Edible News + Notes: July 2, 2020
Welcome to the Island
Bodega Ridge on Galiano Island is opening a Baja-inspired pop-up featuring local Pacific Coast flavours and ingredients. Tranquilo offers a delicious menu and impressive craft beer menu, and you can choose to enjoy your meal at home with their takeout option or on their spacious, socially distant patio.
Lake Cowichan will be welcoming a new hamburger joint that aims to provide healthy and tasty meals to their customers. Their unique selling point? They’ve got their eye on boar meat sourced from Russian wild razorback boars from the forests of northern Saskatchewan. Combined with local produce and built on decades of restaurant experience, Black M is sure to become the talk of the town.
There’s also a new (store) face in town in Port Alberni. Wildflower Bakeshop and Café is opening in Uptown opening later this month. But this isn’t just any bakery—they promise to have on offer fresh juice, bread, pastries, sandwiches and pizza…but they’re also licensed for liquor and able to offer wine, beer and cocktails. So they basically have you covered from everything to breakfast to happy hour.
A regional food processing hub is also opening its doors this month in Port Alberni. The “Sea to Forest Food Hub,” as it’s currently named, will house Flurer Smokery Ltd, Cascadia Seaweed Corporation, two oyster processors (Effingham Oyster and Nova Harvest) and Forest For Dinner. It will also have a commercial kitchen available for use by small businesses and nonprofits and offer a space for food processing or cooking education.
The city of Duncan is doing its part to help support its restaurants that have limited seating due to social distancing protocols by approving a food court project. The food court, which will be called Station Street Common, will be located at Station Street Park and help provide a place for restaurant customers to sit and enjoy their food.
Established Businesses, New Initiatives
Two of Courtenay’s favourite restaurants have combined forces by joining their patios, which means you can now enjoy a Mudshark’s Bowl with a Gladstone’s beer. Sounds like the perfect date night to us!
The Victoria Public Market has just launched a new program called Farm Fresh Fridays. The initiative brings local farm-fresh food and producers into the heart of the city, supporting local farmers and providing easy access for residents to fill their baskets with flavourful fruits and vegetables. And whatever produce might go unsold is then processed into artisanal, farm-sourced canned goods in a line called Circle Canning, which can be found on shelves at The Chocolate Project at the market.
Looking for somewhere to learn more about sustainable gardening, water conservation and meal prep? Nanaimo Foodshare Society has developed their virtual class series: Cooking, Gardening and Eating Together. These are the perfect classes to take as a family, with the videos aimed at school-age children but with information valuable for anyone interested in learning more about growing and cooking their own food.
Island Gourmet Trails is excited about being able to offer their food tours in the Comox Valley again. Like many businesses reopening during this time, things may look a little different with additional safety and hygiene measures in place, but they still promise to provide an unforgettable culinary adventure.
Food Deliveries
Despite the reopening of restaurants across the province, many people might still prefer to eat in the safety of their own homes. That doesn’t mean you have to cook every meal yourself; COVID-19 has caused many restaurants to offer takeout alternatives even while they resume dine-in service.
There are even business who are dedicated to bringing you that local food for your dinner-in. Brown Bagged Food Tours might be the perfect 
choice to help support local restaurants while treating yourself to a delicious dinner from a distance. While normally only available for delivery in Victoria, the business is offering three Comox Valley delivery dates as well, so you can enjoy a gourmet 3-course meal from multiple Victoria-based restaurants (Sunday July 5th, Sunday July 19th, Saturday Aug 15th).
And “Cow-Op” (The Cowichan Valley Co-Operative Marketplace) is developing a contactless home delivery system for the Cowichan Valley. The non-profit farmer and food processor co-operative received $100,000 grant from the provincial government to help the research and design of a sustainable delivery system not only during the pandemic but the foreseeable future, as demand is only increasing for their products on their online marketplace of local food.
Closed
We are sorry to say goodbye to a popular Island restaurant: Mo:Lé Restaurant has decided to permanently close their doors at both their Victoria and Langford locations. But owner Josh Miller says it’s the right decision, and we wish him well in his future endeavors.
