Restaurant in Downtown, Calgary

Major Tom

Steak at Forty Floors

3.5 of 5

Forty floors up, Calgary finally looks the way it thinks it looks. Major Tom sits at the top of Stephen Avenue Place, and the windows hand you the city with the mountains behind it like a dessert course nobody ordered. The Concorde group opened it in 2021, and Frank Architecture dressed it as a mid-century New York penthouse, all dark wood and leather against washed-out pinks and greens.

My instinct with a view restaurant is to check my wallet and lower my expectations. The kitchen here earns a little more faith than that. Steaks are coated in butter and grilled at 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, roughly the temperature of a consultant's first expense report. Choose your beef from Benchmark Angus, Alberta Prime or Wagyu. Start with the Major Tots, a dressed-up version of the potato snack from your school cafeteria, and the steak tartare. The duck breast with lingonberry and smoked jus is the move for anyone who has had enough beef this week. Potato donuts finish things without apology.

It is expensive, it is a scene, and on a weekend it will be loud with people celebrating something. Fine. Some nights you want to be up high with a martini and a steak and the whole prairie laid out under you. Go at golden hour, book a window, and tell ground control you will be late.

Order this

Major Tots, steak tartare, a steak off the grill, duck breast with lingonberry and smoked jus

The damage

$$$$

Go

Golden hour, with a window table booked

Find it

700 2 St SW (40th floor, Stephen Avenue Place), Calgary, AB T2P 2W2

Website

majortombar.ca