If you take the winding Pacific Rim Highway up from the Nanaimo ferry terminal, after a couple hours you’ll hit Tofino. This small community of around 2,000 permanent residents is perched on the far western edge of Vancouver Island, overlooking the vast emptiness of the Pacific Ocean. Surfers come here year-round – especially to catch some of the rather aggressive winter waves.
But even if you’ve never heard of a boogie board, the food here is really all you need as an accompaniment to the rather epic storm-watching opportunities.
SoBo
I’ve been a fan of SoBo chef/owner Lisa Ahier’s The SoBo Cookbook, for a couple of years (in particular, her recipe for Thai chicken with roti and peanut sauce). In the midst of a flood of locavore restaurants and cafés, Ahier unabashedly combines local and global ingredients and flavours however she pleases.
“It’s really about the food that my family and I really like to eat, and what the locals prefer,” explains Ahier. After a day of surfing or coming off the docks (on one visit, there were a couple of fishermen at the table next to us, still in their overalls, enthusiastically tucking into benedicts along with what look like quart-sized margaritas), the food locals obviously prefer is wholesome, hearty, and wholly unique to Ahier’s sensibilities. Fish tacos are laced with pineapple salsa and fresh blueberries, and spiced with a kimchi-style sauce that gives pleasant heat without completely obliterating the buds. That Thai chicken is a heavy-hitting beauty of a dish; the house-made roti is perfectly stretched, the soy-braised thighs are doused in made-from-scratch peanut sauce, and the slaw – a light mix of root-vegetable strips – folds very nicely into the bread with large hunks of chicken. In short, it’s a dish you’ll come back for over and over again.
The menu does change with the seasons, but customer favourites are here to stay.
Got a sweet tooth? The house-made ice cream sandwiches are fantastic. Customize your cookie and your ice cream, and walk it off with a stroll during low tide. SoBo.ca
Wolf in the Fog
Since this restaurant opened almost about three years ago, it’s been a ridiculous success. Voted Canada’s best new restaurant of 2014 by enRoute magazine, in addition to all kinds of glowing reviews... could it maintain its own hype? Oh, yeah. And for a very simple reason: Wolf in the Fog doesn’t take itself too seriously. Sure, chef/owner Nick Nutting and GM/co-owner Jorge Barandiaran lead a highly committed and loyal team, but there isn’t an iota of pretence in this large upstairs room that’s topped with a starburst chandelier made from broken surfboards.
“We wanted to deliver a really high-end experience as far as the food and drink goes,” says Barandiaran, “but we didn’t want it to feel like a white-tablecloth type of place.”
No fear of that. The warm wood, dim lights and fantastic music (lots of Etta James, Nina Simone and Motown) – not to mention the truly delightful front-of-house staff – all make for a wonderfully enjoyable evening. And that’s before you even taste the food. One rainy night, Nutting and sous chef Martin Dean were away doing a collaborative dinner at Galiano’s Pilgrimme, but his kitchen remained in the capable hands of Dylan Ashwood. The list of hearty share plates included standouts like Moroccan-spiced octopus with chickpeas, peppers and tomatoes; and Arctic char with lentils and smoked oysters.
The menu changes frequently, according to what’s available, and it’s worth going through in close detail. The beef tartare (with black-garlic mayo and matsutake mushrooms) alone is worth a return visit. This is a restaurant that speaks very strongly to the place where it lives. The elegance of the tartare, for example, offers up a stark and surprisingly pleasing contrast to drinks like the communal punch bowls (try the Earl and His Girls: a heady mix of brandy, sherry, Earl Grey, orange, lemon, and peach bitters) or cocktails like the Mary, Rick and Rose, made with smoked rosemary-infused gin from Legend Distilling, rosemary-lime cordial, fresh lime and soda. WolfInTheFog.com
Rhino Coffee House
This is much more than a place for a quick jolt. The hand-ground beans are excellent, but so too are the house-made doughnuts. Or come in for the breakfast Sammy: a two-fisted juggernaut stacked with fried egg, bacon, tomato, aged cheddar and lettuce on a crisped bagel. Lunch sees a short list of savoury sandwiches like pastrami on rye and chicken pesto. But it’s the house dog – served up with sauerkraut, cheddar, bacon, and a swipe of Dijon – that makes my day. Just be sure to leave room for the above-mentioned doughnuts. Apple fritters are something of a guilty pleasure, but I rarely find one that leaves me satisfied. Rhino’s was almost exploding with cinnamon-coated slices, and boasted a cream-cheese centre that offset the beautifully moist cake. And at only $3, I may have had more than one. RhinoCoffeeHouse.com
Long Beach Lodge
This lovely resort offers up more than just prime seats from which to view crashing waves and thunderous skies. The Great Room in the main lodge also serves up the kind of food that will keep your heart out of your shoes during the pyrotechnics, and infuse you with the calm that seems to be mandatory to achieve resident status. Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, don’t miss the dry-aged ribeye with smoked carrots and duck-fat potatoes. Even more exciting for yours truly was the varied list of gin-and-tonics, including one with a splash of Grûner Veltiner over De Vine’s gin. Choose your tonic and you’re off to the (surfing) races. LongBeachLodgeResort.com
Getting there: Taking the ferry to Nanaimo, followed by a two-hour drive up the Pacific Rim Highway, is a nice, leisurely way to enjoy the scenery. If time is precious, however, Orca Airways can get you from Vancouver International Airport (South Terminal) to Tofino in an hour or so. Be warned though: Winter flying can be a bit bumpy, but the view is killer. FlyOrcaAir.com
Where to stay: Long Beach Lodge Resort offers both ocean-side suites as well as cabins, complete with a fully-stocked kitchen and private hot tub. It also offers surf camps, kayaking, paddleboard and SUP lessons, kids’ activities, fishing and more. LongBeachLodgeResort.com
