Summer food 2011 revisited La Belle Patate Esquimalt · Friday August 5, 2011 by colin newell
As fond as I am for the great cafe culture, of which Victoria, B.C. is truly blessed,
there are some real restaurant gems in Victoria and it is not so much the food (because the food is important unto itself) but it is the heart and soul of the people that create and work these restaurants that bring magic to the table.
Mathieu (Matty) Lott, owner and creator of La Belle Patate is at 1215 Esquimalt Road in Esquimalt. He knows his potatoes, his cheese curds, his customers and he loves all of them in equal measure.
Andrea, Matty and I sit in the pleasant August sun on the sidewalk patio, full of happy folks tucking into their poutine, burgers and smoked meat sandwiches.
What strikes me is the warmth and ease that Matty exhibits among his staff and appreciative clientele. At a youthful 36, Matty is coming up on 4 years in the business – 4 wonderful years – success measured in bags of potatoes, bushels of cheese curds and smiles… and an endless procession of smiles of customers. He knows them all.
The poutine formula has been good for Matty and La Belle Patate. Poutine is a dish of French fries, topped with a thick vegetable gravy and a covering of Island made cheese curds. We always order a “small” between the two of us – and two all-dressed “Steamie” hot dogs – crazy comfort food – steamed hot dogs (and buns) loaded down with pickled cabbage (saurkraut) and mustard. Brilliant. Pure love.
Matty was recently contacted by the good folks at Guy Fieri’s “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives…” – and Matty has conflicted feelings about the extra exposure. “It is a mixed blessing… in 3 years, we are going full out… 1200 pounds of potatoes a week! That kind of exposure could double our traffic… and right now we are in a perfect place!”
Having Matty join Andrea and me on the sidewalk patio for what seemed like 15 minutes was brilliant. Next time I am doing an audio recording. I could listen to Matty talk potatoes and his loyal customers for an hour.
Back to the reality of his poutine: It’s the real thing. I noted to Matty that I have a fairly good following on Facebook and Twitter (as well as all the devoted readers on the blog and coffeecrew website). There is lots of chatter about poutine, almost daily in fact. And here is the thing – La Belle Patate is the only city poutine that I can take seriously. Sure you can get some freaky gourmet treatment of poutine in a fancy restaurant in the Victoria area – and among some other joints that mean well – but La Belle Patate is the only game in town.
We sip on our iced tea, polish off our last gravy dressed fries and exchange warm handshakes with Matty – he is in a happy place doing what he loves best – making happy people happier and creating poutine converts on an almost daily basis.
Food is love. No kidding.
La Belle Patate is located at 1215 Esquimalt Road a half-block past the Civic Center and Esquimalt’s original strip mall. Bon apetit!
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Summer food 2011 Food preview Bubbys Kitchen Cook Street Village · Wednesday August 3, 2011 by colin newell
Andrea and I were honored to have been invited to a soft opening evening sneak preview at Bubby’s Kitchen – Cook and Oscar in the wonderful Cook Street Village in Victoria.
One of the joys of being an “aspiring” food writer and long time food and drink blogger – as well as having the privilege of calling some of Victoria’s best food providers as personal friends… is the opportunity to look “under the hood” a few days in advance of the lucky people that will soon be enjoying this welcomed addition to the never static Cook Street Village South.
Bubby’s Kitchen is center anchor in a trio of newcomers to the corner of Oscar and Cook Street; a pet store on the left and a Hot House Pizza place on the right.
Bubby’s Kitchen is a very spacious and airy addition to the Bubby Rose family of food stuff providers in Victoria – and, as Tony Bennett sang, “The best is yet to come and, babe, won’t it be fine?” One part bistro. One part deli. One part cafe. 100% family friendly meeting place.
Bubby’s will feature a patio and wine and beer. Wonderful long hours… 7ish til 10 PM 6 days a week (Closed Mondays). And everything you love about Bubby Roses’s – Cook and Meares – scaled up.
The food. More of the comfort classics you would imagine from Mark and Valerie (and partner Joel) – Burgers, Pasta, salads… all day breakfast items – plus a special breakfast menu that made me tingle with anticipation!
Click photo at left for artists rendition of Bubbys Kitchen
Details? Too early to reveal folks! More in a few days.
Andrea and I shared a Bison burger and a plate of awesome Ravioli over bottles of Blue Buck Beer. Again, tease details here readers. Do not want to give up too much as of yet.
We both have a very, very, very good feeling about this place. The excitement is palpable – and I am sure residents of the Cook street village (and beyond) are humming. Possible full opening some time next week.
The best is yet to come and, babe, won’t it be fine The best is yet to come, come the day you’re mine
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Summer sips and food - Canoe Club Victoria - 2011 - August · Monday August 1, 2011 by colin newell
I have always had a fondness for The Canoe Club in Victoria. The beer is good. The food is often creative. The staff are usually long term and super friendly and professional. My single warning for Canoe Club is – avoid them on Fridays after work and, maybe, during prime time (lunch and dinner) on Saturdays. They tend to get swamped on Fridays so we always play it safe and go at 2 PM… on any day of the week.
