Explore Southern Alberta: Plan Your Self-Guided Food Tour In And Around Lethbridge

• 01

  Broxburn Vegetables & Cafe

  5 90008 Rng Rd 210, Lethbridge County, AB T1J 5R9

  Our first stop on Canada’s Food Tours in Lethbridge County is Broxburn Vegetables & Cafe. 

  The farm, which has been operating since 1994, initially started as a U-pick Strawberry farm. but quickly expanded to  include multiple greenhouses followed by a super cute barn-style storefront and cafe that features the products they grow right on the farm. 

  Today, Broxburn Vegetables produces all sorts of fruits and veggies, and is home to one of the largest commercial broccoli crops in all of Alberta! 

  Broxburn owner and farmer Paul de Jonge is all about growing local food and getting that food direct to consumers. You can find Broxburn products in multiple farmers markets in southern Alberta, and since 2012 they’ve been partnered with Sysco food producers to supply local product to restaurants as well. 

  Paul grew up in Holland on an onion farm. While they do grow onions, Broxburn actually specializes in cauliflower, kale, cabbage, and broccoli brassica—which is harder to grow. 

  I asked him why he chose to grow something that’s harder than other crops and he said—because if it’s harder to grow there’s less farmers doing it. (It just makes business sense lol). 

  I love meeting owners of family farms because their passion for food is always so evident. 

  Paul told us the smell of onions often brings back nostalgic memories for him—working on his father’s onion farm. Details like that are so lovely. 

  He walked us through the strawberry fields, past asparagus (they taste like sweet peas when plucked and eaten right from the ground!), past onions and through his greenhouses, where he shared fun facts like how Broxburn grows 50,000 pepper plants, or that they get about 2.5 tomato plants per square metre—and that tomato plants. can grow up to 60 ft. fall. 

  The Broxburn greenhouses use hydroponics which is a way to grow crops without soil (in fact, they grow their plants in cocoa!) 

  We wrapped up this stop with breakfast at the Broxburn Cafe—a delicious and truly fresh experience, as all of the food items feature fruits and vegetables grown right on the farm.

  That makes sense because Broxburn’s motto is “Plant to Plate” and that is literally the case here! 

  The smoked cream of tomato soup is a must-order, and everyone in our tour group raved about the Greek and Beet salad! You also have to order a Broxburn Soda—it comes in so many flavours and you can also add so many flavour shots—and even add some milk which turns it into something of a creamsicle. 

  • View the Broxburn Cafe Menu

  Although technically Broxburn does not offer public tours—as I’ve said above, it never hurts to ask! But if you don’t get a greenhouse tour, you can still visit the strawberry U-pick, storefront and cafe. There’s also the Country Blooms Garden Centre on the same property that draws a lot of visitors too (not owned by Paul but the land is leased out to the garden centre owners). 

  Broxburn also typically participates in Alberta Open Farm Days, so watch for their offering!

  Visit website

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• 02

  Prairie Hill Farms

  105078, Range Rd 211 Picture Butte, Alberta T0K1V0

  The next stop on our Canada’s Food Tour was to a haskap berry farm and production facility called Prairie Hill Farms. 

  Have you ever tried a haskap berry before? 

  I feel like I’m starting to see haskaps everywhere! The haskap berry itself looks like a longer blueberry, and according to the Haskap Alberta Association, tastes like a blueberry (sweet to start) but ends like a raspberry (more tart). 

  There’s a few haskap farms in the Edmonton area (I’m actually planning to do a haskap U-Pick date with my mom this July!) and Prairie Hill Farms (in southern Alberta) has been in the haskap business in 2013 (though the family has been farming since 1991).

  Today Prairie Hill grows and processes haskap berries into syrups, spreads, BBQ sauces and toppings, and I’m told is the processing plant for all haskaps in western Canada!

  So all the haskap farms in western Canada sends their haskaps to this facility to get processed.

  Prairie Hills is growing about 40 acres of haskaps. It’s not a U-pick operation though, but you can pop into their storefront for haskap juice, jam, powder, loaves, cream cheese rolls, streusel, muffins, cream puffs, Haskapple juice , vanilla haskap and chocolate haskap Oreos, and more—the berries can be used to make so many treats! 

