Edmonton Events: 2018 SABOR Seafood Festival Aug. 7-31

One of Edmonton’s best restaurants, SABOR, is celebrating a decade in business and their fifth annual Seafood Festival this August. 

Now SABOR typically features delicious, Ocean Wise sustainable seafood year-round, but for one month each summer they put a spotlight on sustainable seafood with a special menu and education around why choosing sustainable seafood is so important.

If we want to keep enjoying the seafood we love (and us folks in landlocked Edmonton do love seafood!) then we need to be eating it in a more sustainable way. 

Ocean Wise is a program that works directly with restaurants, markets, food services and seafood suppliers to help them make ocean-friendly buying decisions. According to Ocean Wise, overfishing is one of the biggest threats facing our oceans today, with 90% of the world’s assessed fish stocks now fully fished or overfished. As our planet’s population continues to grow, we need to look at sustainable and healthy protein sources.

“Choosing to eat Ocean Wise-recommended seafood helps to relieve the pressure on overfished species, promotes responsible aquaculture and ensures that we will be able to continue to enjoy seafood for generations to come.”
– Ocean Wise

Choosing to support restaurants like SABOR that participate in the Ocean Wise program is one way we can try to do this. 

This year, the SABOR Seafood Festival runs Aug. 7-31, 2018, and is Global Surf meets Turf-themed, inspired from flavours all over the world, including Hawaii—where SABOR’s Chef Lino Oliveira and Christian Mena travelled earlier this year for research. (The tastiest research there ever was, lol).  

SABOR Seafood Festival Edmonton

Oysters from the Raw Bar anyone?

The menu is a seafood lover’s dream. You’ll find clams, scallops, octopus, calamari, mussels, halibut, sablefish, lobster, oysters, crab, tuna… the list goes on and on. 

Click here to see the 2018 SABOR Seafood Festival Menu

Not sure what to pick? Family Style is a popular order at SABOR. For $55 per person, Chef Lino will prepare a three-course family style feast using seasonal ingredients and his daily inspirations. I’m told that my favourite thing ever—spam, a canned luncheon meat popular in Hawaii—will make an appearance on the family style menu at some point during the festival (check their social media for updates—or see if you can request it with your server!)

Spam ‘N Clams was one of the Hawaiian-inspired dishes I tried at the festival’s media kick-off event this year, which featured a food collaboration with Sheraton Maui Resort & Spa with Chef Lyndon Honda and Ka’anapali Beach Hotel’s Chef Tom Muromoto. It was a highlight of the night for me, along with an ahi tartare on taro chip, octopus risotto, and grilled prawns in coconut taro leaf curry. Although these exact dishes aren’t on the Seafood Festival menu, the family style option will allow for variations of those dishes to appear during the month (and you’ll find tuna, risotto, and prawns in various preparations throughout the menu!) 

SABOR Seafood Festival Edmonton

Sheraton Maui Resort & Spa with Chef Lyndon Honda and Ka’anapali Beach Hotel’s Chef Tom Muromoto.

SABOR Seafood Festival Edmonton

SPAM AND CLAMS GUYS!

SABOR Seafood Festival Edmonton

Octopus risotto from the media kick-off event.

With each seafood festival, SABOR partners with talented chefs from all over, which makes the menu even more fun, fresh and inspired, and an event I look forward to each year.

Thank you to Bonafide Media PR for inviting me to this year’s media-kick off, and congratulations SABOR, on your decade of serving delicious sustainable seafood to Edmontonians, and five years of Seafood Festival! 

SABOR Seafood Festival Edmonton

My pal Sharman (The Pork Girl) and I in our Hawaii Aloha best at the SABOR Seafood Festival media kick-off night! (It was Hawaiian-themed lol).

Linda

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Disclaimer: I was invited to the media night kick-off for the annual SABOR Seafood Festival. My meal was complimentary. This has no impact on opinions stated in this post. Uh, I really love seafood. and spam. lol 

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