Just like many other restaurants in Calgary, Cleaver, a handsome Irish-influenced eatery in downtown Calgary, has a Caesar on its menu. Unlike other restaurants, Cleaver lists its Caesar in the “bar snacks” section of its menu. It’s called a Caesar Stack and it’s a horseradish-spiked mix served with a chicken wing and drum—brined, sous-vided, then fried—a mini corndog, a from-scratch jalapeno waffle and a slider, with bacon, on a homemade brioche. Each is impaled on a skewer and arranged in a fanned-out fashion with the care of a florist. To call any of them a “garnish” is like calling Madonna a cabaret singer.
Cleaver is run by Barbara Spain, a Dublin native who studied at Ireland’s famed Ballymaloe Cookery, a school on a farm known for, among other things, its butchery program. Once you learn that, the spectacle makes perfect sense.
The Caesar is to Calgary what the whisky highball is to Tokyo: You can find one nearly everywhere you go and many bartenders or, in the case of Cleaver, chefs like to put their personal stamp on it. It’s ubiquitous because it’s the official national drink of Canada and, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia, over 400 million Caesars are consumed throughout the country annually. But Calgary is where it was born.
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First, a quick aside for the uninitiated: a Caesar is often described as a Bloody Mary with clamato, or clam juice, but it’s much more involved than that. Most bartenders employ one of two kinds—Mott’s and the more premium Walter Caesar, a pre-seasoned clamato that identifies itself as “All natural. Small batch. Proudly Canadian.” Everyone clings tight to their opinion on which is best.
The drink was invented by Walter Chell, bartender at the Owl’s Nest, the restaurant at the Calgary Inn, which today is the site of a Westin. In 1969, when the inn opened its Italian eatery, the good bartender was tasked with coming up with a drink to pair with the pasta alle vongole, a spaghetti dish made with white wine and fresh clams. According to legend and Michael Cameron, the hotel’s director of operations, who has access to archives, Chell created the mix using hand-mashed oysters, an obvious through-line to the dish, tomato juice (a natural match) and Worcestershire sauce. At the Westin’s recently spruced up, seasonal Owl Patio & Bar, visitors can order the drink in its original form.
As the story goes, it was called simply a Caesar until an Englishman blurted to Chell, “That’s a bloody good Caesar,” But it rarely appears like that on any menus, a Canadian friend was quick to confirm. “It’s just a Caesar—like it’s just hockey, not ice hockey,” she informed me. And the American lens through which I viewed Canada was instantly shattered.
The widespread and enduring popularity might be surprising to anyone not Canadian. After all, it’s uncommon to find even a Bloody Mary on cocktail menus at sophisticated restaurants or craft cocktail bars around the world, unless you’re having brunch.
It’s also worth noting that all of the iconic tomato-based foods, from marinara sauce to gazpacho to salsa, are a bit of an historical anomaly. Past societies did not look kindly on the tomato. In the 1700s, in fact, it was called the “poison apple” because lords and ladies of Europe’s upper class died after eating them. But it was eventually discovered that the killer was the pewter plates: the tomatoes would leach the poisonous lead.
Eventually, of course, with the widespread acceptance of scientific theory, it was established the tomato was nontoxic. It was a tectonic-plate-shift-level correction. And Canadians couldn’t be happier for it.
A bartender’s personal stamp on the drink is often a matter of global influence. Just like pocket-style foods have their own cultural interpretations (see: dumplings, ravioli, empanadas, pierogis, English pasties, etc.), so goes the Caesar.
Park by Sidewalk Citizen is an airy restaurant at the edge of Central Memorial Park, at the outskirts of downtown. It’s known for its grand arched-ceiling solarium, with cathedral-like windows, a fig tree, a lemon tree, plants hanging everywhere. The menu here is inspired by Israeli street food and the Caesar is, too. Made with smoked-habanero hot sauce, it’s rimmed with the traditional spice blend za’atar and garnished with a grilled shishito pepper. In fact, it goes so seamlessly with the food here that I almost asked for a spoon. It’d make a perfect sauce for the baked feta and charred eggplant dish.
