As locals, we try to get out and discover the best restaurants in Canmore as often as we can. One of our favorite meals of the day to eat out is lunch, which is great because there are a ton of excellent Canmore lunch restaurants.
In this post, we don’t give you an exhaustive list of 20+ lunch restaurants in Canmore; that’s just not helpful. Instead, we share with you our personal favorites; restaurants where we personally go for lunch or take family and friends when they come to town.
We do not accept free meals in exchange for a review. We support local businesses and pay in full for our meals. This way you can fully trust our recommended list of our favorite restaurants for lunch in Canmore.
Within this list of our favorite Canmore lunch restaurants, you’ll find options for every taste and budget. We hope that you love these Canmore restaurants as much as we do!
Our 8 Favorite Canmore Lunch Restaurants
1. Rocky Mountain Flatbread
Ever since we moved to Canmore, Rocky Mountain Flatbread has been one of our favourite restaurants in Canmore. Located on 10th Street (one block off Main Street), Rocky Mountain Flatbread is not only one of our favourite Canmore lunch restaurants, but also the best pizza restaurant in Canmore.
We love the ambience of Rocky Mountain Flatbread, with the large wood-fired pizza oven in the corner. Enjoy excellent views of Ha Ling Peak and the surrounding Rocky Mountains through several garage doors with plenty of windows.
While the ambience is nice, the food is the real reason we love to come to Rocky Mountain Flatbread. With a focus on local and organic produce, the wood-fired pizza is always exceptional. The menu at Rocky Mountain Flatbread goes well beyond Hawaiian and pepperoni pizzas, with plenty of truly creative and delicious flatbreads to choose from.
The Classic is our favourite pizza at Rocky Mountain Flatbread, but we also encourage you to try the other pizza creations on the menu. There are plenty of pasta options as well as gluten and vegan options.
It doesn’t take long to cook flatbreads in the wood-fired oven, so we’ve always found our lunch service to be very quick.
Directions to Rocky Mountain Flatbread
2. Rocky Mountain Bagel Co.
Sometimes referred to as “Canmore’s Living Room,” Rocky Mountain Bagel has been serving up delicious bagel creations since 1995. Open for breakfast and lunch, we’re confident you will love the fresh-baked deliciousness of their menu.
Personally, I love a breakfast bagel for lunch, so I’m a big fan that the breakfast bagel sandwiches are served all day. The BCTL with an egg is my favorite breakfast bagel at Rocky Mountain Bagel.
(I love a breakfast bagel for breakfast too! It should be no surprise that Rocky Mountain Bagel Co. is one of my favorite Canmore breakfast restaurants too!)
In addition to the all-day breakfast bagels, Rocky Mountain Bagel serves a variety of open-faced bagel dishes, along with Bagelwiches. The Mountaineer (with pastrami, cream cheese and lots of fixin’s) is especially good.
Rocky Mountain Bagel has two locations in Canmore. Their flagship location is on 8th Street in downtown Canmore, while their newer location is on Bow Valley Trail in a cluster of Canmore hotels.
If you are looking for a delicious sandwich on a fresh-baked bagel, Rocky Mountain Bagel is the Canmore lunch restaurant for you!
3. JK Bakery
When we go out for lunch in Canmore, the first restaurant which typically comes to mind is the JK Bakery. Why? Because they make incredibly good homemade sandwiches; the kind that you’d enjoy when you eat lunch at your Grandma’s as a kid.
The star of the show is the freshly made bread, and there are six kinds to choose from. You can then choose from a wide variety of sandwich proteins, including standards like ham & turkey, but the selection goes all the way to chicken curry and pulled pork. Top it off exactly the way you like it with your favorite condiments and veggies, and before long you’ll be in sandwich heaven.
The JK Bakery is a very popular Canmore restaurant for lunch, and they have many other offerings on their lunch menu. Are they good? I’ll never find out, because the sandwiches are so darn good that I refuse to get anything else when I come here.
JK Bakery also has two locations. The downtown location is easiest for visitors, but the Railway Ave location isn’t too far away if you feel like a little walk.
4. Summit Cafe
My fellow locals are going to be mad at me for including this, but the Summit Cafe is one of the most beloved lunch restaurants in Canmore. It’s located in a residential part of town, a short drive from downtown Canmore.
The Summit Cafe has a winning menu combination of all-day breakfast and a selection of delicious sandwiches. Everything at the Summit Cafe has been excellent, but my absolute favorite is the breakfast burrito with a real Mexican flair.
Get here early as this small Canmore restaurant often fills up well before noon. If it’s full, don’t worry as their takeout is also very good. In fact, the Summit Cafe is one of our favorite Canmore takeout restaurants too!
