You knew just what I was there for...

One of the paradoxes of living a scant 55 minutes from the mountain town of Canmore, Alberta is that one never seems to find the time to just hop in the car and drive to Canmore for "something to do".  Which is a very great pity, I remind myself on my annual chance trip west of Calgary, promising that we really need to do so more often.

In the past, (deservedly or not), the sleepy little town had inherited a reputation for hyper-earnest ecofreakism - the kind in which hemp-wearing vegetarians could find mass solace in shouting down evil commercial ventures on general principles alone, and gather thereafter for a celebratory organic beverage in one of many equally earnest communal tea emporia.  Or, perhaps more irritatingly (especially to inhabitants) being thought of as a distinctly second-class cousin to Banff, aimed squarely at those who, after looking (but not touching) the rich and famous at the Springs, could still maintain the illusion of having "been to Banff and stayed in the Rockies" once returning from the National Park to the motley motels along the Trans Canada highway.

Well, folks, Canmore is all grown up.  Not simply because of a real estate boom beckoning investors from abroad, finding themselves unbelievably lucky to procure, with what buys a one-bedroom flat in London or Zurich, a 4-bedroom alpine mansion on a golf course.  The money helps, obviously - but fancy houses do not entirely a community make.  Walking through the neighborhoods - tastefully hidden from the highway (to the advantage of driver and resident alike), and into town, one gets the undeniable sense that Canmore has looked up from its Cinderellesque lot in life and suddenly realized it is every bit as pretty as the glamour girl next door - and maybe with even more depth and character.  Canmore has become a destination in its own right, with a new confidence in itself that has allowed it to spread its arms magnanimously to welcome not just those select few with an indentical mindset, but a full range of people who share a love of everything that living as part of the mountains means.

And those who'd like to drop in for a visit.

Which is how we five families, all interrelated by marriage and birth, found ourselves wandering last weekend down from our spacious mountain weekend retreat onto main street, downtown Canmore.  With several members of the tribe in the five-and-under age bracket, it was occasionally less of a stroll than a coordinated evacuation (especially when visiting the enormously well-stocked Candy Store), and by midday, left us splitting up into vague family groupings looking for food.

My clan stopped briefly in front of LunaBLUE, before being automatically turned away by the rest of the name - Pasta, Noodles and Grains.  No point taking a celiac sufferer into a pasta place, after all...But then Shauna stopped and, fatefully,  said - "Well, they do have salads..."

We filtered in, eyes adjusting from the brilliant mountain sunshine to a peaceful, jazz-infused cool room - nearly empty but for two guests left over from the lunch rush (since we arrived at about 1:30) - but were instantly greeted by a calm, friendly and completely attentive hostess.  May as well get the completely crucial and inevitable question out of the way first - "We'd like to try your restaurant, but do you have anything that's gluten-free (it's not a fad, it's medically necessary...)"

Well.  Not only are all their salads expressly gluten-free, but the chef is completely and utterly prepared to make any of the pasta dishes on the menu (except of course for the cannelloni and ravioli) with gluten-free pasta!  That settled it.  We were hungry, and to be absolutely safe, the salads sounded good enough to serve as a meal if the pasta was too risky.

We got our menus.  Outside, another subclan of the tribe gathered, reading the chalkboard menu.  Note that each branch of the tribe has at least one, if not two celiac members...so before long, over the span of ten minutes, all 22 members filed in, independently, to the same establishment.  Kudos to whomever is in charge of curb appeal at LunaBLUE - clearly whatever you do works to bring them in.

While sitting and admiring the constellations hand-painted and named around the perimeter of the ceiling, a flicker from the kitchen, behind the respectable wine rack, reveals an actual working forno - king of Italian wood-fired ovens, which makes pizza (and all other dishes) what they were invented to be.  That is a very good sign - as is the earnest, urgent but unconcerned conversation in front of that oven between chef and waitress, thinking quickly about how to feed the second, perhaps wholly unexpected lunch crush of the day.  Did I mention unflappable, friendly and accommodating?  They never wavered once, as family tables inexorably filled.