I told my server I was American and asked her if she drinks Caesars on any given night out with friends. It was my first meal out in town and I was still trying to wrap my brain around the drink’s ubiquity. “I freakin’ love Caesars,” she confirmed. So did one of the gentlemen at the next table, who was out with four friends celebrating one of their retirements. His friends drank beer and white wine and he sipped on the house Caesar. When they wrapped up their dinner, I asked if the Caesar is his go-to call drink. Only before dinner, he said. “It’s a perfect drink when you’re hungry. I usually show up to dinner hungry.”
The next afternoon, I had lunch at Native Tongues, a downtown taqueria with tiled walls and a gorgeous wood backbar crammed with tequilas and mezcals. Instead of vodka, the Caesar here is made with mezcal, giving it a smoky flex. And it’s a very logical variation because it nods to the Michelada, the Mexican staple of beer and a tomato juice. But enough people in Mexico prefer it with Clamato that the country ranks as one of the largest Clamato markets in the world. Mott’s has built a social-media campaign on the trend, complete with the hashtag #clamatomichelada
There’s regularly hot sauce and lime in a Michelada, and sometimes there’s tequila, so in essence, a Caesar at Native Tongues is just a Michelada without the beer.
One place where the Caesar is a bit less logical—in a most enchanting way—is Sukiyaki House, a high-end sushi restaurant where I sat at the counter and watched a squad of sushi chefs prepare toro and Hamachi sashimi. There’s an extensive sake list and a shorter cocktail menu. It wasn’t exactly a surprise to find a Caesar here. What was astonishing was the recipe.
Judith, the manager, said she thinks of Caesars like a breakfast tomato soup, so she blends the Canadian tradition with the Japanese tradition of soups, which often involve a dashi (broth) of kombu (kelp) or katsuobushi (simmered, smoked and fermented skipjack tuna.) The result? A wasabi sake, infused with kombu and katsuobushi. This reimagined dashi holds a strong saline flavor, a lovely complement to the clamato. They add Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco and olive brine, augment it with vodka, rim it with a mixture of celery salt, seaweed flakes and shichimi pepper blend, then top it off with a garlic-stuffed olive and a steamed, vinegared prawn. You’d be forgiven if you assumed it’d be a frenzied cacophony of flavors, but despite everything that’s happening in the glass, East meets West harmoniously.
Also astonishing: the clamato-free Caesar at Vegan Street, where bonito flakes are used to give the drink its familiar salinity.
Distillers are in on the game, too. And not as an after-thought. With the astronomic increase in numbers of distilleries in the past few years, it’s rare to go to a city and not find one nearby. Calgary’s is Eau Claire Distillery, about 40 miles south of downtown, and they’re so serious about the Caesar, that they make it a few different ways. Four variations are offered in the flight served in their vintage-accented tasting room. There’s one made with gin, one with vodka, one with single malt spirit (it’s not whiskey because it’s not aged long enough to legally qualify) and one with dill-pickle vodka, which they’ve historically made as a seasonal offering, but are now producing year-round because they use it in their just-introduced canned Caesar. Each spirit is mixed with Walters, Tabasco and Worcestershire sauces. If I had ever had any doubt about the tomato’s versatility, it was wiped out on the spot.
On my last morning in town, I stopped into the Hawthorn, the classy restaurant at the ritzy Fairmont, and witnessed exactly why the Caesar deserves its place in the canon of classic cocktails. Most people shake their cocktail, but bartender Mario Hernandez goes a step further. He throws the drink, bartender jargon for pouring the mixture from one shaker tin to another, one held aloft above the other, creating an arced stream.
“When you throw a cocktail, it gives it air. It enhances and releases aromas,” Mario said. Indeed, it made the many extra ingredients’ flavor pop out, too: balsamic vinegar, hellfire bitters, onion powder. This particular Caesar came highly recommended by bartenders elsewhere I spoke with. But when I first arrived, I noticed it wasn’t listed on the menu. I figured they probably didn’t make it anymore. Mario quickly settled my concern.
“We don’t have it on the list because everybody knows you can get one here,” he assured. “Or anywhere.”
