It’s been a week since it was between my teeth, but this dish still reverberates. It’s a perfectly baked slab of locally caught, cake-like halibut surrounded by a tangle of bright green brassica, nettles, peas, clams, radish coins and little perogies. Made by chef Nick Nutting and his crew at Tofino’s acclaimed Wolf In The Fog, it arrived on a large, oval-shaped, scallop-edged platter dish and looking very much like a painting that shouldn’t be touched.
Though something of a high wire act of contrasting textures and flavours, the dish was harmoniously delicious from beginning to end: the parity of clams versus peas; the squishy, hidden perogies softening all the green cover crunch; the loose flakes of halibut soaking up the buttery nectar underneath; a companion Cedar Sour cocktail by Haley Potemkin elevating it all while keeping it grounded with pronounced, dizzyingly aromatic sense of place — I didn’t want it to end!
The dish is still on the menu at the time of writing, so if you’re headed over to the little Island town any time soon make a stop here. You need to try this!