Elita wasn’t so much a recommendation as the first result when my hotel googled vegan restaurants in the area for me. Just down the road from the hotel, I went knowing only that they claimed to have a few vegan options.
Elita is set at the corner of a building, with a wraparound deck. Large windows give you views in two directions of the surrounding Rocky Mountains. The inside is cute, intimate and relaxed without being too casual. I can see people going there in casual-dress, though I didnt feel out of place in my jeans.
I had plenty of options and finally had to pick one at random because everything sounded so good. I chose The Magic Wok of Tibet, a vegetable stir-fry with saffron-turmeric sauce over jasmine rice. During my short wait, the woman waiting on me allowed me to move to a window table that had just been vacated. The chef brought out my dinner just after and I couldn’t believe how much food was on my plate. Besides my stir-fry and jasmine rice, I had a small salad of fresh greens, tomato quarters and cucumbers with a non-oily vinaigrette. All of it tasted amazing and I didn’t quite make it halfway before I was full. I asked to have it boxed to go and ordered more rice to stretch it for tomorrow’s meals (there was that much left over).
The chef came back to my table and said he would like to offer me a small free desert of strawberries and mango puree. I said that would be lovely, and it was! Lightly chilled, with fresh, sweet strawberries, it was a perfect ending to my meal. I enjoyed it so much I think I took nearly as long savoring my four strawberries as I had eating my entire meal.
I believe the waitress and chef may have been the only two working and they did a remarkable job.
From their website:
“We cater to a wide spectrum of customers, creating a decades-proven balance between refined quality of food, exceptional ingredients, and life-style requirements of our customers. Yes, we cater to diverse dietary requirements, religious dietary specifics; we create subtle multi-ethnic overtones in our eclectic menu that grew out of experience of working on three continents and in a variety or urban settings. We are fresh, tasty, subtle and artistically obsessed with healthy gastronomic and culinary trends.”
I think my experience was very inline with their claims. I can’t wait to try them for breakfast during my stay here in the Canadian Rockies.