Category: Locals

Winter Kaiseki Night @ Wasabiya

Shawn 2 Comments

Kaiseki Course 3On a Monday night just before the Christmas holidays, an entire roomful of food service professionals (if any member of our clan can be called that) sat down to a very special dinner at Wasabiya Japanese Sushi Cafe in Campbell River.

Our illustrious guests were the kitchen and front-end staff of Quay West Restaurant and Catering, who had just hosted our Christmas party the night before. Chef Marc McGraw’s only request for the night’s food: “Make it something really unique, something Japanese… Stuff they may never have the opportunity to eat again.” Read More

Grain & Glass

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Grain and GlassSoon after stumbling into The Edible Valley, I’m hit with the soon-to-be arrival of another big bit of Comox Valley food media. Grain & Glass will be an online magazine dedicated to food, drink and storytelling by Bon Vivant dude Hans Peter Mayer. It looks pretty cool. Very… what’s the word? Designery! Yeah that’s a word!

Also, the guy can write:

“Grain & Glass is a new online publication being created to showcase the producers and purveyors of fine food on Vancouver Island and beyond. It’s fine wine paired with the perfect cheese; a new IPA alongside the most decadent slice of pizza; the sweetest fireweed honey and the mead that it might become.”   

It’s not gone to (Word)press yet, but you can click here to subscribe to the Grain & Glass Email list which should get you all the details and more.

So, this is what it feels like to be part of a scene that’s blowing up!

The Edible Valley Podcast

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The Edible ValleyI get an electric charge when I’m listening to the radio and someone mentions something I know and love. It’s usually something related to mass media, but sometimes it’s more of a localized thing like a Vancouver restaurant I’ve eaten at or a local artist that’s getting big. The closer to home the topic is, the more I’m ‘gonna get excited.

So when I learned that there was a food podcast being beamed out of the Comox Valley by two local boys, focused on what was growing and being eaten right here, right now… I got BBQ duck excited! Read More

The Nest Bistro (Nanaimo, BC)

Shawn 1 Comment

The Nest BistroCrystal and I spent almost twenty minutes prowling the middle of freaking nowhere Nanaimo looking for The Nest Bistro, a highly recommended chef-owned joint which we had made dinner reservations for. We’d already passed a Phillipino mother smoking and breastfeeding in her doorway, a drunken soon-to-be domestic call two doors down and an elderly man with no shirt and one shoe chasing a cat back and forth across the road. It felt, magically, like we were back in our old neighbourhood in East Van – At first glance kind of ghetto, but the Tibetan prayer flags over everyone’s door made it okay. Read More