Food Notes: Epic Market finds home on prime Whyte Avenue corner

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Luke Butterworth is finally able to exhale.

The COO of Epic Market has been waiting for his new food hall to open at Station Market on the corner of Gateway Boulevard and Whyte Avenue for a number of years now. Originally announced by Beljan Development back in 2020, the building constructed of Sea Cans has slowly gained businesses over time, but Epic’s opening has dragged on. The two-level hall officially threw its doors open in the middle of August, showcasing a number of different food vendors on one level, a patio, two bars, and an upstairs area doubling as an events space with a Chef’s Table for private functions.

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“It’s really been a culmination of years learning what works and what doesn’t work,” says Butterworh, who is co-owner of Epic with Jennifer Keith. “We learned a lot when we were running 5th Street Food Hall downtown. We had a good two-plus years of running a food hall-style operation, which we’d never done before. Prior to that I was primarily in tech startups, and as with any startup, it sort of morphed. We got really passionate about different components of what we were doing, which ended up being event hosting. We also learned a ton, even from the layout downtown, about how we would structure things if we got to change them. So from all of those learnings over two years, we took all of that and we put it into this place.”

Epic Market boasts five different food stations, with Italian, Asian fusion, chop house, Mexican and French Canadian cuisine available over both floors. Unlike 5th Street, which featured an independent crew of chefs, all five will be under the watch of Butterworth’s brother Oliver, who has held the role of executive sous-chef at Nicklaus North golf club in Whistler, B.C. since 2014.

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Rowena Cui of Planet Sound has partnered with Butterworth and Keith for the events side of things.

“Food is very emotive and very personal, just like events,” says Cui. “They tell a story, they create an emotional connection. And what we’re finding from the events landscape perspective is after COVID, in this post-pandemic world, people are wanting quality. So when Luke and Jennifer approached me with this idea, in all honesty it was a no-brainer. Through our travels personally and professionally I have had experience with the elevated food hall as a customer. It’s been happening in Asia and Europe for over 20 years now. I was just in Las Vegas for a working holiday, and even the new hotels that are going up are all elevated food hall experiences.”

It’s a food hall, but for Butterworth it’s much more. The team has been reaching out to their Whyte Ave neighbours and forging ties, working with the farmers market, the various theatre companies, the Edmonton Radial Railway Society. The intent is to create community, and to offer Epic as a gathering space.

“We want to collectively try and raise the bar on Whyte and work together rather than competing against one another, which I’ve never found works very well,” Butterworth says.”Happy Beer Street does a really good job of that, and I think we need to go about it in the same way. .And the attitude amongst all of the business owners around here has been amazing, they’ve been really collaborative. Hopefully, we can get black to that pre-pandemic feel on Whyte if we work on it as a community.”

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Pop-up concept allows Vagabond pair to get creative at Whyte Avenue cafe

When Roger Letourneau and Christine Sandford left their jobs in the summer of 2023 for a year-long sojourn in France there was a certain amount of burnout happening.

“The hours had a bit to do with it, but also the motivation changes,” says Sandford, who oversaw the kitchen at Biera while Letourneau, who worked at Bar Clementine and Woodwork, had shifted focus to condiments with his company Lessig Ferments. “There was a need to reevaluate. I think we were pinpointing whether we wanted to start this big, grand thing, or do we want to do something more grounding?”

With their new venture Vagabond they’ve chosen the latter, returning to Edmonton with the concept of a pop-up that allows them to work with local, seasonal produce for small groups of people. The two have taken over the back area of the Take Care Cafe at 9621 82 Ave. over weekends, changing up the menu, seeing what works and what doesn’t. Mostly they’re just enjoying putting into practice what they observed overseas about making food for people.

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“It was just refreshing, because all the ingredients were so high quality and no one really does marketing there.” says Letourneau. “It’s all relationship-based. Things were stripped down to really good, seasonal ingredients, good wine, and relationships. We felt like we could do that here. It’s pretty casual. We don’t take reservations and we’re counting on word of mouth. I guess we’re just translating what we saw over there to here.”

That means a bare-bones operation that can pivot quickly depending on what’s at hand: Heirloom tomatoes from Southern Alberta, local peas, produce from Prairie Gardens, pork from Berkshire Farms. The Horiatiki Dip made of goat feta is a standout, as is the Jambon Beurre. Make sure to grab the small dish of pickled potatoes, and the Hot Chicken with Cheesy Wheezy Hot Sauce.

The two are preparing to take the pop-up on the road to other cities in a few months, but Letourneau and Sandford have bigger plans for the future. While on the way to Vancouver they’ll be stopping in the Okanagan, which they describe as not being unlike the area they hunkered down in near the border between France and Spain. It’s a loosely formed idea for now, but the two are thinking of setting up shop there and coming up with more than just another dining experience.

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“We’ve talked about opening something that’s like a seasonal place where people stay that also has production facilities,” says Letourneau. “That’s why we picked out that particular area of France, because it’s winemakers and dinner makers and it’s very agricultural. We spent time chatting with people there about staffing and seasonal workers and those kinds of things. But also maybe we could just do a travelling thing, go on the road and bring stuff back and forth, move ideas and culture, see what’s going on in the rest of Canada. There’s nothing set in stone yet, but I just feel like we need to keep moving so that we don’t stagnate.”

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