  Prairie Hills actually sells quite a bit of haskap jam to Japan and Korea. The berries are actually native to Siberia, North Eastern Asia, and Japan and now grow across Canada after it was introduced as part of a fruit breeding program out of Saskatchewan.

  • Learn more about the haskap berry from Prairie Hill Farms
  • Learn more about the haskap berry from Haskap Alberta Association
  Visit website

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• 03

  Cattlemen’s Chophouse (Restaurant)

  234 Hwy Avenue N, Picture Butte, AB T0K 1V0

  Our next stop was for lunch at Cattlemen’s Chophouse, a restaurant located inside the Picture Butte Hotel that features a wide range of locally-grown food from around the region. 

  Cattlemen’s Chophouse has a beautiful patio too but it was pretty rainy during our visit so we didn’t get to enjoy that part of the restaurant. 

  According to the owners, you can’t get better ingredients than right here in Alberta, and that’s why their food features fresh ingredients from local ranchers and farmers.

  “Never settle for less than Alberta’s best” they say!

  At Cattlemen’s Chophouse we were treated to a feast featuring locally-grown food (many of which were featured on our tour—which makes sense lol). 

  Dishes featured the following ingredients:

  • Beef from Ben’s Quality Meats (located in Picture Butte)
  • Vegetables from Broxburn Vegetables (located outside Lethbridge)
  • Haskaps from Prairie Hill Farms (located in Picture Butte)
  • Cheese from Crystal Springs Cheese (located in Coalhurst)

  On this tour I actually learned that Southern Alberta cattle farmers produce about 80% of Canada’s beef!

  I also learned that the Munton family, who run Ben’s Quality Meats, have been cattle farmers for four generations—so you could say  they know a thing or two about producing quality beef. 

  I don’t know if Cattlemen’s Chophouse chips use locally grown potatoes but you should definitely get their chips while you’re here too, lol.

  They’re dill seasoned with an adobo cream sauce—delicious!

  Visit website

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• 04

  Crystal Springs Cheese

  102008, Range Rd 222, Coalhurst, AB T0L 0V0

  After lunch we headed over to Crystal Springs Cheese, another family-run operation, where we got a tour from one of the co-owners and cheese maker Jacco, whose parents initially started the farm back in 1984. 

  Crystal Springs Cheese makes a ton of feta cheese, gouda, and yogurt. They also sell cream to Foothills Creamery (local Alberta milk!) But their products go across Canada and they’re actually the creators (now) of the popular Bles-Wold Yogurt.

  During our tour, Jacco walked us through their cheese making facility, where we passed 10,000 litre-milk holding tanks, gouda cheese wheel rooms, giant tanks of brine, and a ton of feta cheese in the making. 

  Jacco actually told us Crystal Springs Cheese would be considered a smaller cheese operation even though I (as a clueless consumer lol) felt like they are a larger cheese operation. 

  Jacco says Crystal Springs Cheese does offer tours by appointment—so I would definitely recommend you ask / pre-arrange that before you stop by! He makes cheese there every day, so he would likely be your tour guide lol. 

  Even without the tour though, I really liked that the Crystal Springs Cheese storefront includes some hot food items featuring their cheese! You can order a few different poutines with their natural cheese curds and gravy, grilled cheese, and an assortment of Dutch specialty food dishes. 

  In fact at this point in my tour retelling, I’ll share that—all the farmers we met on this Lethbridge County tour were Dutch! Did you know (because I didn’t until this tour): that there is a very prominent Dutch community in southern Alberta—and many of them are farmers! 

  You could do a whole southern Alberta Dutch food tour if you wanted to, lol. 

• 

• 05

  Broek Pork Acres

  RR 22-5 104068 Box 791 Coalhurst Ab T0L 0V0, AB

  Next up we drove over to Broek Pork Acres to meet the very lovely Allan and Joanne Vanden Broek. This family has been farming since 1994 (and Joanne grew up on a farm as well).

  With Allan she started a grain farm, then a small hog herd, then in 2005 switched to include a free range Pasture Pork operation.

