FARM-TO-TABLE SCENE FLOURISHES IN VICTORIA
Local cuisine is axiomatic in this region known for its bounty
Spinnakers Brewpub, on Vancouver Island, bills itself as “relentlessly local.” That seemingly hyperbolic tag line, I came to see, is actually an understatement. After all, few are the gastropubs that offer a selection of vinegars produced from the beers brewed on the premises.
I decided to bring home a particularly intriguing India pale ale malt vinegar. And while I was at it, I picked up some chocolate truffles, displayed in a glass case and sold by the pound: dark chocolate with lavender and peppercorn, absinthe and basil, chipotle and bacon. It was like Ghirardelli gone haute cuisine.
Opened in 1984 and recognized as the first brew pub in Canada, the place is decked out in dark wood furniture and features floor-toceiling windows that offer a sweeping view of Victoria Harbour’s Lime Bay.
The space evokes a classically cosy French countryside retreat, but dishes are decidedly anti-classic: oysters on the half-shell are doused in pumpkin-ale-infused vinegar; a brick-oven pizza selection is strewn with house-smoked wild salmon, blackberries from a nearby farm, red onion, local brie, honey-infused sour cream and fresh basil and rosemary. And the beers are designed for pairing. The day’s India pale ale was, surprisingly, a pleasing complement to the pizza, the hops playing easily off the basil and creamy brie.
In most metropolitan cities these days, restaurants wear “local” as a badge of honour, but in Victoria, local cuisine is axiomatic. The Capital Region District, which is composed of Victoria and its bordering townships, covers about seven per cent of Vancouver Island, but it’s home to almost 350,000 people, which accounts for nearly half of the island’s population. You can bet that leaves plenty of land for farming. And it has a temperate climate, making for ideal growing conditions.
Victoria has a university-town vibe, what with its quaint streets, a bevy of coffee houses and indie shops that outnumber the Starbucks outlets and retail chains. Old stately buildings, many of which now stand as modern hotels, have been revamped in a manner that maintains the properties’ heritage.
The downtown district has a Möbius strip-like quality to it. As I wandered through what seemed like a grid layout, I’d realize that the road had curved and taken me nearly back to where I started. It seems only fitting for a town that operates in an efficient and selfcontained fashion. A beer made on one end of the block quickly ends up on tap at the restaurant around the corner.
On the recommendation of a bartender at Spinnakers, I visited 10 Acres, an airy, rustic-chic spot that bills itself as “Bistro + Bar + Farm.” Mike Murphy, the burly owner and Victoria native, owned restaurants in the city for 25 years and opened 10 Acres in 2013. His newest spot, Pescatores, opened recently.
The menu is determined by Murphy’s four-hectare farm, located about 25 kilometres north and gloriously documented on the restaurant’s Facebook page with photographs that could qualify as agriculture porn: piles of spindly, colourful heirloom carrots, closeups of plump tomatoes ripening on the vine, dirt-dusted magenta radishes.
As my friend and I snacked on a quinoa salad with tangy house-pickled veggies, we ordered rounds of Blue Buck, a lightly hopped amber beer made a few streets over at Phillips Brewing.
Meanwhile, Murphy, who has a linebacker’s build, a grizzled voice and an easy laugh, was wandering the floor.
When I asked what’s growing now, he rattled off numbers like a stock analyst running through yesterday’s gains: 450 fruit trees, 700 crowns of asparagus, 110 hazelnut trees, and so on.
Then he dropped a word I’d never heard before: orchardist. He said he was inspired by Bob Duncan, who grows a wide variety of apples, peaches, pears, olives and citrus on land about an hour outside the city. My curiosity piqued, I called Duncan and made arrangements to stop by the next day for a visit.
Duncan, a former entomologist who now lectures on agriculture at universities around the world, oversees an operation involving ingenious low-tech systems. Affable and professorial, he showed me how he strings Christmas lights through citrus trees and rigs them up to a thermostat; the lights go on to warm the tree when temperatures fall below freezing. He explained his technique for training branches of cherry, apricot and almond trees to grow parallel to the ground, allowing offshoots to grow vertically for larger yields. With tricks like these, he boasts about 50 varieties of figs, 30 kinds of citrus and much more.
But the region’s bounty goes far beyond fruit. The Victoria Public Market, which opened in the fall of 2013 in a 102-year-old building that had long housed a historic department store, was a long time coming. Farmers set up a market outside in the spring, but inside, it’s a year-round home to local purveyors.
I strolled through, picking up a pot of truffle goat cheese — one of 10 varieties sold at the Salt Spring Island cheese counter — and a warm wild mushroom pie from the Victoria Pie Co.
Nearby, I bought a handmade natural hand lotion from a man selling Nightingale Natural, so named because it was developed by his wife, a nurse.
But there was one more local treasure I wanted to try: Canadian whisky, which is in the throes of a renaissance.
It’s an industry that’s growing at fast enough of a clip to merit the creation of the Canadian Whisky Awards. It’s an industry piquing enough interest to make liquor conglomerates pay attention. In March 2014, for instance, Campari America spent $120.5 million for Forty Creek Whisky, a company in Ontario started in 1992 by a former winemaker.
Canadian distilleries are taking cues from Kentucky bourbon makers and releasing single barrel products and limited-edition expressions. They’re more complex and full-bodied than such fusty standards as Canadian Club, which is historically accompanied by ginger ale. The whisky’s versatility is on full display at Argyle Attic — part antique-chic parlour, part playfully kitschy hunting lodge — located upstairs from a modern pub.