Nathaniel Davis
Four kitchens, three price steps, one number per guest
- Twenty years of professional cooking behind him
- A food business of his own, alongside an executive chef post
- Learned under senior chefs rather than through a school programme
The four, and what each is for
136 ratings, the earliest from 2022
Four people, 136 ratings between them, and four quite different jobs. Read this as a shortlist rather than a directory — the point is which one fits the table you are setting.
Nicolas Desinai
One price for twenty-four menus, French training underneath all of them
- Trained in Dinard, France — cooking, pastry and sommelier certificates
- Lists three-Michelin-star kitchens in his career
- Executive chef at Priddis Greens and Bow Valley Ranch
- Owned La Petite Table in Okotoks
- Best young commis chef, France 1995; gold medal cold plate, Germany 1997
Marina Mellino
The one to call when the table is long: ten to twenty guests, staff included
- Kitchens in Argentina, the United States and Canada
- Brings her own team and support staff for larger events
- Cooks tasting menus, family style, canapés and buffet formats
- Lists a dedicated wild game menu for Canmore and Banff bookings
Igor Dudkin
The most expensive card on the sheet, and the most plated
- More than a decade in high-end restaurant kitchens
- Menus grouped by country: France, Italy, the Mediterranean, Alberta
- Plans the menu with the host before the booking
- Three clean price steps rather than à la carte add-ons
Where everything on this page comes from
| Field | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| Per-guest rates | Transcribed off the menus each cook publishes, not negotiated or estimated. | Jul 2026 |
| Ratings and counts | Theirs, unrounded, poor ones included — Marina Mellino has one complaint about menu planning and it stays in her mean. | Jul 2026 |
| Menu prose and host notes | Written for this page from the real menus and ratings. Never passed off as a quotation. | — |
| Photographs | The cooks’ own working photos, downloaded and served from this site rather than hotlinked. | Jul 2026 |
| Coverage list | Where bookings on the record actually happened, plus the mountain towns that turn up in their menus and their history. | Jul 2026 |
The four are here because they cook in Calgary regularly and left enough of a trail — published menus, and ratings from people who ate the food — to be compared honestly. Cooks with a thin trail are missing, which is a statement about the trail and not about the cooking. Nobody pays to be listed, nothing here is a quote, and rates drift.