  Then in 2007 they started doing their own butchering, added a retail store in 2008, then more recently in 2018 opened a bigger retail storefront (where we went on our tour!) 

  Broek Pork specializes in Berkshire Pork, considered a high quality, black pig. 

  Our timing had it so that we got to watch Allan process meat while talking about the farm. 

  Similar to how Broxburn’s saying is “From Plant to Plate”—Broek starts “From Pasture to Plate.”

  Allan and Joanne raise their pigs naturally and do their own processing to ensure the quality of their products are guaranteed by their own hands. They also focus on quality rather than quantity, with pigs raised in a relaxed, free-range environment.

  Their pork products are also 100% gluten-free! 

  We got to sample some of their sausage (incredibly delicious). And we learned about how the pandemic affected their operations—where they switched from selling primarily to restaurants to selling almost entirely through retail to customers. 

  • Fun fact: Allan and Joanne’s daughter owns Homestead Bakeshop in the Town of Fort McLeod, just 30 minutes west of Lethbridge! You could add that to your food tour too! 
  • More fun facts: Fort McLeod was actually one of the filming locations for Ghostbusters: Afterlife movie (which I also blogged about!)
  Visit website

• 

• 06

  Little Gem Winery

  Range Rd 23-4, Nobleford, AB T0L 1S0

  Now for the drinking portion of the food tour! At Little Gem Winery which specializes in Haskap Wine! We met with Joel, one of the three co-owners, who explained about their haskap products—a classic red, rose, and dessert wine. They also make a haskap cider! 

  We don’t have grape vineyards in Alberta, so Little Gem likes to say, from their farm to your glass, with their haskap wines, Alberta wine drinkers can finally drink local. Pretty neat!

  • Learn more about Little Gem drinks

  Joel shared that they bottle around 500 wines an hour (manually), and use multiple 1,000-litre tanks for wines, and a 4,000-litre tank for their HaskApple cider. 

  They also launched their canned ciders this year (with Spectrum Beer Company in Lethbridge canning for them this season—I love how all the businesses help the other businesses). 

  Okay I actually don’t like talking bout experiences that people can’t actually replicate but unfortunately in its current space, Little Gem doesn’t actually do wine tastings—but they are working on  getting a new space where they are better equip to handle that! 

  They just did a special tour / tasting for our Tourism Lethbridge group. 

  Sooo you can’t actually go to Little Gem (at least not without a pre-arranged appointment)—as it’s not actually even a storefront, *however*, you can find Little Gem in many restaurants and liquor stores in the Lethbridge region, and you can also order their products online. 

  • Find Little Gem products

  Another fun farm fact—one of the co-owners of Little Gem is actually married to the daughter of the owner of Prairie Hill Farms (remember, the big haskap farm / production facility!) so there’s something of a ‘Vineasty’ (vine dynasty, but not really vines lol) here. Fun! 

  (ok that was a lot of actuallys lol)

  Visit website

• 

• 07

  Mocha Local & Mocha Cabana

  320 5 St S, Lethbridge, AB T1J 2B5 / 317 4 St S, Lethbridge, AB T1J 1Z9

  Our last (sort of) stop on the Food Tour (I say sort of because you’ll see the blog page still scrolls on for quite some time, I have more Lethbridge things to talk about! lol) was to a food store and restaurant in downtown Lethbridge called Mocha Local and Mocha Cabana. 

  Both of these very locally-focused spots are owned by a passionate food entrepreneur named Angel, who—I don’t know how she does it—runs the food store, meal kits, an online farmers market featuring over 300 items, plus a bustling restaurant that is considered the city’s original farm to table restaurant with pages upon pages of their menu dedicated to highlighting the local farms and producers they feature in their dishes.

  It was neat to see different farms, production facilities, retail stores, and greenhouses outside of Lethbridge and then see how those farms and producers translate into dishes on a restaurant menu, or in a downtown food store.

  It’s all so, so connected—and it felt even more so connected in this region. 

  Every place we visited seemed to carry products from other farms and producers on the tour—there is a very clearly supportive agriculture community in Lethbridge County and southern Albertans—Albertans—and Canadians—are better off because of it. 