The menu is brief, and at first glance, spare - until you start reading the details.  There are but six salads - but listen:  The Spinach Salad has warm brie.  And dried cranberries and almonds.  With a blueberry vinaigrette.  It dawns on you that you've probably never had that particular combination in a salad before, and you can practically taste it as you read it.  The Scallop Salad has just three ingredients - but balsamic vinegar on warm scallops nestled in baby spinach greens makes a similar point - this is lunch!  Warm goat cheese, wild salmon fillet, portobello mushrooms, olive oil-red wine and orange-cranberry vinaigrette confidently round out the salad cast - again each one capable of starring in a midday meal.

In fact, we'd very nearly decided that since supper was not far off, these salads would absolutely do the trick - until we were graciously given an extra couple of minutes to browse the rest of the menu.  There are 11 main dish selections to choose from.  Every one comes in two appetite sizes, which is a stroke of simple genius.  Maybe a small version would be just as good as a salad for lunch....let's see... Spaghetti Al Capone, with grilled beef striploin, tomatoes, spinach, garlic, olive oil, and parmesan.

Now stop - if you hadn't read the salad choices first, that description could actually conjure up the usual boring image of barely-chewable noodles piled with bottled red sauce, the odd chunk of beef and a slap of minced garlic from a jar - found on the "Italian" section of gas-station diners across western Canada....

Well, you'd be wrong.  Shauna went no farther.  She was told they had a rice pasta, and she really wanted beef, so that is what she ordered.  What arrived on her plate was so surprisingly and compellingly unexpected - a skewer of the tenderest beef, grilled without sauce or accoutrement other than salt and fresh ground pepper, laid on a bed of perfectly al dente rice fettucine - properly and expertly tossed with a brace of fresh tomato chunks, and olive oil-enrobed and sauteed garlic, all covered with a filigree of fresh, long strands of grated parmigiano reggiano - (the real thing), and spiked with a heady, piney sprig of just-picked rosemary.  Take a giant sniff first - that long, lingering, heady lungful that promises a full commitment to your mouth with every bite.  The meat was tender, succulently juicy, the essence of the pride of Alberta beef.  The pasta was a perfect example of the magic of garlic, tomatoes, olive oil, and cheese.

My conundrum was that I wanted at least three of the remaining 10 choices.  Rae swiftly came to my rescue - she ordered Ravioli Summer.  They stuff the ravioli with sweet, mild butternut squash, paired with ricotta cheese (well, why not, indeed?) and tossed in ginger butter, almonds, onions and - raspberries?  Again, what an inspiration - ricotta with fruit.  Yes, that makes sense.  And butter with ginger?  That makes the butternut squash sing.  The smooth filling, the silky pasta - set off by the crunch of almonds and the tiny burst of raspberry seeds.  Rae said she should have ordered a large portion.

Craig rode to the rescue on the other flank.  A Vancouver man, ordering oven-baked, Asian-glazed Wild Salmon on Fettucine with Shiitake mushrooms?  In Alberta?  Isn't that a bit brave?  "Salmon is easy to do," he said.  "What's hard is to do salmon well!"   His verdict?  This was some of the best salmon he ever ate.  I got a bite.  I agree, though you should value the opinion of a person from the coast more than mine.

So far, the choices hadn't strayed much from my preconceived notion that this "pasta place" was by definition Italian, or at least Italian fusion.  But wait a minute - nobody made that claim, not on the door nor the menu.  In fact, scanning the rest of the entrees shows a remarkable appreciation and respect for other noodles and grains.  By the time the hostess came back for our order, I was thinking about some Spanish complaints about what I was about to order - a Couscous Paella.  Paella is rice, religiously and often fanatically prepared by men of that country in a certain, time-honoured and inviolable way.  Could you really replace rice with couscous, and get away with it?  What the heck - this is Canmore, not Barcelona.  I ordered it, because I wanted chorizo, and mussels, and shrimp.  I didn't realize that it also came with the freshest baby broccoli and carrots, tender chicken breast, and - saffron.  Real saffron, tiny threads of pure culinary gold suffusing perfect little pasta spheres of couscous.  The mussels were big, and juicy, and as fresh as if they were pulled from the ocean that morning.  The chorizo, with a bang of proper spice, is made right in Canmore, they said, by Valhalla meats.  Perfect.  Everything - the shrimp, the chicken, the vegetables - all were perfectly cooked.  Which means that chef back there, making not just my dish but 21 others simultaneously, knew exactly when to slide each one into the mix to guarantee complete harmony on my plate.

