Cowboys in Calgary

What's happening? Have you ever been here? No, because I'm showing you for the first time. This is beauty. Have you ever seen a beauty like this before? No, it's like looking into your mother's eyes for the first time when you were born. You don't remember that I. I'm reminding you of true beauty, you're welcome. Hi, I'm Madi, I'm a chef in Toronto and I'll be crossing Canada. Featuring chefs, foragers, farmers and all sorts of other food industry stars, come with me on this magical journey. To see all the wonderful things Canada has to offer, I'm going to cook with the people I know, so check it out and enjoy.

This is keeping a Canada just outside of Calgary, in beautiful Alberta. There are incredible mountains behind me and look at these ramps. actually there are Rams behind me this is nature supreme in this episode let's go see the rodeo I'm going to ride a horse I'm going to see the mountains I'm going to see these Rams I'm going to see beautiful food this is it keep it Canada look that It's so majestic that we went to Calgary during the Stampede, which is basically a gigantic carnival with

cowboys

, cowgirls, and crazy rodeos. Calgary is known for beef bison that ride horses and wear cowboy boots.

We drove into town during the heart of Stampede season and had a ton of really good food while doing it Keifer Canada is live right now here we are at the Alberta Boot Factory in the cow town of Calgary with two of my favorite chefs and Canadians, we have John and Connie I'm going to get some boots, but first they're about to do something really strange, so the first thing I did when I got to Calgary was wear a white hat, something I'd never worn before made. someone will give me a cowboy hat, that's more. that a cowboy hat you will be an honorary Calgarian Mattie sounds like something from Star Trek this is an official certificate this is real this is not a painted hat I the Dali Lama Bruce Willis Matty Matheson now you are an honorary Calgarian mainly about really special people coming to Calgary, put on the white hat, that's it, you're done with graduation, congratulations bro, thanks Johnny Connie, now I need some boots to go with this damn hat, it's so sick we have Ben here, he's my go-to guy to put. up with some boots but first what about the boots what about the cowboy boots tell me a little about the cowboy boots the reason for the shape the design everything is there it's for a reason you have a heel there so when you get up in the horse and the stirrup that you won't fall out of, you have more point so you can find it easier and you have the higher top, that's where you want to protect your legs, that's where boots essentially come from, now you can get them as fooled as you are with the Calgary Flames absolutely this is like a bra if you had a quiet night and could wear this is your pizza night boot then we also do a lot of exotic things ostrich crocodile elephant elephant skin ace mature would hate this place birdie body leather black market elephant deep deep web deep web deep web what's like a super like a bad boy came in here like what was what would be his boot just a simple black black I would say yeah I've got a couple of spots for you here okay that It's good and adds an inch per quarter or an inch and three quarters as well.

It's really empowering to wear cowboy boots it instantly makes me feel like an amazing person and then what we really need to do is pop. If we take off the boots, we can put on some denim legs and you'll see what the boots look like. We should probably do that, so if you're sitting there talking to a girl, that's how you choose the girl bar. I think these are the ones like Johnny Cash or something, a bad guy, a big, bad man came in and said, give me some boots that'll be the boot, so you walk into a cowboy store, you get cowboy boots, cowboy shirts. and he goes out with some cowgirls who got really into it.

I have the hat I have my cowboy shirt I have the boots Where are we going? The Stampede What does this look like? It's a good vibe. I just talked about it. It's like Juggalos, but they have a lot of weird hats. Look at this. Eat. some corn dogs and then here they are we are in the mecca of everything that tastes good in the world you are going to eat the one from this place we are about to eat some corn dogs start there if you see someone putting ketchup on one of these are tripping on this mustard that's all you need no bill this is very similar to a crazy korean night market where it's full of white people and cowboy hats it's cool so here we have the oldest of all soft drinks we have a sarsaparilla, also known as root beer, root beer is very popular in Calgary if you didn't know, oh okay, you know you go to fancy restaurants, you get wine pairings and all this, what you need is just one root beer, a cold root. beer a bunch of fried things it's like fried cheese jalapeño ranch sauce that's what's up it's like something I like A Midsummer Night's Tale and some of that is practically the best day of my life right here in the Stampede me I was relating food pretty well, we came over to ask me about my ranch's way to get the smoked and roasted Calgary turkey leg, unreal, phenomenal people, it's the best turkey leg here, should we do the mechanical bowl?

I like donuts, fried cheeses that don't They don't like bowling, they're sexist about fat people, it's a bull ride, we just made ourselves look like complete losers at the atomic ball or whatever, it's a lot harder to what you think, especially for someone who weighs over 300 pounds. I'm depressed now I'm going to go eat some donuts me too so you got the og just a cinnamon sugar donut like crack he's a crack donut getting thrown out of a mechanical ball you come here you get the donut stampede becomes the best day of your life, so the next morning we went to Charcut, which is like the mecca of Calgary.

Charcut is Calgary's cooking mecca right now. John and Connie understand what hospitality really means and are phenomenal chefs. Tony and I have worked together since 1999, so we've wanted to open our own restaurant for a long time and we wanted to do it somewhere that meant something to us, so coming back home, where Connie was born and raised and where I lived for most of my life, Calgary, it was a natural thing, we had like a meatloaf. we had some beautiful salads of shaved zucchini and things like that, very meaty things, very big, and then very delicate, very lush vegetables, and like it was a really nice juxtaposition between meat and vegetables, there has to be a balance, since we specialize in flesh.