  Visit website

• 

• 08

  Italian Table at Sandman Signature Hotel

  320 Scenic Dr. S, Lethbridge, AB T1J 4B4 (inside Sandman Signature Hotel)

  Now you should definitely add Italian Table at the Sandman Signature Hotel close to downtown Lethbridge to your food tour itinerary. Technically it was the location of our dinner the day before our official tour day, but it also is big on locally-sourced and food made from scratch in-house. 

  Our meal here included cheese from Mountain View Farm (just an hour south west of Lethbridge), meats from Messinger Meats in Red Deer, locally-made pasta from Let’s Pasta produced right in Lethbridge, bread from Homestead Bakeshop in Fort McLeod, and they they make every sauce and basically everything from scratch.

  Speaking of the Sandman Signature Hotel, I actually stayed here on a different tourism visit to Lethbridge and loved their atrium / pool area—look at it! 

  The hotel is also very conveniently located—a few minutes walk to downtown, and just behind it you’ll find: 

  The longest & highest trestle bridge in the world!

  • View from behind the Sandman. Signature Hotel 320 Scenic Dr. S, Lethbridge, AB T1J 4B4

  You can’t visit Lethbridge without checking out *the* signature bridge. 

  This is a historical landmark (that is still an actively-used bridge to this day, with many trains crossing multiple times a day), first built in 1909.

  More than 100 years later, this bridge is still the longest and highest of its kind in the world reaching 5,327.625 feet long (1.6km) and 314 feet high (96 meters). Back in its time, it had been described by some as one of the wonders of the world! 

  Visit website

• 

• 09

  And visit Lethbridge Public Art!

  And while you’re by the bridge, be sure to check out this stunning public art sculpture titled: A Departure, by artist Ilan Sandler. 

  This sculpture was created in 2009 and features three types of driver train wheels that have crossed the Alberta CPR High-Level Bridge since 1909.

  From Lethbridge Public Art:

  “The sculpture components frame views of the bridge, the Oldman River Valley, the Galt Museum, and the University of Lethbridge.

  When facing the bridge, you can peer through the spokes of the large wheel to see its older counterpart, as if looking back in time.

  When standing between the bridge and the two steam engine wheels, you can see a late twentieth-century wheel appearing to roll into the future.

  Commissioned on the 100th Anniversary as a legacy of the Lethbridge Viaduct also known as the High-Level Bridge.”

  Though my friend Diane told me that the official Pokemon Go description for this piece is: “Fallen from the sky, are the remnants of an adjourn space ship, made of indestructible alloys infused with XM” lol (they do look space ship-like, but the trestle bridge and train wheels obviously make more sense lol. 

  Be sure to walk through the alleyways of Downtown Lethbridge to take in murals and Instagrammable Walls too! We didn’t have a ton of time during this visit (it was primarily focused on food), but we did get check out these two pieces—including one from popular Edmonton artist AJA Louden! 

  From Lethbridge Public Art:

  BELONGING by AJA Louden (2021)

  This mural represents the future, not the past. The piece depicts a mother and daughter, two women of colour, floating through a Lethbridge landscape that looks familiar but otherworldly. The figures would be framed by an ornate art nouveau-style border. There would be a combination of plants and gears in the area below the scene suggesting new technology. The work will capture a sense of wonder and invites the viewer to envision the future with an art nouveau reference to the past and the protagonist women being the scientists and explorers of the future. In the alley between 5 Street and 6 Street in the 300 block downtown. This was a pilot project with Public Art Lethbridge and the Heart of our City.

  JOHNNIE CHINOOK by Alex Pavlenko (2002)

  Acrylic on hardboard and stucco wall. Commissioned by the Downtown Business Revitalization Zone to beautify the core. A whimsical mural depicting a trumpeter competing against the wind.

  (You may not know, but Lethbridge is considered a “Windy City” with lots of chinooks). 

• 

• 10

  Alberta Birds of Prey Nature Centre

  2124 16 Ave, Coaldale, AB T1M 1J8

  And I just could not leave out some additional, non-food-focused but definite must-stops you should include in your southern Alberta itinerary! 