Alanna, whose baby does not yet care for tomatoes or cheese while gaining sustenance from Mommy, was very, very happy to find a Pad Thai on the menu.  I silently figured this would be the acid test - could this place treat that diversity of noodles with the respect they all deserve?  In a word, yes.  The fish sauce underpinning the the chicken, the cilantro, the freshly-crushed peanuts, and the magnificent slippery pad thai noodles...I have not had anything better in any of the good Thai places I have had the good fortune to try.

They have other things - including that great forno-fired pizza, and simple but incredible desserts - which I will try next time.  Before next year, I promise....

LunaBLUE was the icing on the cake for a great Saturday in Canmore.  Family whom you love, but don't get to see nearly often enough, a walk in the mountain air, deer grazing by the back step, and to top it off, finding a place where the people once again so obviously and lovingly care about the food they've found, who've listened to what it taught them, and faithfully shared it perfectly with every guest, whether resident or daytripping tourist.  If you want a one-hour glimpse into the heart and soul of the new and beautiful Canmore, stop into LunaBLUE.  She won't leave you standing alone....

The Next Contestant on "The Rice is Right!"....

Fast food.  In North America, that innocent term has become synonymous with 'fat food', and in much of Europe, it's even worse.  In France, micro-farmer purveyors of spring lamb and fine herbs have, with artisanal cheesemakers and patissiers alongside, taken up arms and Molotov cocktails to underline their opinion that the Golden Arches are nothing less than a mortal threat to nutrition, tradition, and all that has gone into thousands of years of painstaking evolution of everything that is good about food.

Whether you agree or not is the subject for a different forum.  But it does leave one with an interesting conundrum.  Why is it, that when you are on the run - either "starving" after school, or between business meetings, or on the highway between home and vacation, that the choices most often on offer for instant gratification are overwhelmingly bad for us?  Whether it's "Pizza Pockets", or fried chicken (with biscuits AND gravy!!) or burgers featuring three full breakfasts' worth of bacon - all are keenly (and intelligently) targeted towards the most primal and base of human taste cravings - sugar, salt, and fat.  We love it.  All of us do, because we let ourselves love it as if it's hardwired into our DNA.  Maybe it is. Last week's "Maclean's" magazine carried an article which noted that even the new "fruity, healthy" smoothies offered at Tim Horton's each contain more sugar than any of their donuts do.  Bottom line - it's way easier, and faster, and less of a hassle than detouring to find a Safeway to build your own salad, or stopping to sit down and eat in a place that cares enough about food to take the time to make it right....

Lately, there have been some halfhearted efforts to capture that portion of the market which is perhaps tired of yet another flabbyburger - pretty well every gas station now carries a cooler full of at least some variety of sandwiches and the occasional fruit, chef's salad, or vegetable tray.  I don't know about you - but somehow, gas station food does not scream "fresh and nutritious" at me just yet.

Along with having the great good fortune of traveling to a number of other countries, I'm a great fan of TV like "The Amazing Race", "No Reservations" and other excellent programs about food in other places.  It struck me the other day, while watching a bunch of reality show teams having to deliver lunches to shipyard demolition guys in India, that pretty well everyone on the job in India gets lunch this way at least once or twice a week, if not every day.  Every bit of food in that little round "tiffin" tin, often stacked fifteen or twenty high on the front, sides and back of some intrepid courier's bike, is home-cooked in thousands of little kitchens across India's big cities.  They don't settle for anything less - fast food based on quality.

And today, when visiting the Calgary Chapter of the Canadian Celiac Association's annual Celiac Market, I remembered something else.  Among the pretty amazing array of vendor tables set up in the hotel's ballroom, (serving delectable pastas, great chewy cookies, deep, dark brownies, pizza with artichokes...you name it, it was all GOOD, and all safe), there was one table with a nearly zen-like simplicity about it.  Three perfect triangles of shiny greeny-black, set in serried array on a pure white tabletop.

