Field Trip #584: To Tofino For Fancy Book Writin’ And Oysters

I’m on the island tooling a new book for a week and then sticking around to MC the Clayoquot Oyster Festival). Posts will still be coming fast and furious, as I’m wired to the hilt for this trip and our contributors have their own keys. I hope to see some of you up there.

PS. We’ll be launching the new version of Scout shortly after I get back. Ooh, bells and whistles!

Hanging With Frodo Baggins At The Tofino Food & Wine Festival

We’ve just returned back from a stay at Tofino’s stunning Long Beach Lodge on Cox Bay. It seemed like we’d only just left (we were there last month, too), but what can I say? There is no other place on earth that I’d rather be than on a beach in Tofino, taking it nice and easy.

The reason for this particular trip was to take in the 8th Annual Tofino Food & Wine Festival, which – as I’ve noted in past years – is always the coolest and most highly anticipated local event on my work/pleasure calendar. If you’ve never been before, the best way I’ve found to describe it is this: imagine if a bunch of hobbits high on Longbottom Leaf and Old Toby got together dozens of wineries, breweries, artisan food producers and top drawer local restaurants and set up stalls for them to dispense their awesomeness in a rainforest on a perfect June day with the occasional naked woman wiggling her painted boobs for extra fun and a band that plays on and on. That’s what it’s like for me at least. I suggest you go next year and create your own memories.

Between skating the skatepark with a brand new board (weird), watching a Rip Curl surf contest go down in front of our room (a pleasant surprise), going on shell collecting hikes (we found plenty of good ones) and just plain hanging with good friends (always wonderful), we were able to pay visits to some of our favourite scarf spots, including Tacofino, Wildside, Tough City Sushi, Sobo, the Long Beach Lodge’s beautiful Great Room, and for the first time ever, Spotted Bear. With the season now well underway, all were on their game. We had great food within the festival and without, as we have year after year. The good luck flows in this town, and we lap it up. Here are over 100 photos that Michelle and I took to give you a scattered idea as to how it all went down… Read more

An Afternoon Well Spent With Tofino Fisherman Lutz Zilliken

photo | Derek Cruikshank

by Bobby Lax | In this interview I sit down with Lutz Zilliken, owner of Tofino’s West Pacific Seafood and the Fish Store (because he smokes a beautiful fish and has a great big grin on as he does it).

Born and raised: Born in Weilburg Germany, moved to Canada when I was 13.

Education: Bailed after grade 11.

What brought you to Tofino? Salmon fishing and commercial diving for geoduck and sea cucumbers.

What keeps you here? In the short term my store needs fish cut. In the long term I love the summers.

The person in town you most respect and why? Spencer Vaird. I have never heard him say a single bad word about anybody.

The best place to go in the area that not many people know about? Cannery Bay. There is this dock with a slide. You got to go there to understand.

The number of times that you have moved away from Tofino and then moved back? Zero, been here since 1993.

Your favourite local artist? Can’t pick one so I would say Mark Hobson for his underwater paintings, Paul Sam for his jewellery and Keith Plummley for his beautiful wooden plates.

First place you take friends who are visiting? Out on the ocean.

Best drink in town? SoBo’s hand squeezed key lime Margaritas.

Best job you have ever had? Cod Jigger. You just had to reel them up nice and slow.

Read more

Field Trip #581: Digging The Rad Fruits Of Island Collaboration

We recently took a kid-less trip up to Tofino to see and celebrate the launch of the Tofino Ucuelet Culinary Guild, the just-baptised association of west-Island cooks and restaurateurs.

First off, how awesome is it that Tough City and Ukie now have their own organised collective of “like-minded chefs, restaurant entrepreneurs and culinary visionaries whose mission is to work closely with each other and regional farmers, foragers and fishermen to provide, support and promote a unique culinary experience that relies on sustainable farm-to-table practices and the freshest local ingredients prepared with integrity and passion”? That’s pretty cool.

