Sooke Harbour House - as good as it gets, food OR coffee. PDF Print E-mail
Written by colin newell   
Saturday, 05 August 2006 14:00
In the course of 12 plus years of travel associated with work at the University and travel with the website and various writing gigs, Andrea and I have sat at a lot of fabulous tables. This summer we have been on a 4-day work week (self-imposed for our sanity!)

As a result of this new freedom (longer weekends, freedom to do some extra planning), we have been exploring the inner spaces around Southern Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands. And although Andrea and I do 98% of our food experiences at home, we do try and get out once a week while on our "down time" (off the road).
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So, with one extra day to play with, what have we done? Today we did something we have not done in over ten years; Made a reservation at the best restaurant the region has to offer - The Sooke Harbour House.

What makes this one restaurant better than all the others (at least from our perspective)?

For starters, the Sooke Harbor House restaurant focuses on sourcing the best local ingredients, organic vegetables, house-raised herbs and ethical/humane meats from the community. Seafood? Everything except for crab (when it's available) swims free! The Sooke Harbour house even has a section for the growing vegetarian component. Bravo.

Secondly, everyone at the Sooke Harbour house, from the Chef down to the wait staff and sommelier, loves food, the perfect culinary environment and pleasing their guests. They score top points in all these categories. No question.

Thirdly, there is the view. During the day, those lucky enough to be dining at the Sooke Harbor house look out over a garden exploding with color and flavor! Yes folks, flavor. There are over 400 edible flowers and herbs in the gardens surrounding the Harbour house. And depending on the chefs imagination that day, many of these flowers and herbs become ingredients.

Fourth but not finally, the Sooke Harbour House has been awarded the Grand award 3 years running for being among the Planet's top 95 Wine lists. No small feat!

So what about the food anyway? Right off the get-go during this "reunion" with the Sooke Harbour house, we were thrown slightly by the menu. Thankfully we were not alone - everyone within ear-shot was asking the same question. The menu was split into 3 parts - a Fish section, a Meat section and a Vege section. Ok. So far, so good. They offer a 4-course fixed-price (including dessert) with slight variations depending on your choice of Fish, Meat or Vege. Ok - they really could have put that on one page. Small details.

What did we have? Andrea did the 4-course Meat and I did the Fish.

I opened with 2 Quadra Island Oysters - raw in the half-shell with a Beet and Salmon roe coulis. Divine. Andrea had a Butternut/Cale soup with a Simosa - quite tasty (I was sampling everything by the way)

Next at bat for me was a nugget of grilled Sable fish on top of squid. Brilliant and tasty.
Andrea had a duck confit dish, that despite being slightly drier than I would have expected, was refreshing and, at the same time, complimented the previous offering.

My headliner was sesame-battered and baked local cod while Andrea had medallions of venison (deer). I grew up with deer - lots of it and it was nice to taste it again.

Dessert included Blueberry galette (kind of a sweet calzone french style) with a crown of fennel ice-cream. Andrea had the chocolate ganache on a red-fife biscuit beside a meringue-cube served flambe. Brilliant.

Apart from the food and the ambience, some of the best moments of the evening were spent chatting with our waitress Linda. She was a wealth of useful information about the "alternative" cuisine in the Sooke region.

In the next few weeks and monthes we will be getting more of our food adventures integrated into the coffeecrew pages. Stay tuned!
Colin Newell travels around Canada looking for simple food and great coffee - and he has found much to crow about.
Last Updated on Thursday, 26 February 2009 21:59