Openings
- Whyte Avenue restaurant Top One has fully rebranded and reopened as Mr. Bun, offering handmade xiaolong bao, or soup dumplings. Find them at 10828 82 Avenue.
- Slap Shot at 10184 104 Street was short-lived, and has made way for The Tap Room.
Closures
- Take 5, the longstanding doughnut shop in Beverly, is closing on September 22 as the owner is retiring after more than 40 years in business. The shop was listed for sale back in 2020, but unfortunately it looks like there was no uptake.
Local News
- Three Edmonton restaurants made the long list for Air Canada’s 2024 Best New Restaurants: Bar Henry, Bernadette’s, and Little Wolf. In an interview with the list’s “eater-in-chief” Tara O’Brady about her journey across Canada, she confesses that she had never before been to Edmonton: “I’d never been to Edmonton before, and I was really taken by the diversity there. I visited Bar Henry, Bernadette’s and Little Wolf, and each restaurant felt very individual. I’d never confuse one for the other. I am eager to explore more of the food scene.”
- Edify checked out the newly-reopened Atlas Steak + Fish in Ice District, as well as Caspian Kebabs off Whyte Avenue.
- Also from Edify, sober bar co-owner JoAnn Pearce was this week’s guest on the Unfiltered podcast.
- Mother by Chartier will now be the dedicated baker producing Beb’s Bagels.
- Happy seventh birthday to Sugared and Spiced!
- CTV put together a disappointing list of mostly non-local places to find pumpkin spice-inspired goods. A plug for locally-owned Obj3cts Downtown: Mack recently had their pumpkin spice latte and was impressed with their fresh house-made pumpkin syrup.
- Home baker Elora Khanom is representing Edmonton on the latest season of CBC’s The Great Canadian Baking Show.
What I Ate
- I finally made my way to Vagabond Pop-ups (which I wrote about earlier in the summer). The rain on Saturday meant we couldn’t sit on the irresistibly cute back patio, but the food sang regardless. My friend and I loved everything we ate, including the potato rosettes, pizetta, salmon aguachile, and Berkshire pork. There were such a great range of flavours and textures, we were only sad that the pop-up ends in two weeks at the end of September. Get there before it closes!
Potato rosettes
Only Here for the Food 