Deer + Almond: How Mandel Hitzer Built Winnipeg's Most-Cited Exchange District Restaurant And A Pop-Up On The Frozen Red River
Mandel Hitzer opened deer + almond in Winnipeg's Exchange District in 2012 and co-founded RAW:almond, the chef-driven pop-up on the frozen Red River. Together they are Manitoba's most-cited chef-driven operation.
May 3, 2026 · By Justin Plosz · Winnipeg, Manitoba · Business · 10 min read
The Quick Picture
deer + almond sits in a converted heritage building at 85 Princess Street in Winnipeg's Exchange District — the warehouse-conversion neighbourhood that anchors the city's independent food-and-beverage culture. The interior is intentional: exposed nineteenth-century red brick, a pressed-tin ceiling, dark wooden floors, brass pendant lighting, and an open kitchen that runs as the visual centre of the room. The dining room is small. The bar runs along one side. The menu changes more often than most Winnipeg restaurants change their lighting.
The restaurant was opened in 2012 by chef Mandel Hitzer and is, in 2026, one of the most-cited chef-driven independent restaurants on the Canadian prairies. The programme is built on a recognisable disposition: a small rotating menu of Manitoba-sourced ingredients (pickerel from prairie waters, locally-farmed meats, prairie grains, foraged greens, preserves), executed with technical seriousness rather than novelty plating, paired with a beverage programme that takes the same approach. Hitzer is the chef of record, the room is independently owned, and the kitchen has trained a meaningful share of the current Winnipeg chef-driven workforce.
The restaurant is also one half of a larger Hitzer project. RAW:almond, the chef-driven winter pop-up dining tent erected each year at the frozen confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers at The Forks, was co-founded by Hitzer and architect Joe Kalturnyk in 2013 and has run as an annual late-winter event since. The combination — a year-round Exchange District room plus a structurally unusual on-the-ice winter pop-up — has given Winnipeg a chef-driven dining footprint that punches well above the city's market size.
Mandel Hitzer And The Manitoba Disposition
Mandel Hitzer's chef training is the part of the deer + almond story that explains the kitchen's standards. Before opening the restaurant, Hitzer cooked in serious Winnipeg and travel kitchens and developed a working set of relationships with Manitoba farms, fishers, and producers in a way that most working chefs do not have time to cultivate. By the time deer + almond opened in 2012, the supply chain was already in place — not as a sourcing list to be assembled after opening, but as a network of working relationships built up over years.
The disposition the restaurant runs on is recognisably prairie. Pickerel from Manitoba waters is treated as a serious species rather than as a default freshwater filet. Prairie grains and pulses appear on the menu as components rather than as side dishes. Local meats are sourced by farm rather than by primal cut. Preserves carry the kitchen through the long Manitoba winter. Foraged ingredients show up when they are in season. The menu is a working response to what is genuinely available from a Manitoba supply chain, rather than a globalised tasting-menu vocabulary that happens to be cooked in Winnipeg.
The consequence, fourteen years in, is that deer + almond reads as a restaurant that belongs specifically to Winnipeg in the way that a globalised chef-driven restaurant would not. The menu is responsive to Manitoba farms. The flavours are recognisably prairie. The room has stayed under Hitzer's ownership and direction since opening, with no chain affiliation, no franchise expansion, and no outside-investor restructuring.
The Exchange District Room
The deer + almond dining room is small by design. The capacity is meaningful for the kitchen's quality control — Hitzer and his team can plate consistently at this scale, and the night-to-night menu changes are operationally feasible — but it also means that the room is consistently busy and that booking ahead is the right strategy for any planned visit.
The menu architecture is intentional. The kitchen runs a short, rotating selection of small plates and larger sharing dishes rather than a long fixed menu. A typical night will see between eight and fifteen items on the menu; many of them are new since the previous week; some of them will be off the menu by the end of the night because the prep ran out. This is the operational signature of a kitchen that is cooking what is genuinely available rather than mass-prepping a fixed catalogue.
