As the ski season comes to an end, Jasper’s culinary experts are keeping the festivities going, and hope to put the town on the map as a culinary travel destination while they’re at it.

A three-week food and wine festival is in the works to start April 30 and run until May 9, with many local restaurants having a day to showcase a specialty, aimed at bringing visitors to Jasper in the short off-season – after the ski hill closes and before summer – but most importantly, to showcase Jasper’s culinary offerings.

Town councillor and Evil Dave’s restaurant manager Mike Day said the festival is designed not to bring people to one specific location for an event, but to bring food lovers into the restaurants themselves over a three-week period.

On top of having designated days for each venue, which includes a beer tasting and brewery tour at the Jasper Brew Pub, a Cinco de Mayo party at La Fiesta, wine tasting and pairings at Papa George’s and Evil Dave’s, and a scotch night at Earl’s, dining passports will also be available.

Day said the idea is for people to try out different restaurants. Passport holders will be able to go to participating establishments where they will showcase what they do at their restaurant, brewery or bar, and then stamp the customer’s passport.

“It will encourage people to dine around and try a few different places. And then the grand prize for that is two nights at Tekerra Lodge and all the meals paid for the weekend, so two dinners, two lunches, two breakfasts. So that prize will be super sweet,” said Day.

Passports will be free, and will be distributed throughout north-west-central Alberta and Calgary and Edmonton, as well as in Jasper.

“It’s open to everybody. As restaurants, we’d love to showcase to the locals who haven’t been to our places. Either show them or remind them that there are some really great dining opportunities in Jasper. We just think we’ve been overshadowed over the last few years where Calgary, Edmonton, Banff get press about their restaurants and we never seem to, and we thought we need to change that,” Day said.

The festival is based around getting people who really want to come and eat, he explained, and the culinary traveller is someone who Jasper hasn’t actually tried to go after, Day said. The culinary traveller trend is growing and Jasper might as well suggest to north-west central-Alberta that they’ve got something good here, he added.

Having the festival after the ski season will ensure hotel rooms have vacancy and that they are not competing with any long weekends or other Jasper tourism attractions such as rafting.

Day said they will also have a harvesting festival come fall, where there will be a chef competition and local produce will be used by the restaurants, which will aim at showcasing local Alberta producers.

He says both festivals will hopefully turn into annual events.