Buttermilk Fine Waffles: How Sam Friley came to his decision on the new eatery

Whether you're talking cities or waffle recipes, Sam Friley thinks there's no place like home.

"I think this overthinking of food is not fun," Sam told me days before the opening of his new waffle eatery Buttermilk Fine Waffles.

The restaurant is taking over the space that was previously CRMR at Home beside Cilantro on 17th Avenue S.W.

Sam's degree is in geological engineering. Having grown up in Calgary with parents and grandparents in the same industry, his focus was always on the oil and gas business.

But when he finished his studies at Queens, he took some time to check out the world.

"After I graduated, I hopped on a plane to Tokyo with a one-way ticket and a goal to get from there to Spain without flying," he said.

Sam spent some time in South America, Iran and India, which he says opened his mind and changed his focus to food, culture and interaction.

Oil industry not the right fit

"My best meals have always been on the street. I'd be in these cities, like Mexico City, and you'd try to go out to a fancy restaurant for a nice meal and it would be awful. And then you'd go walk down the street and eat a carnita on the corner with a big squeeze of lime and some green sauce, and it's incredible. The food of the people." 

When he came back he had no money, so Sam got a job downtown working in the oil industry — but it wasn't the right fit. 

"I loved the people I was with, but I was way too restless to work in an office, and I knew that cash wasn't enough of an incentive to stay," he said. "So I quit my job and I took a spur of the moment job in Africa, which didn't pan out the way I hoped."

When he returned home to Calgary again, Sam's older brother Billy was busy opening Village Ice Cream, and Sam jumped in with the rest of the family to help with the new business.

"I absolutely fell in love with the hands-on aspect of building something," he said. "I look back to my childhood, the times I was most alive was when I was building box forts, or doing Sim City — I was always building. It was in my blood to create."

And so he set off to find his own idea. Sam spent months coming and going from Calgary, travelling through Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Portland and London to check out concepts that had the same principle — doing one thing really well. He pondered tacos, barbecue, sandwiches and other food trends gaining momentum in other cities.

"I think that's my engineering side, using systems to nail something," he said.

Family recipe

"When I decided on waffles — mostly because when I ate a waffle out, it never compared to anything I ate at my house — it was like OK. There's Liege and Brussels-style, there's savoury, there are a lot of concepts in Japan and Korea. So I set off to eat everything. And I did, and then I came home, and while I respected the directions that people were going, and chefs who knew a lot more than me about food, I did know what I loved in a waffle."

"And it was buttermilk-based. It wasn't yeasted. It was crispy on the outside and pillowy on the inside, and served with butter and maple syrup. That's the waffle I loved."

Although he spent months travelling the world in search of the ideal formula, the recipe for the buttermilk waffles on Sam's menu comes from his aunt Shannon.

"It's a recipe that my dad and his four siblings have been making for their kids for years," he told me.

The shop opened this week with a lineup of waffle irons all poised to turn out the perfect buttermilk waffle to be topped with one of six toppings and served within 40 seconds for the ideal waffle experience. (To this end, he so far hasn't been offering takeout. He says waffles just aren't the same after they spend some time cooling down, boxed up in a container.)

Sam's topping offerings range from straight-up Canadian butter and maple syrup to fresh fruit to house-made lemon curd and goat cheese to waffles topped with his brother's ice cream and chocolate or toffee sauce.

"And then we've got the cinnamon bun waffle," Sam told me of the one that was my favourite at the opening. 

"Inspired by my pregnant friend Rachel, who texted me one day and was like, you gotta try making this! So she came and made it up, and it was brain-meltingly good. 

"It's all about feeding a lot of people with precision," Sam says, again exposing his engineering background. "And having something else to do when you want to get out. Calgary is a city of people who get out on the street ... when it's summertime and nice out, or 40 below, and you don't feel like going to the bar you can come in and have a waffle."