Welcome to the Onigiri Company.  Onigiri.  Now that brought back some excellent memories, particularly related to tearing around Japan on a hectic business mission fifteen years ago.  Onigiri - which literally means "taking something into your hands" is an astonishingly simple yet amazing blend of the essential flavors that have made Japanese food popular all over the world.  It's basically a ball of rice, with a highly tasty filling in the middle, all wrapped up expertly in a sheet of crisp, ethereal sheet of dried nori (extremely flavorful edible seaweed - the kind you find in sushi emporia worldwide).  Onigiri is the ultimate in fast food - something you can literally grab one or two of, and eat with one hand while steering or texting with the other.

The Onigiri Company's founders had also wandered around Japan, and thank goodness something clicked - "we gotta bring this back to Canada".  A couple of hurdles, though - Onigiri was originally designed to be made and eaten pretty much on the spot.  If you leave nori wrapped around rice too long, it absorbs moisture and takes on an insistent quality of really sticking to things it touches - like fingertips.  On the upside, that's an excellent indication of how fresh your onigiri is - if the nori is still dry, it was made mere minutes ago.

Leave it to the Japanese to apply some unique technologies to solve the nori problem.  They made machines that turned out perfect triangles of rice, with a handy hole in the middle in which the fillings were deposited.  Then, they made a machine that actually wrapped the dry nori in a plastic film, and from the land of folded paper cranes, literally origami'd that film around the rice.  The resulting culinary triumph?  Well, I picked up one of the little packages - about the size of half a small sandwich - and read steps one, two and three - zip down the tab, then pull on both ends.  Voila - like magic, the nori shrugs itself free from the wrapper, and somehow wraps itself completely around the rice, leaving you a nice smooth and dry surface to hold while taking your bites.

Nifty, indeed.  But next came the cardinal test.  I don't really care what fillings are put into Onigiri - and in fact, one of the more popular ones in Hawaii includes Spam (!) - but the key for me (and what separates the men from the boys in mass-produced sushi) is - "how's the rice?"

This rice was perfect.  No faint crunchiness, no overly sticky glop, no crumbly disintegration.  It should be noted - this is not sushi rice, which is lightly and sweetly vinegared.  Nothing but salt flavors this rice, which makes it all the more effective in making it willing to blend with a whole host of fillings.  The texture and taste are everything they're supposed to be - savory and smooth.

And the fillings?  Well, the Onigiri Company folks have wisely chosen to jump into North America with stuff we have already eaten, mixed together in interesting and satisfying ways that let you decide, after all, that you could definitely eat this again.  And maybe more than once a week.  Mine today was Yam and Salmon - something I have never paired before, but will definitely find a way to do again, by the way.  Their website explains the three "fusion tastes" they've decided to offer:

Yam n’ Salmon: Baked wild salmon, caramelized yam, fresh ginger, sweet soy sauce, white rice.
Dilly Tuna: Spicy wasabi mayonnaise, garlic dill pickles, flaky yellowfin tuna, white rice.
Sesame Veg: Crisp carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, sweet and spicy sesame marinade, brown rice.

Fusion, shmusion.  That tasted like Japan to me!  The snap of the nori, the slip of the rice, the burst of the ginger and soy sauce against the fresh wildness of the fish....  Who needs a donut!  Who needs fries drowned in gravy!  Like the little paper crane - it isn't really necessary to make a quick meal lovely, but it's lovely precisely because it isn't really necessary.

Remember the days when sushi was something that only crazy people with a culinary deathwish would try?  Have a look around Vancouver, or Calgary or Toronto these days - there's a sushi place virtually on every block now.  It's in our mall food courts too, and the Co-op Stores in Calgary have employees making it on the fly right in the store - it's become mainstream.  So you might still think seaweed is too far out there.  Maybe for some, but you know, all it takes is a few folks who will pick up the triangle, unwrap that magical origami which rewraps itself, and take a big bite.    The Onigiri Company proprietors told me today that they hope to have gas stations here - just like in Japan - have these babies in their coolers alongside the hoagies and fruit cups someday very soon.  I hungrily await the day.

They haven't been here very long - less than a month, I think.  But they will be at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival this year, and in Calgary, you can get your hands on their Onigiri at Amaranth Foods in the city's northwest.  Go get some, if you can.  Yes, they're gluten free, too.  Go check out their website for more information - at www.theonigiricompany.com.