Taste of Edmonton is celebrating 40 years of featuring cuisines from different parts of the world.
Many restaurants returned to the festival. The oldest returnee: Japanese Village.
Japanese Village joined Taste of Edmonton in its first year – in 1984 – and has been a lifelong partner of the festival.
Ten Kai, the general manager and son of the owner, has personally been with the festival since 1999 and has seen a lot of changes through the years.
“It’s just the diversity of the different cuisine that you see here,” Kai told CityNews. “So much diversity, you can get pretty much anything you want here and that wasn’t the case a long time ago. I think that’s the number one change and I think that’s a fantastic change.”
This year’s festival featured 11 newcomer restaurants, including Ribeye Butcher Shop, part of the Canadian Brewhouse group of companies.
The butcher shop also operates a mini restaurant that offers burgers and fries.
“It’s the biggest food festival in Alberta and we wanted to showcase our brand and it’s been going crazy since we started on Thursday,” said Patrick Kehdy, regional director of Canadian Brewhouse.
Taste of Edmonton features 51 restaurants this year with 88 brand-new menus to try. The event runs until July 28.