At first blush you probably wouldn’t think chefs would be great collaborators, especially here in hyper-competitive BC where many tend to be dictators in suspiciously guarded fiefdoms of their own making. Cooperation would seem anathema to the job description. But I’ve seen it work splendidly in Vancouver with the Chefs’ Table Society of BC (witness their Spot Prawn Festival, underway now, and the two Vancouver Cooks cookbooks). I also know that the bonds of kitchen camaraderie are some of the strongest in the human experience, somewhere on the band of brothers (and sisters) ladder between firemen and soldiers. So what if the towns are small and membership in the Guild is consequently limited? The fruits of their zeal and common purpose matter most, and I was therefore very keen to witness the TUCG’s first pluck, a fundraising dinner held at Tin Wis. Read more

Saying Goodbye To Summer At The Gorgeous End Of The World

Since I left university I’ve grown accustomed to treating September as the best part of August, a sigh that lasts for 30 days. Over the summer, however, I remembered that when kids reach school age, September reverts back to its original bummer state for the parents. That’s me now, with irrational worries pinned to pencil cases and lunch bags cancelling that second bottle of wine. With one in grade 2 and another still a year out from kindergarten, I’m looking at 13 years, maximum insecurity.  Read more

A Weekend At The Wickaninnish, Or “How To Slow Down In 3 Days”

I’ve put together a short video of our recent trip up to The Wickaninnish Inn (watch above). We were there for the annual food and wine festival, an event that I’ve been likening to the sort of fun you’d expect hobbits to get up to by virtue of its leafy, outdoors location and its complete absence of pretense and formality. Joie, Prospect, Nichol, Burrowing Owl, Elephant Island and many other BC wineries were in attendance, plus some great breweries like VI and Longwood out of Nanaimo, as well as Sidney’s Sea Cider ciderhouse (all thirsts suitably quenched). The booth fare was the best that I can recall.

The Wick, as per usual, made for a flawless stay. We had the good fortune of dining at The Pointe restaurant two evenings in a row (including a Road 13 winemaker’s dinner). It had been over two years since I’d eaten here, and on this trip I felt more familiar with the restaurant than ever before. I was also able to spend some time getting to know the two chefs. I’d been corresponding with executive chef John Waller and restaurant chef Nick Nutting for the past eight months as they are part of the Island contingent for the Chefs’ Table Society’s new cookbook (finished and soon to be printed!). As a consequence of these exchanges, I’ve had the ever-frustrating honour of having to salivate over their always creative recipes, and left very much pining for a food-centric Tofitian sojourn.

I wasn’t disappointed. Their cooking was mature and calculating (phenomenal saddle of lamb with natural jus and boulangere potato); obviously confident even when delicate (hot smoked arctic char wading contentedly in a shallow pool of elephant garlic soup, emboldened with beurre noisette and flashes of hazelnut); and grounded in but not imprisoned by the region (citrus-blasted rockfish ceviche with fresh rhubarb and orange). All top drawer. as talent was a test these boys never had to take.

View an interview with them below:

The Wickaninnish Chefs

We stayed pretty close to the Inn for most of the weekend. Visits to SOBO and the skatepark were our only real adventures out aside from the food and wine festival and beachcombing.

It was nice to have a holiday (sans kids), however short it may have been. Sigh…

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Sobo’s Iconic Purple Catering Truck And The End Of An Era…

ordering my family's last meal from the Sobo truck in Tofino's Botanical Gardens- late summer, 2007

This morning I was organising photos, video, and text for a post on my recent Tofino trip when a tidbit of topical, bummer news landed on my desk… Read more

Tofino’s Raincoast Cafe Closing

After 12 years in business, Tofino’s excellent Raincoast Cafe is closing.

From the Westcoaster:

TOFINO — A critically acclaimed Tofino restaurant will close it doors at month’s end following nearly 12 years in business.

The RainCoast Café, which has received positive reviews in publications like the Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Magazine and Best Places in the Northwest, will hold its final dinner service New Year’s Eve.

“It’s had a good run,” said Larry Nicolay, who co-owns the café with partner Lisa Henderson. “Our hearts [are] in Tofino, but we have to do different things for the family.”

Best of luck in Vancouver Larry and Lisa!