Chorney-Booth: Penny Crown introduces a taste of NYC tavern culture to Marda Loop

Strange (and wonderful) things are afoot in Marda Loop. Over the past year, the neighbourhood has grown from a construction-dominated headache into one of the hottest restaurant zones in the city. All the way from the junction of Crowchild Trail and 33rd Avenue S.W. to 14th Street, great restaurants representing everything from French to tacos have been sprouting up at a dizzying pace. The latest to emerge is Penny Crown, a New York-style tavern that will only strengthen Marda Loop’s status as a destination for foodies.

Penny Crown is the newest addition to restaurateur Tony Migliarese’s growing empire, which already includes the outrageously popular DOPO, Bar Rocca and La Hacienda, all of which sit on the same block on 34th Avenue. This new development in Marda Loop is the work of developer Rod Leonard, who offered Migliarese a new restaurant space across the street and half a block up from DOPO. Migliarese knew his team — including executive chef David Leeder and beverage director Derek Grandpre — were ready to expand, and they set to dreaming up a new concept to complement DOPO without necessarily directly competing with it.

“We had the staff and quality of people, and we knew Rod was going to build us a beautiful space,” Migliarese says, adding he didn’t really hesitate to accept the opportunity to claim the space. “The idea for what it would be came from a trip to New York.”

Before entering the DOPO fray, Leeder was working as executive sous chef at Thomas Keller’s Per Se restaurant in New York City, and he fell in love with that city’s upscale taverns, which combine French influences with casual American classics. Noticing a gap in the Calgary market, Leeder and Migliarese set out to develop a restaurant that builds on the DOPO model — a small but exciting restaurant with unfussy but superbly executed food — with a NYC tavern twist.

“Tony and I were trying to figure out what the neighbourhood needed and what would work in the area and build the culture up,” Leeder says. “After living in New York, my heart was set on the idea of doing a New York-style tavern like Minetta or Red Hook as a love letter to these great restaurants.”

The restaurant — like DOPO, located slightly underground on the lower level of the building — makes guests feel like they could be anywhere: New York, London, Paris, or, of course, Calgary. The cozy warren, complete with a pressed tin ceiling, luxurious curved bar, and plenty of exposed brick, also feels like it has existed for decades, despite being a new build. There are about 70 seats, including a covered veranda with space reserved for walk-ins.

The glamour of the room is matched by Leeder’s menu, which he intentionally keeps fairly small. The chef has mastered the art of developing a basic-looking menu, while overdelivering on the actual dishes in terms of both technique and flavour. The early runaway hit is his burger, which comes in at $32 — steep pricing by Calgary standards, though worth every penny. From the housemade duck fat-enriched bun to the Lakeside Farmstead’s wagyu-cross beef patty topped with caramelized onions and housemade mock American cheese made with comté, gruyere and Quebec cheese curds, this burger is a work of art, far surpassing almost every other restaurant-style burger in town.

The burger is an emblem of Leeder’s talent in making seemingly pedestrian dishes sing and sets the tone for the rest of the menu. There are baked scallops ($16 each) topped with pepperoni butter, mussels cocotte served in a lemony broth punctuated with sherry, dill, and brown butter ($31), steak frites swimming in a pool of peppercorn dijon jus (MP), and Calabrian fried chicken with nduja aioli ($33), calling back to DOPO’s Italian roots.

Grandpre takes care of the drinks: Expect an appropriately classic cocktail list and nice wines as well as beer (this is a tavern) and both white and red house wine selections — always a must at Migliarese’s restaurants.

Penny Crown is located at 1926 34th Ave. S.W. and can be reached through pennycrownyyc.com. The restaurant is open daily from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m.

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In other restaurant news, chef Leroy Borrega, formerly of Shokunin and more recently, Maven, launched a special modern Filipino event at his new digs at The Wilde on 27. ORAS is billed as “Filipino Omakase” (although it’s more of a chef’s tasting menu experience than traditional face-to-face omakase), celebrating Filipino flavours as interpreted through fine dining techniques and Canadian ingredients.

Expect somewhere in the neighbourhood of 10 courses (with optional wine pairings) delving into flavours of adobo, ube, fermentation, calamansi, and other hallmarks of Filipino cuisine. The word “oras” translates to “time,” referring to the time it takes to slow cook the food, the chef’s journey towards bridging the flavours between the country of his birth and his current home, and for the meal to unfold (budget three or four hours — it is a lot of food). The next ORAS dinner takes place on Dec. 28, and reservations can be made through thewilderooftop.com.

Elizabeth Chorney-Booth can be reached at elizabooth@gmail.com. Follow her on Instagram at @elizabooth or sign up for her newsletter at hungrycalgary.substack.com.