BUSINESS MIX

WOLF IN THE FOG AIMS TO MAKE TOFINO A CULINARY DESTINATION

Wolf in the Fog packs a punch in Tofino, B.C.

Expect a certain challenge factor if you book a meal at Wolf in the Fog, Vancouver Island’s relatively new (and, so far, pretty successful) bid to make a culinary destination out of Tofino, B.C., a town best known for its gnarly surfing conditions and even gnarlier storm fronts. Bar manager Hailey Pasemko offers this by way of directions from Victoria, where she grew up: Drive north for about three hours, then, when “you get out to the coast, you hang a right, and the Wolf in the Fog is the very first building” you see in Tofino. “Getting here at all is part of the experience, I would say.”

Many critics and food fans have braved the trek since Wolf in the Fog’s opening last June, hungry to sit under the cedar beams and sample chef Nick Nutting’s cutting-edge, fashionably primitive cuisine, where fishing and foraging factor heavily in the construction of the evershifting menu. “It’s hard to define it without just saying it’s Tofinio cuisine,” says Pasemko, whose unenviable task is to create a drinks menu to suit. Solutions to that challenge include vodka infused with smoked salmon, and cocktail syrups redolent of cedar and pine.

Meanwhile, Pasemko has watched as the communal dining aspect of Wolf in the Fog has fuelled an interest in bowls of punch (pictured), which she never expected to sell especially well. “It really surprised me that people wanted to drink them. I didn’t think that punch out of vintage crystal would be interesting to the [local] Tofino clientele, who are generally a little rough around the edges. But they’re flying off the shelf,” she says. “They’re sort of contagious in that when a table receives this giant crystal chalice, people go, ‘What’s that? I want that.’”