The beverage programme is matched. The wine list leans toward small-producer and natural wines that pair with the kitchen's flavour profile rather than toward an encyclopaedic wine-by-the-glass selection. The cocktail programme runs a short, well-considered set rather than a long catalogue. Local Manitoba beer and spirits are well-represented. The front-of-house team can pair recommendations off the current menu, which is the right way to order on a first visit.
RAW:almond — The Chef-Driven Pop-Up On The Frozen River
RAW:almond is the part of the Hitzer project that gives deer + almond its outsized national footprint. Co-founded in 2013 by Hitzer and Winnipeg architect Joe Kalturnyk, RAW:almond is a chef-driven dining pop-up erected each year at The Forks — the historic confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers in the centre of Winnipeg. In late winter, when the rivers are reliably frozen, an architect-designed wooden structure is built directly on the ice; the structure is taken down a few weeks later when warmer weather returns. The pop-up runs a series of multi-night residencies through its operating window, with a rotating roster of guest chefs from Canadian and international restaurants taking the kitchen for short stretches.
The project is structurally unusual. There are very few chef-driven dining rooms anywhere that are intentionally built on a frozen river, taken down each spring, and rebuilt the following winter on a slightly different site as the ice patterns dictate. Almost no other Canadian restaurant operates on this calendar. The Manitoba winter, which is normally treated as a problem for the prairie hospitality industry, is reframed in RAW:almond as the precondition of the project — there is no event without the ice.
The national press footprint of RAW:almond is therefore disproportionate to its operating scale. The pop-up has been covered repeatedly in major Canadian food press, in international travel and food publications, and in architecture coverage of the wooden structures themselves. A meaningful share of the national-press attention paid to Winnipeg's chef-driven dining scene over the past decade has been pointed at RAW:almond, and a meaningful share of that has, by extension, pointed at deer + almond.
The Independent Position
deer + almond is independently owned and operated by Hitzer. The restaurant has not been acquired, has not accepted private-equity restructuring, has not been split into multiple locations, and has not been licensed to a chain operator. The room is one address, run as one business, by the founding chef. RAW:almond is run separately as a co-founded project with Kalturnyk.
This matters operationally for several reasons. First, the small-rotating-menu model the restaurant runs is structurally incompatible with a chain operator's purchasing logic; only an independent can run the menu as responsively as deer + almond runs it. Second, the chef-training role the kitchen plays for Winnipeg's broader chef-driven scene depends on the room being run by a working chef-owner; cooks who pass through the kitchen learn from Hitzer directly. Third, the night-to-night menu responsiveness requires operational autonomy that a chain location would not have.
For Winnipeg residents, the result is a chef-driven dining room that belongs specifically to the city. The supply chain is Manitoba. The kitchen is run by a chef who lives in the city. The pop-up is staged on the rivers that physically define Winnipeg's geography. None of these are decoupled from one another, which is the durable reason the room reads as the most-cited chef-driven Winnipeg booking when national press writes about the city.
The PRC Editorial View
deer + almond is, in 2026, one of the most consequential single restaurants on the Canadian prairies and one of the most-cited chef-driven independents in Western Canada outside Edmonton's RGE RD. It runs a small rotating Manitoba-sourced menu, executed with technical seriousness, in an Exchange District heritage room, under the founding chef-owner, with no chain affiliation. The associated RAW:almond pop-up is one of the most architecturally and editorially distinctive Canadian winter food events. The combined project has given Winnipeg a chef-driven dining footprint that punches well above the city's market size.
For visitors planning a Winnipeg itinerary that takes the city's food culture seriously, deer + almond is the canonical first booking. The room is small, the menu rotates fast enough that booking ahead is the sensible move, and the experience repays slow eating and a conversation with the front-of-house team about what is on that night. For visitors who happen to be in Winnipeg in late winter, the additional question is whether RAW:almond is running during the visit window — when it is, it is one of the most distinctive single dinners available anywhere in Canadian food.
