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Dining in Tofino: Hippies turn YuppyBy Sandra Phillips
Tofino, five hours up island from Victoria, has finally bloomed. If you want to see it and taste it before it is truly overrun, you’d better get here, and fast.
McDiarmid’s family helped the turnaround by building their luscious Relais and Chateaux property in which Chef de Cuisine Andrew Springett showcases coastal seafood, island organic ingredients and the meat of the land. Eat in The Pointe Restaurant, so-named because it juts out onto the rocky promontory point, allowing you a full 240 degree ocean view of pounding surf and is finished with hand-adzed cedar post and beams, circular wood fire place, and copper elements melding right back into the landscape. The wine cellar is built under the restaurant, on the rock itself... a fine chilling system.
On the other extreme, Sobo’s winning lunch menu is written in multi-colored chalk on a stand outside the truck. It offers the eclectic mix of: killer fish taco filled with salmon, halibut topped with fresh fruit salsa in a blue corn tortilla, crispy panko crusted shrimp cakes, Thai green papaya salad, and one snack that is sure to be picked up elsewhere - polenta fries with spicy Caesar dipping sauce.
Down the road on the bay front, Shelter sits in a soaring wooden building with comfy leather chairs, a friendly bar and lip-smacking food. One hardly knows the salads are salads. The warm chevre salad is so rich with creamy goat cheese, enough roasted garlic to chase vampires, double smoked bacon and caramelized onions balanced by an apple-cider vinaigrette, that you need a really full bodied red wine to wash it down. Mains like fresh (that morning!) caught halibut have creative sides such as spot prawn pierogies and apple-parsnip cream puree. The clam linguine packed with clams on the half-shell and the similar bacon, onion, and roast garlic of the salad was tweaked with preserved lemons, thyme and Parmesan cheese, so each bite was a surprise packed with a new flavor. Pan-seared salmon was zipped up with pan fried potato gnocchi (yum!) and Dijon-fireweed honey butter. Alcohol is just as diverse, with wines served also by the glass so each diner can pair up each course. The ten martinis are humorously named for the weather, as in “gail warning” and “fog bank”, and eighteen micro-brewed beers are featured along with after dinner scotches. Food in Tofino can be summed up neatly by Shelter restaurant’s motto: “Food for the body, wine for the heart, shelter from the elements”. The Wickaninnish Inn and Pointe Restaurant,Box 250 Tofino BC V0R 2Z0 Phone: 800-333-4604 or 250-725-3100 www.wickinn.com The AerieResort, P.O. Box 108 Malahat, British Columbia V0R 2L0 Phone: 800-518-1933 or 250-243-7115 www.aerie.bc.ca SOBO (stands for Sophisticated Bohemian), 1084 Pacific Rim Highway, (in the Tofino Botanical Gardens) Box 813 Tofino, BC Phone: 250-725-2341 or 250-725-4265 www.sobo.ca Shelter Restaurant 601 Campbell Street, Tofino, BC Canada Phone: 250-725-3353 www.shelterrestaurant.com |
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The fact that the kitschy Sobo restaurant’s purple truck
which serves food through a side window made Air Canada Enroute Magazine’s best
new restaurant of the year and has now been “grounded” into a permanent and very
grown-up location inside the Botanical Gardens, is a metaphor for the town of
Tofino itself.
Back in 1955 when Charles McDiarmid, general manager of the
Wickaninnish Inn, was a boy growing up here, Tofino was so far out of the loop
that supplies came in by ferry twice a week. Miners, loggers, fishermen and
hippies happily settled in. Nowadays, all that has changed with the nearby
Pacific Rim National Park, noted as the second most popular visited place in
British Columbia
Every detail has been thought of - microphones have been
placed under the outside eaves so that you can enjoy the soothing sound of the
sea as you dine. The menu, like the hotel itself, reflects the land and sea,
with halibut caught that morning or duck as soft as filet mignon and handsome
slices of foie gras on orange toast. Perhaps the most typical signature dish
might be the alliance of the smoked salmon and foie gras mousseline layered with
potato and poached radish salad with horseradish creme fraiche and Sevruga
caviar dressing.
Inside its new building, a proper four-course dinner is
served on tables with chairs. The changing menu starts with “really tasty
tidbits” such as tofu pockets with smoked salmon or shitakes and grilled goat
cheese wrapped in grape leaves with toasted bread and olives. Main courses might
be chicken mole with beans and rice or braised short ribs with potato salad and
cayenne onion rings, and you can finish your meal off with a bourbon chocolate
pecan pie. Artie Ahier, one of the owners, is happy in his new permanent home
“because of the little things like having a roof and bathrooms”. In the
evenings, the stuck-in-the-ground purple truck simply becomes a spare kitchen
when needed.