The Caesar: how Canada’s favourite cocktail was inspired by spaghetti vongole, and the endless variations on the theme
- Calgary in Canada is the birthplace of its national cocktail: the clam broth and tomato-based Caesar, invented by Walter Chell at the Calgary Inn in 1969
- 400 million Caesars are drunk every year in Canada, and the drink is celebrated with its own Caesar day
In a city best known for its cowboys, landlocked Calgary seems an unlikely birthplace for Canada’s national cocktail: the Caesar.
Tomato-juice-based with the key addition of clam juice, it balances sweet, salty, sour, spicy and bitter notes so well that 400 million Caesars are consumed annually in Canada alone (that’s 10.5 per capita).
Different origin stories for the Caesar circulate, but most agree that Walter Chell played a central role in its development and that its final iteration happened in Calgary.
In 1969, Chell was the hotel manager for the former Calgary Inn (now the Calgary Westin). Some say he was asked to create a new signature drink to celebrate the hotel’s new Italian restaurant. As an Italian himself, Chell drew inspiration from one of his favourite dishes, spaghetti alle vongole (spaghetti with clams), and experimented with tomato juice, clam broth, vodka, Worcestershire, hot sauce and spices to create the new cocktail.
Rachel Drinkle, organiser of YYCaesarFest (YYC is Calgary’s airport code), offers a different origin story. “Actually, he was making spaghetti alle vongole in the kitchen, but the sauce was too thin and couldn’t be saved so he brought it out to the bar to see what he could do with it there.”