Sunday, Yummy Sunday: Brava Bistro

On the first Sunday of any given month, you’ll likely find us tucked into our regular corner table at Brava Bistro. We’ll be enjoying “Sunday Supper” with a couple of friends, a tradition that now spans a few years. Other Sunday Supper regulars will wave as they pass by on the way to their usual tables, the servers will joke with the assembled masses and the food will come out hot and friendly. It’s Sunday Supper, after all, and it’s all about friends, family and a fine feed.

Sunday Supper at Brava revolves around a three-course, prix fixe menu that has two or three choices in each course. It features hearty dishes that the staff enjoys preparing and that fit with the theme of a Sunday Supper. It often includes ingredients that are fresh from the market that day. It’s nothing prissy, nothing overly fussified. Just good food, well prepared, at a decent price ($32).

Brava initiated these suppers back in 2005 as a way both to generate more business on a Sunday night and to allow its kitchen staff to play with their food a bit. It adopted the French bistro prix fixe tone and slowly built a following. Seeing Brava’s success, a number of other restaurants in Calgary have since developed their own Sunday-night options or prix fixe menus on other evenings.

We like the casual tone of Sunday Supper at Brava, but it’s far from the only thing that happens there. It’s only one night a month, after all. At lunchtime, Brava does a contemporary bistro menu of vodka-prawn penne, lamb burgers, bacon and-avocado salad and a braised pork-and-bean dish. The top price? Sixteen bucks. More good food and good prices.

The menu broadens out at dinner, with crispy chicken, lamb shank and beef tenderloin dishes, but many of the lunch items reappear, too. Not that executive chef Kevin Turner, sous chef Eben Brummitt and the kitchen gang are short on ideas. It’s just that some of the dishes are so popular regulars demand them, well, regularly. The lobster gnocchi, for example, with peas and carrots and chunks of lobster in a butter sauce. (Mighty fine.) We’d raise a riot if it weren’t on the menu night and day — and there’d be no shortage of volunteers to join us.

That’s what happens over time. Do a good Caesar salad or lobster poutine or warm gingerbread cake (oh yeah, warm gingerbread), and people will beat a path to your door. So for a decade now (it opened in June 1999), Brava has been building a loyal following for its food.

And also for its wine. While the talented Turner presides in the kitchen, the inimitable G.M. Dewey Noordhof — just call him Dewey and he’s happy — digs up wine finds. Brava will usually have about 30 wines open for tastes by the glass, plus 100 more bottles on the list. Anticipating the wine-bar buzz years before it became full-blown, Brava was built around a long bar that’s perfect for the see-and-be-seen, wine-by-the-glass crowd.

And for those who prefer not to be seen, there are some cozy booths and a few discreet tables. There’s also a long banquette for groups and one of the more lively patios in the city.

But since it hedges onto a particularly busy stretch of 17th Avenue S.W., Brava’s patio is for those who like a little — or a lot — of action with their meal. And noise. It seems to be a popular place for the lightly mufflered biker crowd.

Inside, Brava remains a buzz of conversation and laughter mingled with an eclectic soundtrack. The lighting is subtle, the artwork contemporary and the dress stylishly casual.

It’s the perfect home for Turner’s cooking. A local lad who trained in the San Francisco Bay area at places such as the California Culinary Academy and Chez Panisse, Turner
adheres to the local-seasonal mantra of the Slow Food movement.

He hits the farmers’ markets, often with preschool daughters Berkeley and Cassidy in tow, selecting the freshest and most sustainable ingredients for his dishes.

His style fuses the traditions of the French bistro with contemporary California cuisine and a healthy dose of Alberta home cooking thrown in. So lobster gnocchi followed by braised pork and beans and then warm gingerbread isn’t a far stretch.

In fact, that sounds like a fine combo for a Sunday Supper trifecta. We wonder if they take suggestions?

Brava Bistro is located at 723 17 Ave. S.W., 403-228-1854.

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