F O OD
WALK ON THE WILD SIDE C
hef Tracy Little’s Instagram handle is @WildLittleChef — clearly a play on her surname, but also a clever summation of what makes her tick, both personally and professionally. Raised in northern Alberta, near the city of Fort McMurray, Little grew up hunting and foraging with her forester father, first because it was practical — why spend money at the grocery store when there’s perfectly good food growing and available right beside you? Later, the young culinarian developed an appreciation for food that tells a story about the place it comes from. That passion for hyper-local food that evokes a multi-sensory experience is the driving force behind Sauvage, Little’s fine-dining spot in Alberta, in the mountain town of Canmore, just east of Banff National Park. Like many Canadian chefs, Little started with a fairly conventional path towards professional cooking. She went to culinary school and began paying her dues in restaurant kitchens. She eventually landed in the kitchen of the remote,
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luxurious Milton Lake Lodge in northern Saskatchewan, where she took to foraging ingredients to fill in the gap between food deliveries and add some extra flair to the menu. Later, after heading back south, Little spent some time in what she calls “regular restaurants” — most notably, Rouge, in Calgary — but city living didn’t suit her and she couldn’t resist the call of the mountains. What Little jokingly refers to as “the full Tracy experience” emerged in 2019, at The Sensory, in Canmore. There, as executive chef, she helped launch the upscale restaurant and impressed adventurous eaters with her tasting menus, including the three-course gourmet meal simply called “Trust Me.” But the journey towards Sauvage really began in 2020, when Little’s family assisted her in purchasing Tapas, a well-established and much-beloved restaurant in Canmore. To play it safe, she stuck with the restaurant’s name and Spanish concept, hinting at what was to come with a high-concept, mountainthemed tasting menu that in-the-know
diners enjoyed while those at the tables next to them dined on traditional croquetas and patatas bravas. “I called it the boil-a-frog method because we made the changes at Tapas so slowly that people didn’t realize we were turning up the temperature on them,” Little confides. She finally took the plunge and rebranded Tapas as Sauvage in September 2021. While à la carte offerings remain, the real star of the show is the tasting menu — an ever-changing multi-course meal that takes diners on a virtual walk through the forest and evokes the smells, sights and flavours of the Rocky Mountains. Sauvage’s food is not rustic. Little’s style falls into the tradition of fine dining, though she uses classic techniques on uniquely mountain-sourced ingredients. >
OPPOSITE PAGE: Venison tartare, lightly seared, is crusted with lavender and coriander, then topped with confit egg yolk, cornichon pickle, shallot and cricket aïoli.
All photos by Georgi Silckerodt
Be transported to the heart of the forest at Sauvage — chef Tracy Little’s Canmore restaurant dedicated to all things local and wild. By Elizabeth Chorney-Booth