We do all our own butchery and we do charcuterie, but I mean it's summer, so thirdly there has to be a balance, we have beautiful vegetables that come from our garden, we have the meat pie, it's like half a kilo of crusted meat and our in our house pastry big bone marrow chimney sticking out of the top the pig's head bologna you tried to get bologna is unreal tell me a little bit about what this cult of this chef culture is really coming together now itself really has many as in In the last five years we have all realized that we are not going to be able to show our city individually.

Charcut is not going to be able to put Calgary on the map. The market alone is not going to be able to market Calgary. on the map, the culture has changed from being competitive to more collaborative. John and Connie are about to open a massive company in Char Barn that will bring local businesses together. It's great to have people like you and other friends come to Calgary and show them that you know true western hospitality is real hospitality is real in Calgary it's the Wild West anything goes yeah this is gritty it's about to take me to the Rocky Mountains and we will ride horses.

I have never ridden a horse. before, so what do I have to get my leg into this first? Obviously, I can't get on the horse because I'm overweight and I wear skinny jeans, so they brought out the what is this? Where do they call it? This is a stool. stool I've written in Ferraris I've been in helicopters, you know, I have a lot of stops, I really don't think I ever thought I'd ever be on a horse. I wrote a horse, it was amazing, think about it. that life in the big city leave that aside you are there on the horse it is you the horse the mountains is the chain I put it at a trot people in the world know what a trot is it is very fast look at this view This is a crazy, this is like a Middle Earth type movie man, do you think I'm a cowboy yet?

Oh yes, oh yes, it's a really beautiful experience. You know, I thought I was going to be a cowboy and I think I'm a cowboy. because obviously I just rode a horse in a field, excuse me, excuse me, we went to downtown Calgary to see Dave Mahadji's restaurant market, he serves his food on plates with tongs, he drives a Beemer, let's see if this guy can cook well, like this That's the beautiful tuna. raw um you're going to use some preserved lemons. It really is a gangster way to serve like raw seafood, just literally serve it on a huge salty bun.

Really what we want to do today is show some kind of stuff so maybe you would find it at the fairgrounds, but we cut it up a little bit so that it became our own bologna in those little corn dogs. You had some sweet potato fritters. You know, he does a very good job. He does that Swanee. He is really refreshing. To have something fried that's not heavy, you know, and you need your right hand to handle that kind of thing. I wanted to show a little bit of everything, so of course we had a lot of pigs because pigs predominate in the game. this these days, so we made that hot pot, some clams and shrimp, okay, I shaved some, a nice one to order there.

Dave Behati is definitely going to places where kids can cook, he has a meal, his dessert program is. on point, take some poop, yes it has a coil, the boiler upside down, one big thing I've been looking forward to is seeing some Alberta beef where Strathmore Alberta with Scottie, a world class bull rider, He is also a world class. rancher here at s Bar ranch we are going to go see some cattle, he showed me around, we are in a Polaris going through flats, so I came across the crack that separates the cows from the rest of the field that they walk through cows. far from me I feel like they don't like me I feel like I'm sitting in a cafeteria just drinking milk and hot chocolate but it's outside tell us a little about the meat here they look pretty good they're pretty breastfed Everyone is fine around here everything is fed with grass, that's why we have the best beef, what we like to say in Canada before Alberta, it's breeding season, as you can see, they have some pictures of that, there's four bowls here, there's about a hundred. and ten cows here, so breeding is about 45 days, now I leave them here for 45 to 60 days, give or take two months of pure spring break, you can bet Jake Spring Break exactly, so, when you ride bulls How high have you been? like thrown into the air a few times I've been there at 1012 feet so how many how many how many bones do you break after you I broke my femur, yeah, and then I broke my fibula and tibia further down, yeah, I tore my bicep off my The elbow wrapped around my shoulder looked like a popsicle.

He had a big bicep. They just screw themselves back together. You keep going. Keep going. Determination. Determination. And I'm not good at anything. Yes, you do if you are not good at anything. anymore and you don't care about having the bicep ripped off your arm, so all these calves are moving. I'm trying to interview Scottie like a pro and they're moving us around, they're in the background, well, they usually don't. that when I just left it's breeding season and you're new maybe you have a smell we're not sure I have a little smell maybe we should get out of here because I don't want to survive a dance so I like to cook for the people who showed me the surrounding area and Calgary and Alberta so we had a little cookout so I'm here at John John's house it's a beautiful area it's just outside of downtown Calgary it's the suburbs but no. the suburb and this is downtown, where there are lakes and trees everywhere, yeah, so we have some chili made with bison leg, we have some baked beans made with some bacon, it's molasses and some beer root, so we'll add a little. we're going to paint some sustainable paint then we got some chopped onions some tomato some corn chips we just had a really nice cookout there's a ton of different people almost like a potluck there's a ton of people here that have me helped over the past week and are about to have the best chili and baked beans they have ever tasted.

Dave is making a market, but John and Connie are making a charcut. They're just constantly raising the bar there and in Canada in general, not just in Calgary and it's an amazing thing to be a part of. You know, it's one of the best places I've been to in Canada. One of theBest places I've been in the world. It's the Wild West here in Calgary. Keep Canada on. On the next episode of Keep it Canada, we'll go to PEI. I'm going to put on a wetsuit, go clam hunting. In fact, my balls are going to shrink.

What's happening? This is the world of a potato factory about to eat a five-pound lobster. I'm probably going to sweat a lot