DOPO
Marda Loop
You reach DOPO down a set of stairs and past a heavy curtain, into a low-ceilinged room that owner Tony Migliarese built to feel like the basement kitchen of an Italian grandmother — herringbone floors, candlelight, warmth. The cooking is a refined take on southern Italian comfort: hand-rolled pastas, a lavishly layered lasagna, luxe ingredients handled with restraint rather than flash. Migliarese takes his cues from his late father's hospitality-first approach, and it shows in a room that wants you to stay. It is generous, unpretentious food served with real care, and one of the hardest reservations in the city for good reason.
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Bar Gigi
Crescent Heights
Bar Gigi has only twenty seats, which is part of why it became one of Calgary's most talked-about rooms almost the moment it opened. Three friends — Alessandro Chinea, Jaden Kanomata and Kayla Blomquist — pooled their savings, took over a former fish-and-chips shop on Edmonton Trail, and now run a tightly edited menu of creative shared plates that changes with the season. A couple of things never leave: the buttery prawn toast and a charred cabbage with hot mustard and sesame. Ex-fine-dining technique meets neighbourhood ease here, and the smallness is the point — it lets the kitchen cook exactly what it wants, for exactly as many people as it can look after.
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Gatsby's
Downtown
Gatsby's leans, unabashedly, into glamour: a two-storey art deco room of black and gold and chandeliers, entered through jewel-toned drapes, where chef de cuisine Asher Wilson cooks tasting menus of three, six or nine courses. Wilson trained at Toronto's Michelin-recognized La Banane before returning west, and his cooking pairs classic French technique — brining, poaching, sauce-making — with the aromatic spice of his Jewish and Indian roots. Dishes like a wild-mushroom soufflé or lobster with bone marrow arrive with real precision beneath the theatre. Opened in 2025, it is the most openly luxurious fine-dining arrival Calgary has seen in some time, and the cooking earns the setting.
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