Right there on the menu at Francine\u2019s, under the \u201cEn Plus\u201d (sides\/extras) section, nestled in between Confit Halibut Cheeks ($44.95 CAD) and Potato Pur\u00e9e ($9.95 CAD), was \u201cA Lactaid Pill,\u201d advertised for \u201cmarket price.\u201d We asked, and it turns out the going rate for a Lactaid in a fancy French restaurant these days is 25 Canadian cents.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After looking more closely at the menu, the Lactaid began to make more sense. We indulged in \u201cCheesy Puffs,\u201d a pair of enormous cheese puffs (they\u2019re like a big dinner roll), doused in grated parmesan cheese, alongside a massive bowl of warm parmesan mousse sprinkled with a liberal helping of finely grated chives. Hells yes. It was to be either that or the Bayonne ham with honey butter chips and Comt\u00e9 cheese, and the melted bowl of cheese won the day.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Continue Reading Article After Our Video<\/p>\n
Recommended Fodor\u2019s Video<\/p>\n
Even my summery tomato and stone fruit salad had cheese (it was a tangy house-made Boursin that I still dream about as I type).\u00a0<\/p>\n
My main course was cheese-less, but not butter-less. The steak frites (when in Alberta, one must have at least some of the province\u2019s vaunted beef) came doused in a tremendous toasted garlic peppercorn sauce (quite a bit more umami than the typical plain old brandy-peppercorn sauce the dish is famous for), and the triple-cooked fries were satisfyingly crunchy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/IMG_2451-724x708.jpg\")
Cheesy poofsScott Laird<\/p>\n
We closed out the evening (sans Lactaid) with French toast, with a honey caramel glaze (bees in Calgary like to feast on the abundance of rapeseed flowers, which are used in the production of Canola oil), honey ice cream, and\u2014you guessed it\u2014cheese, in the form of a 15-month-aged Comt\u00e9 (the same one, I\u2019ll wager, adorning the ham).\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u2019s more to the story, however, than the butter-and-cheeseapalooza we encountered at Calgary\u2019s most lactose-forward French eatery. We had just come directly from a delightful speakeasy, also in Chinatown, called Paper Lantern<\/a>. Hidden behind a nondescript door in a basement elevator lobby, the place feels like something out of the \u201970s, with kitschy wallpaper, a menu of comfort foods (pork belly skewers? spring rolls? b\u00e1nh m\u00ec?) and inventive cocktails like my Morning in Hanoi, a delightfully evocative potable containing coffee-infused vodka, Kahl\u00faa, condensed milk, coconut, banana, and pineapple\u2014sort of like a boozy Vietnamese Bob Marley.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is all par for the course. Karen Anderson, founder of Alberta Food Tours,<\/a> told me over a plate of ginger beef (there\u2019s that Alberta beef again) at the Fairmont Palliser<\/a>, the 1914 vintage hotel in the heart of the city. Some of Canada\u2019s most well-known dishes and beverages were created in Calgary, she told me, including the ginger beef, a Chinese-Canadian dish of thinly sliced beef deep-fried in an egg batter, then tossed in a ginger-garlic sauce.\u00a0<\/p>\n I also finally tried Canada\u2019s national cocktail, the Bloody Caesar, which is essentially a Bloody Mary made with Clamato juice (I broke my longstanding no-clam-juice-in-my-cocktails rule). For the unaware, Clamato is a spiced, sweetened tomato juice with just a hint of clam juice. The drink was invented in Calgary in the late 1960s after bartender Walter Chell traveled in Italy, tried spaghetti with clams and tomato sauce, and thought the flavor combination of clam and tomato would work well in a cocktail. Turns out he wasn\u2019t wrong, and I could barely taste the clam.\u00a0<\/p>\n