Earlier this year, I found myself sitting in a booth in the Fairmont Palliser Hotel’s Hawthorn dining room with my mother and a small group of very pleasant strangers. We drank Caesars and ate ginger beef, talked about the history of the hotel and its importance to the city of Calgary and then walked down Stephen Avenue to a few other restaurants, with additional bites of both food and information to digest — literally and figuratively — at each stop. Even though I’ve lived in Calgary almost my entire life and like to think I know a few things about the city’s food scene, I not only had a delightful time full of laughs and clinking glasses, but also learned new things about the city and its culinary history. Read More