A Non-Commercial Guide to Canmore (updated Feb 24, 2008)

Climbers and other visitors often ask me where to sleep, drink, eat, etc. in Canmore, here are my choices plus some from a few other people who have written in (I reserve the right to comment on their choices, grin). If I've left your favorite place off the list drop me an email to gadd@gravsports.com and I'll include it.

Canmore has really taken off in the last five years--better food, coffee, more choices, and of course rapidly rising prices--most everything has gone up about 50 percent in the last five years. Those of you sporting US dollars will be even more shocked--thank George Bush for the fact that the $US now buys about half of what did five years ago in Canmore.Those with Euros will find Canmore to be reasonable compared to Davos or Chamonix.

Note--I'm too lazy to look up phone numbers and such, but you're on-line, you can figure it out--the whole town is pretty small.

Food

Canmore has finally yuppified sufficiently to have good food... Unfortunately, prices have also gone ballistic compared to five years ago.

Good Food at reasonable prices, Breakfast:

Railway Deli: This is the best new addition to the Canmore food scene in the last two years. For $15 you can get a huge plate of very nice food, and stock up on all kinds of Austrian deli stuff from fresh bread to good cheese to "Death Sticks," the weird burnt-looking fatty sausages that have been up a lot of new routes in the Rockies. Maybe the best cafeteria-style food I've ever eaten. If you call ahead they will do a fondue too. On the corner of the 1A and Railway Ave (on your right just before you cross the railway track when going from the Trans Can toward downtown). Kind of hidden in a strip mall.

Communitea: Downtown but one street north of main next to the dog store and just past Bella Crusta. Best cappucino in town, nice owners, a good "rest day" place to chill out. Healthy organic bowls and such, lots of moms with strollers and people using the place as an alternate office.

Summit Cafe:  Good breakfast food, crowds of active people scheming about the day every morning, nice atmosphere, good morning sun deck. Canmore's best breakfast place.

Coffee Mine: This place has been seriously upgraded, now has the best breakfast sandwiches in town (towering creations) and good lunch. Not exactly cheap but good.

Bagel Bakery: Good prices, good service, good food, weak coffee, open late on main street, occasional live music in the evening.

Beamers: OK coffee and simple food, open very early in the morning. One locaiton on the 1A, one right across from the post office (Rusticana on main street).

Harvest, beside Switching Gear: A bit limited menu but good food, the "Stuffed French Toast" seems like an odd idea but is actually really good. Located where the Village Bistro used to be, and right across from the Internet Cafe.

Curry in a Hurry: Off main street, merged with Blends Coffee, good curries for lunch.

Bella Crusta: Good and cheap pizza-style (toppings on big pieces of round bread, excellent) lunch stuff across from Marra's just off main street. I sometimes take some of his "heat and bake" pizzas, cook 'em up, and take them climbing, excellent lunch. The owner is a Canmore classic and good guy.

French Quartier: Located near the Vsion, great breakfasts, good "cajun" style food in Canmore of all places, definitely a cool spot. The owner can be a bit surly, but half the time he's the only person in the place so it's understandable.

Good Food, not cheap but not crazy expensive:

Luna Blue (formerly Melange) : Great pasta, appetizers, good service and one of the best kitchens in Canmore. Main street across from the Canmore Hotel. Lunch and dinner. I eat here regularly. The chef will cook up about anything you want if you ask nicely, he is a town resource.

Rocky Mountain Flatbread Company (Just off the far end of main street). Organic salads, cool pizzas, organic market every Thursday where I spend money on expensive but very healthy-looking food.

Santa Lucia: Best pizza in town, decent Italian food, pasta can be sketchy.

Studio Chef Sushi: Hidden off of main street. Pricey but good Sushi. I think this place is actually a front for an English-language school as ordering can be complicated, but really nice staff.

Thai Pagoda: On the 1a (street with Hospital etc). Solid Thai food with an interesting owner who may regale you stories that are interesting the first time but don't gain much on subsequent tellings. Not the biggest portions going--if you're really hungry order two. In the same location that used to house Musashi (I miss that place!).

