Edmonton for first-time visitors

Best restaurants

Edmonton's restaurant scene is not built for tourists, and that is its strength. The city eats like a place that works for a living — a downtown tower spine where the after-work crowd lands, an Old Strathcona stretch where students and twenty-somethings push the late hours, a 124 Street corridor where the independent kitchens cluster, and a Whyte Avenue edge where the breakfast and lunch counters do the heavy lifting. The twelve places below are arranged by rank, not by neighbourhood, and they cover the working spread of a real city's eating: a downtown tower restaurant, a breakfast house, an American room east of 95 Street, a butcher-counter lunch, a Korean staple in transition, a 124 Street burger, a sandwich-and-soup counter near the university, a daytime sandwich shop, a daytime breakfast and coffee room, a Mexican counter on 101 Street, a Bonnie Doon steak house, and a pizza shop near campus. Skip the chain rooms in West Edmonton Mall; the locals eat here.