In a sea of eccentric and delicious food, entrepreneur Joanna Pariseau, CEO of Taste the City and her team created a free Stampede tasting guide in less than 24 hours that escorts consumers through the finest grub on the grounds giving stampede goers a walking food festival experience.
After being invited to judge The Calgary Stampede food this year, Pariseau and her business partner Melissa Boerger assembled the tour after being inspired by the top food winners for 2024 at The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth.
Taste the City is a service that offers planned, high-quality food tastings in neighbourhoods around the city. The tasting digitally guides customers through some of the city’s most esteemed restaurants, with the added element of surprise as foodies never know where the next stop will be.
Each food vendor at Stampede is judged on a rubric consisting of taste, presentation, value and likelihood of recommending it to a friend.
“We could really just leverage what we already do, easily guide people and promote vendors, and help them drive traffic to their venues.” says Pariseau
You can book two different routes of Stampede tastings on tastethecity.ca. One route is an international-focused tasting, and the second is your typical Stampede comfort food.
The guide is completely free, all you need to do is book online with your desired start time and you will receive texts in 15-minute increments on where to head for the next award-winning vendor.
Guiding you through the best of the best on the Stampede grounds in a carefully planned route allowing you to walk in sequence between vendors. The service aims to create an easy and unique way of trying new Stampede food without the extra stress.
“Rather than having a list of all the places where you figure out where to go and how to get there. We actually curate it into a really easy way for you to do that,” said Pariseau.
Each of the stampede tastings they have mapped out will cost about $90 and will feed around four people, according to Pariseau.
“What’s great about all the winners is it’s not your standard Stampede food that you get every single year. Everything has a twist,” she said.
The Stampede tasting is currently in a beta testing stage, and should it be successful, Pariseau hopes to collaborate with vendors to make a pre-guided food package next year to continue making the hunt for food on the busy Stampede grounds seamless.
Other plans cooking up for Taste the City include expanding and bringing tours to even more neighbourhoods around the city and creating exciting spaces for Calgarians to discover new foods and restaurants.
