The small towns of southern Alberta may not always be the most stylish spots when it comes to cuisine, but oh my, there's pie.
Along the Cowboy Trail, a pretty route that skirts the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, there's a lot of cowboy cuisine on the menu. But what's particularly plentiful on this Prairie road trip is pie – saskatoon berry pie, famous apple custard pies, tart prairie berry pies and sweet potato pies, served up at farm-gate cafés, historic houses and small town bakeries. I'm hankering to taste them all.
There's something about the wide, rolling landscape here that draws you down the back roads into serious cowboy country. Pie is the dessert of choice in these parts and has been ever since the first cowpokes trailed their rangy longhorns up across the U.S. border into the wide, unfenced swathes of Alberta ranchland in the 1880s.
The first sweet offering I try is a hand-held pie – dubbed Dead Fly Pie – a version of the British Eccles cake, and a throwback to the campfire “fried pies” once served on the range. I find it in Black Diamond, a sleepy old coal town next to Turner Valley, where they first struck oil in 1914. The gushers are gone and the populace is a quirky collection of artists, musicians and urban escapees. The Dead Fly Pie, from the Black Diamond Bakery, tastes considerably better than advertised, with layers of crisp puffed pastry studded with sweet dried currants and encrusted with sugar. It goes down well with a dark roast from Ian Tyson's Navajo Mug coffee shop.
Marv Garriott of Marv's Classic Soda Shop performs a decent version of the King's That's All RIght, Mama when you order the Elvis Burger.— Cinda Chavich for The Globe and Mail
We make the obligatory stop at Marv's Classic Soda Shop for a root beer soda – hand-muddled by Marv himself – and snoop through his collection of old-fashioned candy. While we twirl on the stools and sip our sodas, someone in a pink vinyl booth in the back orders the Elvis Burger and, as advertised, Marv doffs his soda jerk cap, grabs his guitar and launches into a surprisingly decent rendition of the King's That's All Right, Mama.
If the pie and coffee and ice cream aren't enough to keep you going, you can always stop in Longview for the famous beef (and now bison or elk) jerky, dried to chewy perfection in a converted baker's oven by the Kirk family at the Longview Jerky Shop.
From Longview, the trail heads south to Cardston via Waterton Lakes National Park – true Alberta cattle country. It's one of the prettiest rural routes in the land – carved through the last of the native fescue grasslands of the Eastern Slopes, with the mountains rising sharply to the west, jagged and blue along the horizon. We pass the famous Bar U Ranch – now a national historic site – imagining former ranch hand and outlaw Harry Longabaugh (the Sundance Kid) enjoying the ranch cook's famous apple pies. Next door is the historic EP (Edward Prince) ranch, once owned by the Prince of Wales, where they surely served pie fit for a king.
At the Twin Butte general store, a lone prairie watering hole and post office, we share a plate of perfect nachos, and tip a frosty margarita at a picnic table outside, while a local rancher describes his favourite beef jerky, from the butcher in nearby Cowley.
