Alberta’s unpretentious steakhouse to the stars

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You might well expect to find the best steak in Canada in Alberta. But it might surprise you to find the best steak in Alberta served with a Moroccan twist at an unpretentious, family-run restaurant tucked in the foothills.

Longview Steakhouse, 45 minutes south of Calgary, is now a destination for foodies. The drop dead gorgeous backdrop of the Rockies is compelling, but gourmands come for the cuisine. In 2023, Yelp reviews ranked the steakhouse as the #4 restaurant in Alberta and #37 in Canada.

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“I think the biggest challenge in Alberta,” chef Karim Belmoufid chuckles, “is everyone knows how to cook a steak, everyone’s a connoisseur of steak, and it’s really tricky here because we’ve got ranchers and they are like the king of the mountain on this topic.”

On arrival at their restaurant, perched on a hilltop in the village of Longview, I’m warmly greeted by several members of the extended family; the patriarch Driss and matriarch Sigrid, their sons Karim and Samir, even two wee granddaughters. Views of the Rockies from the panoramic windows are breathtaking, in the real sense of the word. A cup of hot coffee laced with cinnamon set before me, alongside a heaping platter of freshly baked croissants with marmalade and jam, cause me to sigh out loud.

This family understands hospitality at a DNA level. Driss was born in Morocco in the Middle Atlas mountains near Fez, a touristy area, and worked at Hotel Suisse. In the 1970s, he migrated to Montreal and there met Sigrid, a German immigrant, at the Four Seasons hotel where they both worked. The pair relocated to Calgary in the mid ‘80s where they launched their first of several restaurants, Le Chateaubriand, a French fine dining restaurant.

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“Neither of them were cooks. They were in food and beverage management, or the dining room management,” Karim explains. “And mom was accounting; she’s still accounting. We call her our finance minister,” he chortles. “So you have the Moroccan flair with the German discipline.”

After several restaurant openings and closings — in Calgary, Longview, even Crowsnest Pass in Alberta’s far south — this extended family now finds itself fully deployed running a very popular steakhouse in the heart of ranch country. Their original Longview steakhouse was described by Conde Nast magazine as “an old ranch-house that could double for a school canteen” when the magazine recognized it as one of the world’s best 15 steak restaurants in 2013.

In the early days, Karim explains, it wasn’t uncommon for locals to arrive at the restaurant on horseback. The newer building is larger, but it’s far from pretentious; there’s a taxidermy turkey in the front foyer, live chickens have free range on the front yard. But a helicopter landing pad has been built on site, and with Longview increasingly a destination for movie producers, you’ll see more than an occasional star at the restaurant noshing on steak. Just don’t expect to find photos of famous customers on the wall.

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“There are no pictures on the wall of people who’ve been here,” Karim reports. “If you’re coming here because this famous guy ate here, then I don’t think you should be here.”

The steakhouse was initially launched as a summer project for Karim, Samir and their middle brother, Tarik — all teenagers at the time — while their parents were trying to make a go of a restaurant in Crowsnest Pass. The boys started the Longview Steakhouse serving burgers and steak, their mother recalls with a fond smile. And the boys used a different name than their parents’ establishment for the restaurant, Karim explains, “because we didn’t want our mistakes to affect our parents.”

Roll the clock forward and Tarik (trained at SAIT’s culinary school in Calgary) is the chef behind a celebrated restaurant in Montreal, Bistro 1843, and Samir and Karim (trained at the Stratford chef school in Ontario) are running a steakhouse where people wait months and months and months to get reservations.

At the steakhouse, Karim (44) runs the kitchen and Samir (35) runs the dining room, and when I ask who’s in charge, their response? The customer. And they seem to mean it.

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Their answer smacks of conventional wisdom about hyper-hospitality, told to us by those who know how to run chic restaurants. Most recently, Will Guidara, co-owner of New York restaurant Eleven Madison Park, made the charts with his book, Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect.

As becomes increasingly obvious over the course of our conversation, when the Belmoufid family speaks of authentic hospitality, their experiences are far removed from the pretentiousness of New York City.

“It’s the 45-minute drive out from Calgary. It’s the Foothills. It’s the Rocky Mountains,” Karim explains, “It sets a tone.” Expectations are high by the time they arrive, but the second-generation brothers hustle to impress.

“When we started, when you have nothing … You’ve got nothing to lose,” Karim says. “You create, you develop, you push boundaries, you do things because you’re trying to find your space. There comes a point now where, you’ve attacked, you’ve created, you’re established. The next generation is different; because now we have something to lose.”

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Speaking in sports metaphors comes easily to Karim, who was recruited to play college basketball in South Dakota; at six foot four inches, he would have been a natural. As we talk through the family’s future in the restaurant business — his own teenaged kids are now working at the steakhouse — I sense he’s tired of playing defence and is angling for another offensive play.

No one expects to find a Michelin starred restaurant in these foothills, he says.

“Can we be an international destination? Can we, from Longview, Alberta — not having the brigades that other restaurants have, not having the fancy equipment — can we be a disrupter in the business?” he posits. “Can we redefine the business model?”

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