When Sal Howell first set eyes on the building that would become her award-winning restaurant in Prince’s Island Park, it didn’t have any exterior walls — the structure was nothing more than a kiosk inside an aging, open-air concession stand where hungry park-goers could grab a hot dog or ice cream cone. Yet somehow Howell, who was only in her early 20s and a rare woman proprietor when she opened River Café in 1991, could picture a vibrant contemporary restaurant compelling enough to lure diners over the footbridge separating it from Calgary’s downtown.
In almost anyone else’s hands, the idea would likely have fizzled out within a couple of years. Calgary is, after all, a car-oriented city full of people who choose restaurants based on their proximity to free parking. But Howell gave diners more than enough reason to make the trek to her urban oasis of thoughtfully prepared seasonal and sustainable food. River Café not only survived, but has now thrived long enough to celebrate its 35th anniversary while still sitting at the top of its game.
“I wanted to create something that was timeless,” Howell says, waving her hand towards the rustic wooden tables, canoes and snowshoes that make up the restaurant’s decor. “This is the artist in me. I wanted the restaurant to grow out of where it is, so it felt like it had and would always belong here.”
Howell and her then-business partners, including the late Witold Twardowski and Teatro’s Dario Berloni, were known as the “Mescalero Group” through their involvement in the 1990s Calgary hotspot. Together they opened about 10 restaurants in the span of just a few years. But River Café was always Howell’s baby, and she eventually took full ownership. She initially ran the restaurant as a seasonal venue — you need walls to serve food through a Calgary winter — but renovated in 1995 to bring River Café to its current state. Guests who look closely will spot the original roof beams of the concession stand, but everything else came from Howell’s ambitious vision.
If River Café’s history is unconventional, its food philosophy has been even more so. It opened in an era marked by steak houses and the rowdiness of Electric Avenue. Restaurants garnering culinary accolades were typically showcasing imported European ingredients and ideas instead of homegrown dishes. Howell, by contrast, took her cues from the slow food movement and early ingredient-driven concepts like Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., and Sooke Harbour House on Vancouver Island. Calgary didn’t have the same access to ingredients as either of those places in 1995, but Howell and her staff sought out local producers to create farm-to-table dishes evoking a taste of place, with a strong emphasis on sustainability.
“We imagined what was raised on the plains and swam in the river,” Howell says. “That set us on a path, to figure that out and unlock it.”
Since Howell is not a chef, she relied on a succession of executive chefs to match the food on the table with her vision for the restaurant. The restaurant’s food program eventually came to include an all-Canadian pantry with things like lemons and olive oil phased out in favour of domestically grown sumac and cold-pressed canola oil. Trout replaced more exotic fish, and bison took on a place of reverence. The names of local farms — places like Highwood Crossing and Broek Pork Acres — appeared on the menu, something many high-end restaurants in Calgary have since adopted.
“To my knowledge, we were the first in our area to do that. It had a huge impact,” says Scott Pohorelic, who was River Café’s executive chef from 2004 to 2010 and is now associate dean of culinary arts at SAIT. “The farms we named on the menus suddenly got way busier at the farmers’ market. It had this snowball effect and helped this community of local suppliers.”
While many long-running local restaurants stay afloat through nostalgic appeal, River Café has managed to stay relevant despite its vintage. Howell’s 1995 design remains unchanged — some of the tables purchased during the open-air days remain — but each executive chef has licence to put their own mark on the restaurant, provided they work within the parameters of the restaurant’s philosophy. River Café has had eight official executive chefs: Dwayne Ennest, Glen Manzer, Pohorelic, Andrew Winfield, Matthias Fong, Ross Bowles, Scott MacKenzie and current chef Kristen Livingston, each building off the work of their predecessor and pushing the restaurant into a new era.
Livingston also serves as executive chef at River Café’s sister restaurant Deane House, and has chefs de cuisine — also women, making for an all-female kitchen leadership team for the first time in the businesses’ history — taking care of the day-to-day when she’s not in house. She takes the River Café house rules seriously, while also using the boundaries as a source of inspiration. Whether it’s winter beets and Vital Green Farms stracciatella with a glaze made from the previous season’s preserved blueberries, or cappelletti with mortadella made with local mangalitsa pork and bison pemmican, each of her dishes is undeniably River Café, yet unlike what her seven predecessors would have presented.
“Being playful, imaginative and having a sense of place are all important to my food, regardless of where I cook,” Livingston says. “But it melds well with what’s happening at River Café.”
Cumulatively, River Café has an allure that couldn’t be created anywhere else: it’s uniquely Calgarian but also unique within Calgary, accounting for its longevity and enduring popularity. Even Howell, who has spent more hours in the restaurant than anyone, says it still has a spellbinding effect on her: “Walking over here melts everything else away. It still has that magic for me.”