The Benchlands Trail (one of my favorite walks in Canmore) is in-between the Summit Cafe and downtown Canmore, so it’s the perfect walk & lunch combo. There are park benches on this trail where you can sit and enjoy some Rocky Mountain scenery as you enjoy your takeout from the Summit Cafe.
5. Communitea Cafe
One of the healthiest lunch restaurants in Canmore, Communitea Cafe has been a beloved restaurant for years. A fun, colorful restaurant, I just love the energetic vibe whenever I eat at Communitea.
Communitea Cafe offers a wide selection of healthy food options, including a variety of delicious bowls (the Buddha Bowl is our favorite!), sandwiches and wraps.
An easy to reach Canmore lunch restaurant, Communitea is just two blocks off main street. If you like eating outside on a warm, blue sky day in Canmore, Communitea has plenty of outdoor seating. There’s plenty of foot traffic, making it a great spot for people watching while you enjoy a delicious, healthy lunch.
6. Grizzly Paw Pub
The Grizzly Paw has been serving up pub favorites at their location on Main Street Canmore for nearly 30 years. Quite likely the most popular pub in Canmore, the Grizzly Paw Pub is a great place for lunch.
The Grizzly Paw is a large restaurant, with two levels of indoor seating as well as a generously sized outdoor patio. The patio is almost always packed for lunch on a sunny day in Canmore, so we advise you arrive early if you’d like an outdoor table.
Everybody loves pub food for lunch, and the Grizzly Paw Pub has it all. Choose from a big selection of appies, burgers, sandwiches, salads, and main dishes like fish n’ chips and BBQ ribs. I’ve eaten at this popular Canmore restaurant many, many times and have always left satisfied.
If you like microbrews, you’ll love that the Grizzly Paw makes its own handcrafted beer. My favorite is the Grumpy Bear Honey Wheat, but if it’s your first time here, why not get a Suds Sampler to try 4 of their creations?
Directions to the Grizzly Paw Pub
7. Market Bistro
Another Canmore lunch restaurant we’ve loved for years is the Market Bistro. Nicely hidden away in the Three Sisters Mountain Village neighborhood, the Market Bistro is the perfect lunch restaurant on a nice day. We enjoy sitting in their beautiful, tree-covered outdoor patio soaking in the views of the Three Sisters mountain.
But it’s not just the excellent patio and mountain views that keeps us coming back to the market bistro for lunch – the food is outstanding too. The Market Bistro serves up simple, yet very delicious food from a French and Italian inspired menu. Our go-to item on the Market Bistro lunch menu is their tasty flatbreads, but they also have a wide variety of pastas, wraps, sandwiches and entrees.
While the Market Bistro is one of Canmore’s best lunch restaurants, its location in the Three Sisters Mountain Village makes it a little harder to reach for visitors to town. It’s easy to drive to, of course, but we have a better solution for you.
Simply take the fare-free Roam public transit bus (route 5T – Three Sisters) from downtown Canmore. Then, after an amazing lunch, you can take the bus back or enjoy a beautiful walk along the Bow River back to downtown Canmore.
Directions to the Market Bistro
8. Harvest Cafe
I distinctly remember the first time I ate at the Harvest Cafe – it was during the weekend when we were house hunting for our first place in Canmore. Our Realtor had suggested it to us as one of his favorite places, and we are grateful as it is now one of our favorite Canmore restaurants too.
When I go to the Harvest Cafe for lunch, I typically enjoy one of their delicious wraps, like the curry chicken or pulled pork. In addition to wraps, they offer all-day breakfast, paninis and a variety of vegetarian dishes.
I know this is a post about my favorite Canmore lunch restaurants, but if you can visit the Harvest Cafe shortly after they open, you have a chance to get one of their huge cinnamon buns fresh out of the oven. They are truly amazing when fresh out of the oven.
Directions to the Harvest Cafe
And that’s it! We hope you found some great options for lunch restaurants in Canmore. If it’s a hot day, why not check out our favorite ice cream shops in Canmore too!
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Dan Brewer, a life-long Alberta resident, calls Canmore home along with his wife and two kids. He is the co-owner of Travel Banff Canada, where he gets to share his passion for the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Dan, along with his family, love being outdoors doing one of the many activities they enjoy in the mountains: hiking, mountain biking, paddleboarding, skiing, snowshoeing and cross-country skiing.
When he's not in Canmore enjoying one of his favourite local hikes, you can find him hopping on a plane to explore a new country with his family or working on one of their other two travel sites: Family Can Travel and Baby Can Travel.