Key takeaways
- deer + almond is an independent chef-driven restaurant at 85 Princess Street in Winnipeg's Exchange District, opened in 2012 by chef Mandel Hitzer.
- The kitchen runs a small, regularly-rotating menu of Manitoba-sourced ingredients (pickerel, prairie grains, locally-farmed meats, foraged greens, preserves) executed with chef-driven technical seriousness.
- Mandel Hitzer is the chef-owner of record, the room has stayed independently owned through its fourteen-year run, and the kitchen has trained a meaningful share of the current Winnipeg chef-driven workforce.
- Hitzer co-founded RAW:almond in 2013 with Winnipeg architect Joe Kalturnyk — a chef-driven winter pop-up dining tent erected each year on the frozen confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers at The Forks.
- RAW:almond rotates a roster of guest chefs from Canadian and international restaurants through short residencies during a multi-week late-winter operating window; tickets sell quickly each year.
- The combined project has given Winnipeg a chef-driven dining footprint that punches well above the city's market size and is widely treated by Canadian food press as a canonical example of prairie chef-driven dining.
- Reservations are recommended for the Exchange District dining room, especially on weekend evenings, through deerandalmond.com.
Frequently asked questions
- Where is deer + almond located?
- deer + almond is at 85 Princess Street in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in the Exchange District — the heritage warehouse-conversion neighbourhood that anchors Winnipeg's independent food-and-beverage culture. The restaurant runs dinner service; current hours and reservations are at deerandalmond.com.
- Who owns the restaurant?
- deer + almond was opened in 2012 by chef Mandel Hitzer and remains under his ownership. Hitzer is the chef of record and runs the kitchen directly. The restaurant is fully independent, with no chain or restaurant-group affiliation and no outside-investor restructuring.
- What kind of food does deer + almond serve?
- The kitchen runs a small, regularly-rotating menu of Manitoba-sourced ingredients prepared with chef-driven technical seriousness — pickerel from prairie waters, locally-farmed meats, prairie grains and pulses, foraged greens, preserves. The menu is short and night-to-night; a typical evening has eight to fifteen items, many of which will be different by the next week. The disposition is recognisably prairie rather than globalised tasting-menu.
- Should I book ahead?
- Yes. deer + almond is a small dining room and is consistently busy, particularly on weekend evenings. Reservations through deerandalmond.com are the recommended approach for any planned visit. Walk-ins are sometimes possible at the bar, but the dining room is best secured ahead.
- What is RAW:almond?
- RAW:almond is a chef-driven winter pop-up dining tent co-founded in 2013 by Mandel Hitzer and Winnipeg architect Joe Kalturnyk. The pop-up is erected each year on the frozen confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers at The Forks in Winnipeg, runs through a multi-week late-winter window, and rotates a roster of guest chefs from Canadian and international restaurants through short residencies. Tickets are released annually and tend to sell quickly; the schedule is published at rawalmond.com.
- Is RAW:almond actually built on the ice?
- Yes. The structure is built directly on the frozen rivers each winter, sits on the ice through its operating window, and is taken down before the spring thaw. The Manitoba winter is the precondition of the project — there is no event without the ice — which is part of the reason the project has attracted disproportionate national and international press.
- Is deer + almond involved in chef training?
- Indirectly, yes. The kitchen has trained a meaningful share of the current Winnipeg chef-driven workforce; cooks who pass through deer + almond's kitchen learn from Hitzer directly. The restaurant is a working chef-owner-led independent, which is the operational pre-condition for that kind of training role.
- Why is deer + almond considered nationally important?
- The restaurant is consistently cited in national food-press coverage as one of the defining chef-driven prairie restaurants in Canada because the kitchen runs a complete Manitoba-sourced rotating-menu model with technical seriousness, has stayed under the founding chef-owner for fourteen years, and operates alongside the structurally unusual RAW:almond winter pop-up. The combination has given Winnipeg a chef-driven dining footprint disproportionate to the city's market size.
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