What will you eat this Christmas (2020)? Here are some options in Calgary to order Christmas dinner. All the goodness without the mess!
Christmas dinner in Calgary comes in three flavours: book a restaurant, order the feast to go, or host it yourself. All three can be wonderful — and all three go sideways if you start planning in mid-December. Here's how we approach the big meal, learned from many Calgary Christmases of our own.
Rule One: Book Earlier Than You Think
Whatever route you choose, the calendar is the whole game. Restaurants that serve on Christmas Day fill their reservation books weeks ahead, and most takeout Christmas dinners have hard order deadlines — often four or five days before pickup — because kitchens prep to exact numbers. Even turkeys sell through at the popular butchers and markets. Our rule of thumb: have your Christmas dinner plan locked by the end of November, and confirm details like pickup times and reheating instructions directly with the kitchen.
Option One: Dine Out
A restaurant Christmas means zero dishes and someone else's gravy-timing stress. Calgary's hotel dining rooms are the traditional home of the restaurant Christmas — the city's grand hotels, including century-old downtown landmarks, have been setting festive tables for generations, and hotel kitchens are built for holiday volume. Beyond the hotels, a rotating cast of neighbourhood restaurants opens for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day service each year. Expect fixed menus, seating times, and prepayment — and book the moment menus are announced.
Option Two: The Takeout Feast
This is the option that's quietly become a Calgary tradition of its own: a full turkey dinner — bird, trimmings, sides, dessert — prepped by a professional kitchen and picked up cold or hot in the days before Christmas. Hotels, catering kitchens, markets, and beloved local institutions like Heritage Park and the Calgary Zoo have all offered versions of the feast-to-go in past years. You get restaurant-quality food, your own dining room, and a fraction of the work. Watch the order deadlines, ask whether it arrives ready-to-eat or reheat-at-home, and don't be shy about adding extras — someone else's stuffing is always better.
Option Three: Host It Yourself
There's still nothing like a house that smells of roast turkey. If you're hosting, Calgary's markets, butchers, and specialty grocers are your allies — order the bird early, and consider outsourcing a course or two (a market's pies or a caterer's appetizers rob no one of Christmas spirit). Hosting is also the option that scales: seats can always be squeezed in for one more, which matters in a city where so many of us have family arriving from out of town.
Where to Look, by Area
Downtown and the Beltline hold the hotel dining rooms and special-occasion restaurants. Inner-city dining districts — think Mission, Kensington, and Inglewood — are where independent restaurants post their holiday menus and meal kits. The suburbs bring the hotel-and-casino dinner packages, the market feasts, and the family-style options, often with the easiest parking and pickup of the bunch. Wherever you live, there's a good Christmas dinner within a short drive — one of many small reasons we love this city's communities at holiday time.
Our Honest Advice
Pick the option that matches your December, not your ideals. Hosting a houseful the same week you're moving, renovating, or working flat out is how holiday memories get ruined; a picked-up feast on your own table is not cheating. And if this is your first Christmas in a new-to-you Calgary home — something we get to be part of every year — keep it simple, light the candles, and let the house do the rest. (Still looking for that home? The current listings are a fine thing to browse with a post-dinner coffee.)
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