Sylvan Lake’s Lodge 43 will be taking part in Alberta on the Plate, a food and drink festival running Aug. 12 to 21. This is a province-wide dine-around event, where participating restaurants offer menu items highlighting local producers, growers, distillers and brewers. It takes place in conjunction with Alberta Local Food Week and Alberta Open Farm Days.
More than 100 establishments in 27 communities across the province will be taking part, showcasing over 200 farms and producers.
For Lodge 43, this will be the restaurant’s second year participating in the event and they’ve chosen to offer a unique two-course meal for the 10-day event.
“We felt it’s something fun to do,” said Heather Jones, co-owner of Lodge 43 with her partner, Trevor Scott. “It’s great for the local producers we work with and it gives our kitchen a bit of creativity.”
Lodge 43 will be offering a spicy mussel soup, featuring peppers and tomatoes from Pik-N-Pak Produce in Gull Lake. For their second course, diners will be treated to a crab donut with a side salad, the donut coming from a bakery in Edmonton and the crumbled feta on the side salad is from Sylvan Star Cheese. The restaurant will also be offering a craft cocktail pairing with the meal, a wild gin gimlet, with the gin coming from Wild Life Distillery in Canmore.
“It’s a fun way to create something that you wouldn’t normally have on your menu otherwise,” said Jones. “We are being recognized in this alongside some amazing restaurants in the province, so you have to step your game up a bit. We do a lot of seafood, so we wanted to do something seafood focused. We were beef focused last year.”
Jones and Scott bought the restaurant in March 2019 when it was still known as Open Range Saloon and then re-branded to Lodge 43 in February 2021.
“Out of our three-and-a-half years in business, we’ve only had one year pre-COVID, so it’s been a crazy learning curve” said Jones. “But we couldn’t have been luckier to have a restaurant in Sylvan Lake. The town has been incredible in their support.”
Visit albertaontheplate.com for a list of participating restaurants.