  In between our food tour stops we got to visit the Alberta Birds of Prey Foundation Nature Centre, which has been operating as a rescue and conservation organization since 1982. At this centre you can do a “Hawk Walk”—check out their owls, watch an eagle flying demonstration, visit their aviaries, walking tours, and ponds, and more. 

  We got to meet Grace, a five-year-old Bald Eagle who was rescued as a baby and may be ready to be released back into the wild in a few years. We were told that Bald Eagles get their “bald” (white) heads around age seven, which is their maturing age. 

  Eagles are very revered creatures in Indigenous culture as they are the only bird that can fly above the clouds. I only recently learned during a mural tour in Jasper (May 2022), that because of this, eagles are often considered messengers, taking messages up and back down from Creator. So it felt extra special to be in the presence of an eagle at this Nature Centre. 

  We were told the goal of the Nature Centre is always to rehabilitate and release.

  They do also have a breeding program to help with endangered bird species as well. 

  Along with with the flying demonstration, we got to meet some owls—like these owls below named Pancake and Oreo.

  Owls have twice as many neck bones than humans, which gives them a lot more movement in their heads. Owls can rotate their heads 270 degrees (including tilting their head back, like Oreo demonstrates below!) 

  We didn’t spend long at the Nature Centre because it was raining (cries lol) but they do tour groups and school groups and they also rely solely on donations and volunteerism to run. 

  • Learn more about the Alberta Birds of Prey Foundation

• 

• 11

  Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden

  Corner of 9th Ave S &, Mayor Magrath Dr S, Lethbridge, AB T1K 0C6

  And finally (!!!!) the last thing I’ll suggest you do during your visit to Lethbridge is a stop at the Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden. 

  I had no idea that Lethbridge has a very large Japanese population. In fact up until 1982, Lethbridge was home to the third highest population of Japanese Canadians in the country. This was largely due to Japanese people being sent to the area to work on farms and internment camps (not a great history).

  The garden acknowledges a lot of this history in their brand new centre (opened this year 2022). 

  The garden itself was created in 1967 during Canada’s Centennial, built to recognize “contributions made by citizens of Japanese ancestry to the multi-cultural community of Lethbridge, Alberta, and as a symbol of international friendship.”

  The garden is said to be a Canadian garden in a Japanese style, with the name deriving from the Japanese words Ni (from Nihon meaning Japan), ka from Kanada or Canada, and Yuko, which translates as “friendship” to mean “Japan-Canada friendship”.

  There is a ton of programming offered here, including yukata (kimono) dressing, taking part in a tea ceremony, picnics in the garden, Japanese language classes, yoga in the garden, and more. 

  The new centre even has a karaoke room you can book!

  I thought our Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden tour guide was great.

  He shared so many interesting tidbits:

  • One of the paths was designed to represent a mountain path, and when you walk along it you’ll walk past many Alberta trees and plants on a slight elevation
  • Many of the structures are built Japanese sukiya-style, meaning no nails or screws are used. 
  • The Pavilion, bell and other structures were also initially constructed in Kyoto, Japan, built first there, then disassembled, shipped to Lethbridge, and reassembled.
  • I loved learning about the Japanese technique of “borrowed view”—which is a design technique that incorporates other aspects of the existing landscape into the design of the garden. The garden itself is actually not that big, but using borrowed view from nearby Henderson Lake, it makes the garden look really big, like the garden waters go on forever!
  • The shape of the Garden is also not meant to be a full circle. This is said to lean on a Japanese idea of perspective—when you walk in you have one perspective, and then when you walk out the same way, it’s not the same experience because you should now have a different perspective leaving.

  We were told that the local  Japanese Society runs the garden today (but the garden itself is owned by the City of Lethbridge). It’s a beautiful garden and depending on the time of year, you can find different events and activities. 

  • You can use this audio tour to guide your visit!
  Visit website

• 

This story has been adapted from an original article available at: https://linda-hoang.com/explore-southern-alberta-plan-your-self-guided-food-tour-in-and-around-lethbridge/.