Sunday » September 18 » 2005

Jane and Kate's excellent adventure

A 'foodie foraging foray' to Vancouver Island yields everything from gourmet dinners to fresh seaweed

Jane Mundy and Kate Zimmerman
Special to The Vancouver Sun

August 2, 2005

"Pack your bags," says Jane. "Bring a cocktail dress, rubber boots, gardening gloves and a chef's knife. Oh, and a raincoat, of course -- it's summer and we're going to Vancouver Island."

"Wait a second," Kate replies. "Boots? Knives? I thought we were going to gourmet resorts, lolling in pools and taking spa treatments. That's what you said."

After dodging a barrage of expletives Jane explains that spa treatments might be on the agenda but what we are really doing is packing for a foodie foray. A foodie foraging foray. Anyway, food will predominate, and some of it we two Vancouver-based gourmands might have to find and then cook for ourselves.

This will be quite a splurge, but not the usual pampering one in a spa.

"Don't worry if you have to do a little work," Jane says. "The accommodations are to die for."

Jane does some reconnaissance solo at the new Miraloma hotel in Sidney, a few minutes from the ferry terminal in Schwartz Bay. Miraloma overlooks Tsehum harbour's no-wake zone. Not even the sound of a yacht engine disturbs the serenity. Bonus: This elegant resort-style inn is a stone's throw from Dock 503 restaurant, where Chef Simon Manvell prepares spot prawns with sea asparagus followed by silky smooth and locally smoked albacore tuna atop organic spinach leaves.

You can count on Manvell to source the freshest possible ingredients and Jane reports that she would come here for the perfectly grilled oysters alone. Then there is Cowichan Bay Farm's exceptional chicken and duck breast (more on that later).

With promises of king-sized pillows and 200-thread-count pillowcases dancing in her head, Kate heads off to meet Jane. Our first destination together is Sooke Harbour House. When we check into our luxurious rooms, Kate discovers hers is the size of a ballroom, complete with a stylized arbutus whose branches stretch above the headboard of her king-sized bed. "I have a problem. My room is too small," she jokes to owner Sinclair Philip. Without missing a beat, Philip offers to switch her to the "bowling room."

It's time to pull on the gumboots for our seaweed foray. Since we have the cocktail outfits but not the rubber boots, we borrow a couple of pairs from the "Seaweed Lady." Diane Bernard hand-cuts live seaweed from rocks in the waters around Whiffen Spit, which is located at the southwest tip of the island. Bernard's Outer Coast Seaweeds is seaweed central for area chefs, including Sooke's own Edward Tucson. The inn is known for its devotion to local produce and product. Seaweed, harvested just off Sooke's own coast, looms large, and Bernard conducts regular seaweed tours for interested parties.

Philip comes with us. He has no compunction about eating raw things scraped off wet boulders. So while Bernard drapes us in seaweeds that look less like food than like something Adrienne Clarkson might wear, both she and Philip encourage us to eat from their salty buffet. Soon we, too, are chewing uncooked limpets as blithely as any seabird. Bernard tells us about the numerous health benefits of the seaweeds, as well -- she doesn't just sell this stuff for food (pestos are imminent) but turns it into spa products. (Kate samples a seaweed wrap in her room later and finds it heavenly.)

Before dinner, armed with glasses of champagne, we tour the garden with Philip. It's a beautiful spot, but more important than that, it's where many of the ingredients of our marvelous upcoming dinner grew up. From day lilies to begonia stems, the beauties in this plot are employed in sauces and foams and glazes, giving Chef Tucson's wildly inventive cuisine its distinctive edge. Sooke's garden is so famous that its gardeners offer regular tours and talks.

The tasting menu spreads over four hours, each course perfectly paired with B.C. wines, several from Vancouver Island. Among the highlights are smoked albacore tuna with lemongrass mousse and ginger scallion sauce with Nootka rose petal oil and beet cracker, and alaria seaweed (harvested by Bernard) with crusted crispy squid nestled amongst goosenecked barnacles scented with grand fir and mint chili glaze and Cobble Hill asparagus.