Picture (Click on it) above: Ploughman’s Lunch – selection of cured meats, local Hilary Cheese, pickles, pate and artisan breads… – Panasonic Lumix 8Mp Camera
I am not a beer expert, but the beers are fairly reliable and generally mature by the time they hit your glass – and what I mean by that is… the brewmaster knows what he is doing and the beer comes out of the kegs when the time is right – not a moment before.
The Canoe club, quite arguably, has the best patio scene in Victoria. If you have ever been in any other city in Canada… like Toronto, Ottawa or Halifax – you know the patio scene is the thing – especially this time of the year.
Your blogger sips the seasonal Canoe Club Wheat Ale…
Because of Victoria’s notably short summer season (and the fact that you can count on one hand generally the number of hot summer evenings) the evening patio groove can be slim at times. Bottom line – evening on warm evenings, it can be cool near the water.
The Canoe is perfect for summer days because the patio is ideally located on an inlet and not right on a large body of water – and the layout and design of the patio affords some protection from cool breezes.
In the photo, above, Andrea and I shared the Ploughman’s – cured meats, cheeses, some veg, pate and bread – and as I would discover in a few hours… low on the protein for one 6’ 2” dude. I had a sleeve of Summer Wheat Ale (I call it the chick beer…) and Andrea had the IPA. As always, the beer is good.
Victoria has lots of great food and drink places – so get out there and enjoy them while the weather permits.
Colin Newell is a Victoria area resident and occasional writer for EAT Magazine…
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Victoria Summer 2011 Wine Food Coffee Chocolate and Life Chapter 1 · Tuesday July 5, 2011 by colin newell
Andrea and I have been doing more in our life together.
Here is the thing folks. Life is short. This is not a dress rehearsal. Get on it.
So in the last year or so we have started living like there is no tomorrow – because, hey… you never know.
Photo above right – Vintner owner Andy Johnston was brought up on a Welsh hill farm and graduated from Birmingham Medical School in 1971 as a physician, and soon made his way to Edmonton, Alberta, where he enjoyed a 30-year practice as both a family doctor and a businessman.
One of the new items on our journey are the Wine pairing events at the Fairmont Empress. It is a crazy affordable night on the town that is hard to resist.
And with your free friends of the empress membership card (15-20% off a bunch of stuff) – it is downright frugal.
For “friends”, it is around $45 dollars for 5 wines and 5 food pairs.
Tonight the featured Estate Winery was Averill Creek on Vancouver Island.
One note of housekeeping. An Estate wine is a wine that is produced with grapes grown on the farm that is making and selling the wine. It is that simple.
Averill Creek grows all the grapes for all the wine that they sell.
I am no wine expert but what I do know about Vancouver Island wines is – they have most certainly evolved in the last 17 years or so. Why is that? Climate change… in part. Additionally, the skill and abilities of the vintner and a bunch of other reasons.
I am not a wine expert. Have to be clear on that. And this blog is more about a specific wine-pairing event. So here goes…
Tonight we sampled 5 wines. 4 of them were grape wines;
The Pinot Grigio. The Gewurztraminer. The “Foch Eh”. The Pinot Noir. And a bold Blackberry wine, the “Cowichan Black.”
The P.G. (bold, bright and fruity – with lots of sharp acid and citrus) was paired with an Sea Urchin “Uni Veloute” — kind of a fritter… on top of a Salmon tartar. Brilliant.
The Gewurztraminer was mated to a nugget of natural Vancouver Island Buffalo Mozzarella, baby greens and some wild boar bacon. Again, the G. is big and bold with lots of fruit, apple, figs, spice…
Foch Eh? A humorous take on Beaujolais but made Canadian with 100% Marechal Foch. This light bodied red is delicately structured with spicy dark berry flavors, soft tannins and juicy acidity, wrapped up with a lengthy, dry finish. Paired with seared Ahi tuna, prosciutto and asparagus. Awesome balance!
The Averill Creek Pinot Noir. This is a wine in development for Averill Creek. The Pinot is my wine and I know it fairly well. This Vancouver Island example has a few years of development ahead of it. The Pinot’s I pick tend to be big, bossy and in your face. This one has subtle reflection and delicate nuance – light duty fruit and spice… but hey, it was created on Vancouver Island… so that is astounding all by itself.
The pairing of seared duck breast, morel mushroom risotto and fig jus was overpowering for this gentle Pinot — but perfectly prepared nonetheless!
Cowichan Black – a blackberry wine with a 12.8% alcohol bite – and a sweetness perfect for after dinner, on ice cream, flambe or over your breakfast dairy free waffles a la yours truly!
A bit more on the vintner, Andy Johnston: His transition to grape growing was a natural one – his passion comes naturally. At this particular night at the Empress Hotel, he was engaging and informative – encouraging the guests to discover what was in their glass.
Bottom line here folks: Get out there and explore your Island.
If you do not live on Vancouver Island, take another look at your region, neighborhood and city…
And remember: Life is for the living… and the eating and drinking.
Big hats off to Fairmont Empress food and drink manager, Theresa Dickinson, who, in part, makes these events rock. She is a gigawatt of energy and brings a lot of pizzazz to everything that happens at the Empress.
