A Feast For Your Senses: Culinary Inspiration for Foodies

May 24

What is Pacific Northwest food? We love farm to table but what about forest to table? What are the flavours and nutrients indigenous to this coastal land? Vancouver and Victoria have great reputations as foodie cities with diverse international culinary options, but just recently has our region started to create a unique culinary identity truly routed in our oceans and forests. Unfortunately, many of the culinary traditions of the indigenous peoples where squashed as Europeans colonized the area. Today there are several notable chefs and culinary companies who have learned from and lived in remote indigenous communities and continue to experiment and sustainably forage creating a new story about our relationship with our environment and the flavours and techniques that make our food notorious, desirable, and accessible.

Did you know, the Temperate Rain Forest in which we live, has the largest biomass in the entire world? And that it sustained the highest population in North America prior to colonization. Our forests and oceans have ingredients and flavours most people have never tasted, but many people want to try.

Here are a few of our favourite influencers that inspire the culinary creations featured in our group activity “A Taste Of Nature: Tasting Nature’s Abundance.”

Chef Jesse McCleery at Pilgrimme Restaurant.

He celebrates the once forgotten ingredients native to the Pacific Northwest like bull kelp and spruce tips in a cozy cabin in the woods on Galiano Island just off the coast of Vancouver. He trained at Noma, ranked best restaurant in the world for four years.

“New Nordic Cuisine has been used to promote local, natural and seasonal produce as a basis for new dishes both in restaurants and in the home. As a result, a number of restaurants, in particular in Denmark, have introduced local ingredients, some often new to the usual palate, in combination with traditional foods prepared in new ways.”

Chef Paul Moran - Winner of Canada’s Top Chef & Culinary director at L’oca

Chef Paul Moran is an expert forager who has made a career specializing in Canadian wild food. He previously worked at Tofino’s 1909 restaurant, then went on to found Wild Origins, and now is curating culinary experiences at the soon to open L’oca Quality Market in Edmonton.

Chef Martin Dean, owner of Neck of the Woods Catering

Chef Martin believes that appreciation for ingredients and their producers make an exciting, immersive, and place-based culinary experience. That’s why celebrating fresh, local, and seasonal product and respecting their origin is his culinary priority. He wants to make guests excited about not just a great experience, but one unique to his neck of the woods on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

Chef Martin served as Sous Chef at the award winning Wolf in the Fog restaurant in Tofino under Chef Nick Nutting for the past seven years, including leading the catering team for weddings and special events.

Martin located to Tofino over a decade ago to work as Sous Chef at the Wickaninnish Inn, where he learned the craft of curating beautiful coastal cuisine, and coordinated culinary programs for weddings and esteemed private events.