Next day we head to Brentwood Bay Lodge & Spa. Brentwood Bay is a sleek lodge that nestles into the forested shoreline of Mill Bay like a shy woodland creature and is one of only five Canadian entries in the 2005 edition of Small Luxury Hotels of the World. The main building, where its restaurants and lobby co-exist, are all honeyed wood post-and-beam and soaring floor-to-ceiling windows. The lodge looks like something Frank Lloyd Wright might have cheerfully doodled while drinking beer in the sunshine. We scarf down delicious calamari in its Marine Pub before teetering down the hill for a foraging cruise. We're going to learn something if it kills us.

The foraging cruise is usually an afternoon's glide in a glass-domed boat piloted by Matt Smiley of Eco Cruising B.C. that takes passengers out among the buoys set out by local hunters of prawn and crab. Our tour is information-packed but brief because one of the newer Brentwood Bay Lodge options is having a private cooking show in the Arbutus Grille & Wine Bar for two or more by chef Alain Leger, accompanied by wine pairings. Our mission: check it out. Our own chef's knives never see the light of day as Leger does all the work; the mise is already en place when we get there. But we have the option of a little light oyster shucking and plenty of heavy oyster slurping.

Dinner in the Arbutus Grille is another consummate West Coast experience -- we tuck into an immense seafood platter loaded with crab, spot prawns, clams, oysters, scallop ceviche, and salmon three ways, accompanied by a second platter brimming with accoutrements.

To bed, and then to La Pommeraie, an airy new bistro set in the orchard at Merridale Cidery, near Cobble Hill. (This is easily done, as the Mill Bay ferry is next door to the lodge.) Here the food is wonderfully fresh and simple: an asparagus frittata and salad followed by rhubarb crumble (as if we need dessert). We wash lunch down with an assortment of Merridale's award-winning potables, including its Scrumpy cider.

After La Pommeraie, we veer south to the top of the Malahat and the Aerie Resort, which is not West Coast in the least but rather a blush-toned pseudo-Tuscan villa. The Aerie is one of 13 Relais & Chateaux properties in this country, and may feel homey to the sort of folk who choose their hotels on the basis of R & C's stamp of approval.

We are housed in Villa Cielo (above the main buildings), which sweeps us upstairs on a grand staircase better suited to white-gowned debutantes than to those of us with crushed apples stuck to the bottom of our Tevas. Villa Cielo's view, overlooking Finlayson Arm (and looking past a replica of Michelangelo's David), is magnificent.

"We're looking down on hawks," Jane marvels.

But our gluttonous daily regimen allows no breaks for prolonged birdwatching. Down the stairs we go to the villa's kitchen, where Chef Christophe Letard is waiting to instruct us. Guests at his cooking classes can participate as much or as little as they like; we elect to go minimal by tweezing a few bones out of the arctic char and then we resume our well-warmed spots on the kitchen island's stools.

Letard proceeds to concoct course after course on the order of partridge, pheasant, foie gras and chestnut sausage with dandelion sunflower seed pesto. He is unpacking a hefty rack of venison to which he is about to do goodness knows what magic when Jane stops him.

"I couldn't eat another bite," she says.

It's time to let Letard get on with the slightly more important task of preparing dinner for the dining room's guests. A few hours later we are among them, learning about the hotel's impressive wine collection from general manager James Kendal while tucking into Letard's aromatic lemongrass and lobster broth with seaweed, sea urchin and oyster and a breathtaking pineapple and vanilla goat cheese crumble.

Is this top-able? The next morning we spend a few hours checking out local producers with Kathy McAree of Travel with Taste Tours, who specializes in introducing visitors to the gustatorial wonders of the Cowichan Valley -- from Hilary's Cheese to wines from Cherry Point Vineyards (the second aboriginal-owned winery in North America) to Cowichan Bay Farms' pasture-raised chickens and ducks. The latter, we buy frozen from an unmanned shed, leaving our money in a cashbox and writing our own receipts. Then, we ramble north to Cobble Hill and Fairburn Farm.

