Good Folk

Alberta bison runs straight through Good Folk's menu. It arrives first as a tartare, bound with grainy mustard caper aioli, cured egg yolk, pickled red onion, and juniper crisps; it returns as a burger under smoked cheddar, pepper bacon, and tarragon mustard aioli; and it lands again as a striploin with brown butter squash, parsnip purée, and blackberry red wine jus. The repetition is deliberate. Good Folk is the Contemporary Canadian restaurant inside Banff's Otter Hotel, set on the uptown stretch of Banff Avenue, and it cooks like a kitchen with a thesis about the Canadian Rockies rather than a dining option filling a hotel lobby.

That thesis is easiest to taste across three plates. The bison tartare is the clearest read on the place — concentrated, built to share, unmistakably Alberta. The Bison Burger gives the same identity a looser route, grounded by a brioche bun, house pickle, and frites for a table that wants the place-specific order without committing to a full entrée. And the Arctic Char shows the kitchen's cleaner Canadian fish side, plated with crispy Brussels sprouts, dill lemon gremolata, potato rosti, and a charred orange beurre blanc that cuts the richness around it.

The rest of the menu holds the same standard. Seared Hokkaido scallops come with smoked pork belly, brown butter, and dark chili honey; an Alberta wild boar chop sits over creamy French lentils and red chimichurri; ricotta rosemary gnocchi hides beneath wine-braised short rib; and an Icelandic cod cioppino crowds mussels, prawns, and clam into a tomato saffron broth. East Coast oysters and West Coast mussels bracket the country on a single page. Vegetarian diners are not an afterthought either, with Brassica corn fritters in miso dust and spicy tomato honey, a roasted wild mushroom flatbread finished with black truffle, wild mushroom risotto, and a red kuri squash and butter bean cassoulet. Dessert keeps the ambition, from a passionfruit cheesecake on an oat crust to an orange chocolate ganache torte with mandarin crème fraîche.

Read together, the plates keep returning to the same regional vocabulary: Alberta bison and beef, Arctic char, Canadian maple, haskap berries, seafood pulled from both coasts. The menu scans as a directed program, not a catalogue of trends. The bar follows the same logic. A house lager brewed for Good Folk by Village pours alongside a signature Negroni built on Mattei Corsican gin, Campari, and a split of Alvear and Antica vermouth — house drinks built for this kitchen, not pulled from a generic well.

The kitchen is led by Corporate Chef Dwayne Ennest and Head Chef Victor Bonilla, and their direction shows most clearly at the hour when hotel restaurants usually coast. Good Folk treats breakfast as real cooking. Warm Johnny Cake comes skillet-baked from cornmeal with haskap jam and Canadian maple syrup; steelhead trout gravlax is set with dill goat cheese and an everything bagel; a croque madame is built on guajillo boar loin and gouda; and huevos rancheros carry wild boar chorizo, queso fresco, and salsa both roja and verde. The Good Folk Breakfast plates two eggs with duck-fat rosti bravas and a choice of chorizo, double-smoked bacon, or ancho squash and cipollini onion.

Good Folk also carries genuine occasion range. Private rooms, terrace seating, and full buyouts make it a workable plan for a Banff group dinner that wants a polished Canadian menu instead of a louder default. Its position on uptown Banff Avenue, a few minutes off the main-street crush, suits that part — close enough for visitors staying nearby, far enough that arriving feels like a choice. The bison running through the menu is the whole argument in miniature: this is a kitchen cooking the Canadian Rockies on purpose, and the hotel address is incidental to that.