Be transported to the heart of the forest at Sauvage \u2014chef Tracy Little\u2019s Canmore restaurant dedicated to all things local and wild.<\/p>\n
Chef Tracy Little\u2019s Instagram handle is @WildLittleChef \u2014 clearly a play on her surname, but also a clever summation of what makes her tick, both personally and professionally. Raised in northern Alberta, near the city of Fort McMurray, Little grew up hunting and foraging with her forester father, first because it was practical \u2014 why spend money at the grocery store when there\u2019s perfectly good food growing and available right beside you? Later, the young culinarian developed an appreciation for food that tells a story about the place it comes from. That passion for hyper-local food that evokes a multi-sensory experience is the driving force behind Sauvage, Little\u2019s fine-dining spot in Alberta, in the mountain town of Canmore, just east of Banff National Park.<\/p>\n
Like many Canadian chefs, Little started with a fairly conventional path towards professional cooking. She went to culinary school and began paying her dues in restaurant kitchens. She eventually landed in the kitchen of the remote luxurious Milton Lake Lodge in northern Saskatchewan, where she took to foraging ingredients to fill in the gap between food deliveries and add some extra flair to the menu. Later, after heading back south, Little spent some time in what she calls\u201cregular restaurants\u201d \u2014 most notably, Rouge, in Calgary \u2014 but city living didn\u2019t suit her and she couldn\u2019t resist the call of the mountains.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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<\/div>\nWhat Little jokingly refers to as \u201cthe full Tracy experience\u201d emerged in 2019, at the sensory, in Canmore. There, as executive chef, she helped launch the upscale restaurant and impressed adventurous eaters with her tasting menus, including the three-course gourmet meal simply called \u201cTrust Me.\u201d But the journey towards Sauvage really began in 2020, when Little\u2019s family assisted her in purchasing Tapas, a well-established and much-beloved restaurant in Canmore. To play it safe, she stuck with the restaurant\u2019s name and Spanish concept, hinting at what was to come with a high-concept, mountain-themed tasting menu that in-the-know diners enjoyed while those at the tables next to them dined on traditional croquetas and patatas bravas.<\/p>\n
\u201cI called it the boil-a-frog method because we made the changes at Tapas so slowly that people didn\u2019t realize we were turning up the temperature on them,\u201d Little confides.<\/p>\n
She finally took the plunge and rebranded Tapas as Sauvage in September 2021. While \u00e0 la carte offerings remain, the real star of the show is the tasting menu \u2014an ever-changing multi-course meal that takes diners on a virtual walk through the forest and evokes the smells, sights and flavours of the Rocky Mountains.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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Sauvage\u2019s food is not rustic. Little\u2019s style falls into the tradition of fine dining, though she uses classic techniques on uniquely mountain-sourced ingredients.<\/p>\n
Chicken, beef and conventional pork are out, as these meats aren\u2019t usually farmed sustainably or indigenous to the BowValley, where Canmore is situated. Instead, the chef opts for bison, elk, wild boar, freshwater fish and yak, all sourced from small farms that she trusts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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And while animal proteins are an important part of the menu, Little also gets considerable fanfare for her clever use of foraged ingredients. Utilized as garnishes or flavour enhancers, the found ingredients\u2014 such as spruce, lovage, wild caraway and mint \u2014 appear alongside traditional fine-dining indulgences like truffle, demi-glace and mimolette cheese. Little and her kitchen staff (and, usually, also her border collie, who is always keen for exercise) goon daily foraging excursions, sometimes up to higher elevations, to look for wild lichen, though she notes there are plenty of goodies too, lurking in the empty lots and river banks of the town, invisible to those without her expert eye.<\/p>\n
\u201cForaging is a lot like cooking in that you are constantly learning,\u201d Little explains. \u201cIf I\u2019m confused by something,I won\u2019t feed it to other people until I\u2019m absolutely sure it\u2019s safe. It\u2019s not like riding a bicycle because if you don\u2019t keep [in mind] what ingredients look like and what they taste like, you\u2019ll forget.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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\u201dNot everyone loves Little\u2019s wild-first approach \u2014 she says she\u2019s had guests walk out after seeing the menu \u2014 but having her own place means she can stick to her beliefs, which include honouring environmental sustainability and indigenous ways of eating. Beyond that, her vision has always been about creating that taste of place and offering visitors a completely immersive way to experience the land that is so dear to her own heart. Sauvage can only exist exactly where it is \u2014 if Little was cooking anywhere else, the food and the feeling wouldn\u2019t be the same.<\/p>\n
\u201c[Sauvage] has given me more confidence to just put myself out there, and all of a sudden what I\u2019m doing is being accepted,\u201d Little says. \u201cWhen I\u2019m feeding visitors who are experiencing the mountains for the first time, it\u2019s an opportunity for me to really give them that sense of indelible awe because they can either eat an ingredient that they\u2019ve walked by or taste, more deeply, where they are.\u201d<\/p>\n
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