"Special" Food and needs

Coffee: Nosh on main street does a mean Espresso, but Communitea has seriously good cappucino, a very rare thing in North America. There is a Starbucks in town but I wouldn't subject anyone who has ever had an Italian cappucino to Starbucks.

Late-Night Food: Peking Ginger on the 1A is open to all hours, they are also the best option for Chinese food (The Famous is now where Des Alpes used to be, same surly service).

Vegetarian: Sunfood Cafe (on the left just before you turn onto main street, across from the Provinical building). Good stuff, sort of random breakfast hours but often open earlier than the sign says. Tofu Scramble huge and good, high-quality Euro food.

Expensive Places to Eat

The Trough: The owners of the trough have run good high-end restaurants in Canmore for years. The Trough isn't cheap, but it does provide good value and good service.

Crazyweed: This used to be a small place on main street but has moved to the junction of Railway and the 1A on the west end of town. The building is very cool, all angles etc., but it must have been really expensive to build--everything on the new menu is about twice as expensive as the old one. I've eaten here only once since the location switch, and was not impressed. I don't mind paying for world-class creative food, but no one at our table was blown away by their meal. Some of my friends still like it, but it's definitely not the town institution it used to be. Pretentious might be the best word to describe it. I'll have to try it again and see if it can move from up from plain pretentious to something more worthy of what it used to be.

Where to Stay:

Rocky Mountain Ski Lodge. Good owners, nice rooms, good people. My friend Guy Lacelle's favorite

Chateau Canmore: They helped some buds out with a room, nice people and there's a gym and hot tub if for some reason you can't get a workout in. Not super cheap, but reliable and clean with large rooms.

The Drake Inn: Good central location, traditional, close to the Drake Bar so you don't have to drive home (don't pull the same move as one well-known guide/businessman who got busted driving home lit from the Drake to his house that was, no shit, 400M away!).

Akai Motel: Cheap, clean, best "bargain" place.

Alpine Club: Hostel-style, but good people, clean, cheap, good place to find partners. Just outside town (you can walk if you're a European, Americans will need a car).

Where not to stay: No really bad places in town, with the possible exception of our futon.

Where to Drink/get Western

Thursday late-night at Zona's is really good value, good DJ, usually a strong local scene where you can see Canmore's rock and ice stars make complete asses out of themselves regularly. One of my favorite events, but I won't eat the food at Zonas despite what everyone else seems to think--I love the place and people, but I'm sorry, I have never had a great meal there even though the prices and menu might suggest otherwise. Go Thursday and spend whacks of money on alcohol, tip the DJ, try not to make the newspaper. Sort of refined techno hippie meets yuppie.

The Canmore Hotel usually has the best bands in Canmore--I'll brave the smoke and occasional aggro youth (the crowd reflects Canmore's mix of yuppification and whatever the opposite of yuppie is) for the bands, the music is often worth it. Let's just say the "Ho" has cleaned up its image as the town's primary source of police reports but still has a way to go before it's a family-style institution. You'll probably end up putting the final touches on a solid night of it here.

The Drake is always popular and sometimes has good food, plus they have a smoke-free room for those of us who like our smoke direct instead of second hand.

Holligans is good if you're having a book launch or want to experience our retro small-town eighties club scene or something.

Other Useful Stuff

Climbing Gym: The Vsion is a great bouldering gym in Canmore: Steep, good music, motivated owner (Dung can climb circles around all of us). The Sally Borden gym at the Baff Center in Banff is good for roped climbing, but it's pretty small. Nice staff, full workout facilities if you want to chuck some discs.

Gear Up rents most basic mountaineering gear (boots, ice axes, crampons, etc) if you need some in a hurry, nice to have this service in a local shop.

Grocery Stores: Marras on main street is GONE. Sobey's (used to be IGA) and Safeway are both monolithic big city style stores; Safeway does have the better selection. The Railway Deli is a good place to stock up on cheese, meat, bread and euro-food.

Buy Cheap Outdoor Gear:  Switching Gear often has great deals due to local sponsored athletes surreptitiously selling surplus sponsor swag (seriously).

