When Peggy Garritty was doing her undergrad at the University of Alberta in the late 1960s, there was a campus cookery called the Tuck Shop that served up cozy comfort food for hungry students. It was a no-frills joint known for its coffee, milkshakes and, most importantly, cinnamon buns.
Flash forward multiple decades, and Garritty is now finishing her tenure as the U of A’s chancellor. The Tuck Shop closed in 1970, but, even after all these years, Garritty still has a cozy nook near campus to eat cinnamon buns and chat with friends over coffee at Sugarbowl.
“I think I like the fact that it’s old, you know? It’s been there for a long time. It gives the sense of stability,” says Garritty. “When you come in, you can kind of just put your shoulders down.”
Of course, Sugarbowl’s cinnamon bun is famous in its own right, and anybody who’s indulged in it knows it’s a different beast.
“How can you resist it? It’s huge. I can’t eat it all at once, so I bring half of it home, and my husband is [always] really happy about that.”
For Garritty, who isn’t huge on things like foie gras or caviar, it makes sense that the simple but good comfort food from the Tuck Shop and Sugarbowl would be her go-to choices on campus — a whole 50 years apart.
“I don’t know how close the Sugarbowl ones are to that memory I have,” Garritty says. “But for me, it’s just that they bring those memories.”
Sugarbowl
Garneau | 10922 88 Ave NW, Edmonton | 780.433.8369 | thesugarbowl.org
Hair and makeup by Tiiu Vuorensola
This article appears in the Jul/Aug 2024 issue of Edify