Proprietor Mara Jernigan is a bit of a celebrity, one of the founding members of Vancouver Island's Slow Food Movement and a well-known cooking class instructor with special expertise in Italian cuisine. After establishing and running nearby Engeler Farm, she's moved to Fairburn to operate its rambling farmhouse as a B & B, cooking school and multi-course Sunday summer lunch mecca (book well ahead).

The lunch she serves us is, in a word, perfect -- a bright yellow frittata from area chicken eggs, studded with local sheep's cheese and minced homegrown herbs, alongside a platter of salad made from Vancouver Island greens, B.C. hothouse tomatoes (this being spring), white and green asparagus from "Chuck's" (a neighbourhood farmstand) and seared pasture-raised duck from "Lyle's" (Cowichan Bay Farm). Afterward we follow her down the road to Blue Grouse winery, where tastings of owner Hans Kiltz's Siegerrebe force us to buy almost a case of his product.

Later that night, over halibut with a sauce made of pepper brunoise and verjus (leftover grapes from nearby winemaking), Jernigan continues to spread the word about how we should all eat what springs from the earth in our own part of the world.

Some of her message even sinks in. The next morning, as we heave ourselves on to the Nanaimo-Horseshoe Bay ferry, stuffed with seaweed and daylilies, apple Scrumpy and gooseneck clams, Belle Ann cheese and Blue Grouse wine, "Lyle's" duck and "Chuck's" asparagus, we realize that true fabulousness is found not in stylish hotel rooms and luxury toiletries -- not that we are the least bit ungrateful for those -- but in the rich bounty of this region.

We haven't unsheathed our chef's knives on this trip, and we haven't touched gardening glove to dirt. But others have, and our cooler is full of Vancouver Island products, from sausages to vinegars, to explore when we get home.

"Let's eat local," we say, digging into White Spot burgers while chugging toward the mainland. "Or as close to it as we can. Pass the chipotle mayonnaise."

Jane Munday is a Vancouver food writer and Kate Zimmerman is a North Shore News columnist.

IF YOU COME:

The Aerie Resort:
P.O. Box 108 Malahat, B.C.
1-800-518-1933

aerie@relaischateaux.com

www.aerie.bc.ca

Sleepover: high season: $295 - $995; low season: $195-$650

Dinner: Tasting menu: $95, wine pairing: $55

A la carte: Entrees: $28 to $42

Cooking Class: scheduled: $100 per person

Private: $200 per person

Brentwood Bay Lodge & Spa:
Brentwood Bay
1-888-544-2079

reservations@brentwoodbaylodge.com

www.brentwoodbaylodge.com

Sleepover: high season: $495 - $845; low season: $295 - $475

Dinner: Five courses: $78; seven courses, $98, not incl. wine

Cooking class: $400 for two people

Fairburn Farm:
3310 Jackson Rd, Duncan
250-746-4637

info@fairburnfarm.bc.ca

www.fairburnfarm.bc.ca

Sleepover: $140 - $155, including breakfast

Lunch: $75 including wine pairings

Dinner: four courses, $50; seven courses, $90

Cooking class: $85 including lunch

Sooke Harbour House:
1-800-889-9688

info@sookeharbourhouse.com

www.sookeharbourhouse.com

Sleepover: high season: $355 - $575, incl. breakfast and picnic lunch; low season, from $175

Dinner: gastronomic menu (approx. seven courses): $99

Wine pairing: $10 per course

A la carte: average Entree: $35, Friday and Saturday; four-course set menu, $70 Monday to Thursday

Cooking Classes:

As Fresh as it Gets Culinary Fishing Adventure: Prices range from $50 per person to $250 per person, depending upon group size and structure of class.

Travel With Taste Tours
Kathy McAree
250-385-1527

info@travelwithtaste.com

www.travelwithtaste.com

Cuisine and wine day trips in the Cowichan Valley or Saanich Peninsula start at $180 per person and can be as decadent as private cooking classes in a chef's home, spending time with a vintner in his winery, or mushroom foraging with a chef and cookbook author, staying at award-winning inns and hotels along the way. Private outings with McAree start at $500 a day. Over four days, you can expect to invest $2,000 or $3,000 for some very exciting palate-pleasing fun times--not including accommodation.

Ran with fact box "If You Come", which has been appended to the end of the story.