Internet: Internet Cafe (one street west of main street) Canmore Public Library, Coffee Mine, Bagel Bakery the wireless network at our house.

Laundry: On main street beside the Grizzly Paw.

Books: Second Story Books is in now in the basement on main street, but it's still a good place to buy second-hand and local-interest books. Occasionally has great deals on older mountaineering books. The Alpine Club also has a good climbing reference library.

Bike Shops:
Rebound on the south end of Main Street. Fair people, good "fix it" department, I've bought two bikes there. The Bicycle Cafe is good too, a little more attitude but good people/bikes and often the best deals on Santa Cruz anywhere in North America.

Climbing Gear: Vallhalla Pure on main street is under new ownership and stocks a reasonable selection of most gear. MEC and the Hostel Shop (both in Calgary) are the best "full service" shops, but Valhalla is good. Although this is supposed to be a Canmore guide, Mountain Magic in Banff has a full selection of gear and a good staff to ask questions about current conditions.

Vertical Addiction: On Railway between Safeway and Sobeys. The owner is a serious climber, good store but a little limited in brand selection.

More Good Choices from Bill Piekos, thanks.

It was interesting to see your Canmore page, with good suggestions et al.  As much as I do not live in Canmore (working on it!), I do stay there  regularly in both summer and winter and would like to offer a few other  obvious choices that folks may enjoy:

Beamer's - great for breakfast BOBs, lunches, good coffee and great  service. Opens at 6am which is a boon for climbers. Second location soon  to be opened on Main Street, I think.

Grizzly Paw - good bar food, micro brewery style beer, and a superb  selection of Single Malts! Crazy Weed - yep... the service can be problematic, but they do excellent  dinner take outs like no other place! Call in advance, avoid the wait and  simply pick up your food when it is ready. Great value for high end dishes. (WG Note--I received an email in October saying the service was much improved, I've also eaten there lately and agree).

Canmore Crossings Condos (plus other vacation condos springing all over  town): great value for a group trip. Prices on par with ACC Clubhouse when  6 folks split a 3 bedroom. Much, much cheaper than any hotel! Fully  equipped: full kitchen, BBQ, TV, VCR, CD, fire place, on suite laundry, hot tub on the roof, etc, plus close to all the shopping (IGA) and a booze store right in the building! What more could you ask for? A great new alternative to noisy huts, or regular hotels/motels.

www.canmorealberta.com - great website with general info for the town.

Hope you will find the above info useful. Have fun and play safe. Cheers,

Bill

And Another Perspective from Mélanie Anabelle Massé

As for the social life in Canmore...
Bagel Co. is a great place to take a coffee, relax in comfortable chair, see VERY good looking people and... Many Quebecquers!

Flatbread pizza is really good, their curry is too hot but good. The place it self is cozy and warm.
Zona is a great place to eat, despite what you are saying! :) But kind of
botter us that everything was extra (bread, soup, etc...). Kind of a rip off
technic...
The Bear Paw is a great place to eat good burgers and drink good beer. Even
if they do funny eyes when we asked for mayo for our fries and guacamole for
our burgers! :)

Banff sucks. Ok, this is too hard but just to say... It is faked, plastic.
We tried finding a nice place for a coffee. Nada. Maybe we weren't looking
at the right spots. Too many cheap "gift/souvenirs" shops. Only cool place
we found; the cowboys store! :)

Lake Louise: not much visited the place... But JF says that the best deal in town is at the bakery/coffee shop; get the end slice of the banana bread's
for 0.25$!!! What can you get for that price today???!!! ;)

We stayed at Rocky Mountain Ski Lodge. GREAT PLACE. Great service, great people, GREAT SPA. It is unbelivable how a spa ride can get you going and
going and going the day after... Almost like an Energizer bunny!

By the way, if you want the best deal in town to rent a 4x4 truck... It ain't written in the yellow pages. But call Enterprise in Canmore and ask
for Kelly. (They are located in the Dodge dealer). The same business is also in Cochrane; it is rulled by the same people. 4x4 at the best price.

There ya go.

Hope some info are worth something for you or visitors like us.