Illustration by Fig & Ginger, drawn from the review. The venue's own photo is on its way.
Restaurant in Beltline (17th Avenue), Calgary
Model Milk
The Old Dairy on 17th
Before it fed people dinner, the building on 17th Avenue processed milk. Model Milk kept the name and the bones of the old dairy and turned it into a restaurant that feels built to last. Seventeenth is a street of patios, shots and noise. This is the grown-up on the block.
Justin Leboe runs it, a chef with a shelf of awards, including two Pinnacle Awards as Canadian Chef of the Year, in 2013 and 2015. What I like is the question his team says it asks every day. Not what should we cook, but what do we want to eat. That is how a cook thinks when nobody from marketing is in the room. The menu moves, but the regulars keep talking about the same things: a sharp beef tartare, fried chicken that has built a reputation all its own, a good steak and an apple pie worth an extra half hour at the table. Ingredients are local and the preparation is kept simple, which is much harder than it sounds.
Doors open at five every night. Go early on a weeknight, before the avenue gets loud, take a seat at the bar if one is free, and ask what the kitchen is excited about. Then order the fried chicken anyway.
- Order this
- Beef tartare, fried chicken, a steak, apple pie
- The damage
- $$$
- Go
- Early on a weeknight, before the avenue fills up
- Find it
- 308 17 Ave SW, Calgary, AB T2S 0A3
- Website
- modelmilk.ca