I’m not sure where you’re reading these words, but here’s some helpful context: Canadian Prairie winters are COLD. Once Christmas wraps up for another year, we Albertans can look forward to the bone-chilling months of January, February, and March. If you grew up here, you’re used to it; if you moved here, I hope you did your research before signing a lease.
While it’s easy to bellyache over the cold, a number of fun festivals have sprung up during the frozen months of the year to help people come together, get out into their community, and embrace our Canadian winters.
Many large Canadian cities have winter-themed events, from the Flying Canoe Volant Festival in Edmonton (where I live), to Winnipeg’s Festival du Voyageur, to the longstanding Carnaval de Québec in Québec City.
And in Calgary, you really can’t go wrong with the city’s annual YYC Hot Chocolate Festival.
Hot chocolate festival, you say?
Calgary’s Hot Chocolate Festival has been running for over a decade, and it’s grown into a large, city-wide event that doubles as a fundraiser for Meals on Wheels. Cafes and restaurants from across the city create signature hot chocolates that compete for bragging rights, and the public gets to vote for their favourites.
Because this is Calgary, and Calgary loves the shiny things, there’s an app and a website that provide a listing of cafes/restaurants, drinks, and prices, so it’s easy to make a plan to visit a few different participating shops that are clustered together, or find a lonely outpost in a suburban strip mall.
If you’re vegan or lactose-intolerant, lots of cafes can accommodate with dairy alternatives. Personally, I just bring along a box of chewable Lactaid tablets and hope for the best.
Trends? There are a few
I’ve made a habit of visiting the festival with my daughter, who loves hot chocolate and enjoys a good road trip down to Calgary for a long weekend of café hopping. Over the years, we’ve seen trends show up across multiples cafes, with a wave of salted caramel hot chocolates one year, and spicy hot chocolates the next.
This year’s menu has lots of fruity hot chocolates and those based on the Dubai chocolate pistachio trend that has been all over the internets.
Amidst the zany and fancy options, there’s still room for classic hot chocolates that are rich and creamy and don’t try to mess with a good thing.
NEAROF’s Picks of the Year
In the few days we were in Calgary this year, my daughter and I tried a total of seven different hot chocolates. Of those, we have a selection of picks we can heartily recommend.
First: Higher Ground’s Nanaimo Bar Hot Chocolate ($6.35 for a 12 oz. cup) was the first one we tried this year, and it set the bar high. If you’re Canadian, you know what a Nanaimo bar is. Everything you’d expect is there: the chocolate milk, the coconut, the chunks of Nanaimo bar topping the drink. And best of all, the kitchen wizards at Higher Ground have somehow made a whipped cream that tastes like the middle custard layer of a Nanaimo bar. Bravo! We visited the Kensington location, but the Capitol Hill shop is also participating.
Second: Hexagon Café’s Mississippi Mud Mug ($7 per cup) is rich and decadent and over the top. The description in the app explains that they use a butterscotch chocolate sauce as the base, and build from there. They rim the cup with chocolate pudding (wait, what?), then top it with a holy trinity of chocolate caramel whipped cream, a generous chunk of pecan brownie, and a squiggle of caramel drizzle. It’s both very sweet and beguilingly complex. We got ours in to-go cups, but I feel like this one is best enjoyed in a mug in the café. It’s just down the block from Higher Ground in Kensington, so this makes for a good one-two evening visit.
Third: The Macaron Mocha from Aggudo ($9.99 per cup), also in the Kensington area, is as tasty as it is sneaky. Strictly speaking, it’s a mocha, not a hot chocolate, as there’s espresso in there (yay!). It’s made with both chocolate and coconut syrups, and is topped with a macaron that sits atop the whipped cream. There’s something fun about how they’ve played with the common confusion between macarons (a classic French treat made with almond flour and meringue, piped with a filling) and macaroons (cookies usually made with shredded coconut that look like baked coconut meringue lumps). Very tasty, regardless.
Four: The Dubai Bling hot chocolate from Euphoria Café ($7 per cup) is one of several drinks that take the chocolate pistachio route this yet. It’s described as having a drinking chocolate and steamed milk base, crushed pistachios on top, and a drizzle of bright green pistachio sauce. It wasn’t as sweet as I’d expected, and the crushed pistachios added a curious texture all the way to the bottom of the cup. My daughter liked it more than I did, but I thought it was fine.
Honourable mention: The Strawberry Blonde from Phil and Sebastian ($6.75 for a 12 oz cup) is made using caramelized white chocolate and strawberry milk. I love white chocolate. My daughter does not. So this is my pick, and she wants nothing to do with it. It was sweet and fruity and creamy, but also subtle and understated in a way that a lot of the other hot chocolates at the fest are not. It’s not showy, and it’s not the most Instagrammable drink on the list — but if you like a warm mug of sweet strawberry comfort, this is a solid choice.
The Details
Date: Runs annually all February long. So get a move on if you want to check it out.
Price: Depends on the hot chocolate. I’m used to paying between $6-10 per cup. For boozy hot chocolates, expect to pay more. Use the app or website to research your options so you don’t get sticker shock.
Availability: Locations are everywhere in and around Calgary. Hot spots for hitting lots of different shops in an afternoon include downtown, Sunnyside/Kensington, Inglewood, and the Beltline. But don’t let that stop you from exploring more widely.
Nutrition: Maybe don’t get too hung up about the calories. If there’s ever a time to say yes to whipped cream on top, this is it. (Especially if it’s Nanaimo bar custard whipped cream. Seriously, how did they do that?)
Verdict: One of my favourite things to do during a long Alberta winter.