Colin Newell lives in Victoria B.C. Canada and with his loving Wife, Andrea, endeavor to enjoy life just a little.
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Victoria food reviews 2011 Moon Under Water Pub Bay Street · Sunday June 5, 2011 by colin newell
It has been a while since we tried a new brew pub in the city of Victoria – Our fair city has, perhaps, more than its share of good brew pubs; the likes of Canoe, Spinnakers (one of North Americas first brew pubs) and Swan’s comes to mind – all good in their own right – most of whom that have had food offerings that have varied wildly over the years – nowadays they are all pretty passable.
We popped into the Moon Under Water Pub on a very, very, very quiet Sunday afternoon – I think there were 3 parties of 3 folks each finishing up their late lunches and since we were coming in 2:20ish, we were guaranteed a buffet selection of seating options. One of the owner-partners came out to greet us with an overview of what was happening or not happening on their menu that day.
The Moon Under the Water pub is more like a traditional English public house than your typical table service joint downtown – My personal Island favorite, The Crow and Gate, south of Cedar, British Columbia (near Nanaimo) is like this; show up, walk up to the counter/bar, place your drink order and food order, maybe run a tab if you are inclined and take a number to your table. I am used to it – not everyone else would be… but it is fairly clear on the door and on the menu that this is the way that it is. All good.
One of the benefits for me of this concept is that you can talk to the beer keep or host directly about the specialties of the day or something about the beers without having to break the rhythm of the serving person who brings out your grub – although they could be the same person. I personally like the relaxed feeling of running a tab and/or paying for your food ahead of time and only having to worry about a gratuity after the meal is complete.
The Beer Needless to say, with Andrea and My sister Lisa along for this exploration, we were going to try all of the beer offerings (in a responsible fashion of course…) – harder to do when there is only 2 of you. We tried the Blond Ale, the Best Bitter, the IPA and the limited edition Brown Ale.
The Blond is a American style wheat beer with 10% wheat malt. Very crisp without being overarching in the citrus department. Sometimes the Ales can have too much grapefruit and come off a tad puckery (not a skilled beer reviewer folks – just relying on my senses from coffee tasting.)
The IPA was very, very drinkable – delicately balanced. Not to hoppy or aggressively in your face like a lot of other locally produced IPA’s.
I enjoyed the Best Bitter – crisp and balanced with a slightly lower alcohol/volume content than the IPA.
Finally, I shared the limited edition Brown Ale with the table. More complex sugars were present but like the other offerings, they tend towards the conservative end of the beer flavor spectrum for being “more drinkable and less quirky and strong flavors.”
I think as Moon Under the Water brewpub finds their legs, the beer will get more interesting and mature – but for now, I give them top marks. I would much rather drink a polite Bitter than wrestle with a raspberry espresso stout with an oil drum of attitude — especially on a first visit.
The Food – OK. Here is the thing about brew grub. One of my litmus tests for a kitchen is: If you have onion rings on the menu as a starter and they are reasonably priced (between 4 and 7$) and they come from CostCo, trust me folks, I am shooting you down! Joyfully, the bar keep advised me that their rings are hand cut, coated and dipped in house. They are at the higher end of the price point, yes – but so what. They were fabulous, fresh, crispy, hot and a tad oily – served with a paprika aioli.
So you know: An onion ring is perfect (this is the test part), when you break them in two and the coating and the onion breaks at the same time. And when you bite into the perfect onion ring, a piece of onion and breading (coating) comes off in your mouth. Unlike most other places in Victoria (contradict me all your want) where the onion rings come directly from CostCo, Walmart or Thrifty Foods. Selling commercially made previously frozen onion rings in a pub, any pub… is a sin.
The rings at the Moon Under Water Pub on Bay street were worthy of a return visit – if only for the onion rings and some more beer. Enough said.
Andrea and Lisa had “Moon” burgers several different ways with different sides. The burgers were considered “very good” and repeatable – each one came with caramelized onions, lettuce, tomato and cheddar cheese (as an add on). Lisa had the mixed salad (very nice and fresh) and Andrea had the fries, thin cut and likely made in-kitchen.
I had the Steak Mushroom Beer pie in puff pastry with the side mix salad.
For those most familiar with the traditional steak and mushroom pie (more mushrooms, less steak), this was the opposite; chunks of lean steak that you actually had to cut up with a knife – and overall, melt in your mouth.
The Pub – Moon Under Water is at 350B Bay Street just before the Bay Street bridge on the Victoria side. It’s in an industrial neighborhood where you would not expect to find a pub. Lots of free parking and overnight parking for those having a really good time. The interior, high ceilings and lots of art, is pleasant and welcoming. The pub has several “snugs” or alcoves for more private gatherings – and a games room. In the main room there are no TV’s that I could see (thank goodness!)
It is an unassuming space – does not bug me at all – and any reviewers that would find fault with this are not actually food reviewers, they are self acknowledged interior designers… obviously.
The staff are very, very friendly, informed and informative about the menu and the beer.
Going back? Definitely!
Colin Newell lives and works in Victoria B.C. Canada – edits a very old coffee website and writes for EAT Magazine.
