lino describes his learning process,” and every day felt like the last day. “You’re living on your passion, you want to perform, you want to do it, and every day you wake up and check the bank.” Now he’s over 15 years in and feeding Edmonton consistently delicious old-world Portuguese cuisine.
Sabor’s preview for Downtown Dining Week featured the $65 dinner. I highly recommend the Smoke Scallop Caesar Salad, replacing traditional bacon bits with smoky slices of scallop on the greens. This starter was borne an earlier Downtown Dining Week; they tried it out and customers kept asking for it, so now it’s here to stay. The crispy, salty skin on the Branzino, accompanied by a rich prawn risotto, is a dish that reminds me of sitting by the sea on the Mediterranean coast.
Sabor brings in their fish whole, breaks it down in the back seafood butchery room, and uses all the bits for stock the way the grannies do. No vacuum packed pre-portioned fish here. The Braised Beef Cheek (the sweetest, most tender part of any animal is the cheeks), are fork-tender, rich, melty and matched with “mmmm” inducing mashed potatoes. The Lobster Bisque is incredibly rich and creamy, a little salty for my liking, but I’m there for the sweet morsels of lobster (in my family we call it “candy of the sea”). You can’t go wrong with any of the choices, and enjoying such a meal in the shabby chic industrial converted warehouse space of Sabor will be a memorable night out.
An example of Sabor’s $65 Dinner – all participating restaurants have multi-course meals with options.
1ST COURSE
CHOOSE ONE
SMOKED SCALLOP CAESAR SALAD
Fresh romaine, smoked scallops, house Caesar dressing, croutons, parmesan cheese.
LOBSTER BISQUE
Classic French bisque with cognac and cream.
2ND COURSE
CHOOSE ONE
BRAISED BEEF CHEEK
Hotel potato, Brussels sprouts, red wine jus.
BRANZINO
Fresh European seabass, prawn risotto.
DESSERT
DESSERT
HOUSE CHEESECAKE
Cherries in port.
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