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Pluvio

Where: 1714 Peninsula Road, Ucluelet
When: Dinner, daily
Info: 250-726-7001. www.pluvio.ca

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Wild Mountain 

Where: 1831 Maple Ave. South, Sooke
When: Dinner, Thursday-Sunday
Info: 250-642-3596. www.wildmountaindinners.com

A small town known for fishing and logging has gained a little swagger. Thank Pluvio restaurant for being a big part of bringing tourism to the struggling industries. Its food and guest experience make the town a trip worthy from anywhere in the world.

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Pluvio turned five in April, winning accolades and awards along the way. Opening shortly after the pandemic started, chef-owner Warren Barr, manager-owner and partner Lily Verney-Downey and their staff weathered it by selling “drive-by fried chicken” by the hundreds.

They’ve been so busy ever since — constructing four guest rooms, evolving and deepening the food program — that they didn’t stop to celebrate. “I’d like to have one boring year,” Barr says.

But five years felt like a milestone, and celebrate they did, with a weekly chef collaboration dinner throughout the month of April.

I attended one such collaboration with the rather unsung Wild Mountain restaurant in Sooke. Owner-chef Oliver Kienast and partner Brooke Fader met while they both worked at Sooke Harbour House, where on his last tenure Kienast was head chef. He oversaw a team that changed the menu daily, which most chefs would view as culinary masochism. “It pushed me to be so creative,” he says.

Barr and Kienast are kindred spirits in their zeal to showcase Vancouver Island on their menus. They’re going forward and backward at once — with new ideas, using unfamiliar edibles and techniques while also restoring old-time skills, like whole animal butchery, fermenting, cooking with fire, foraging, growing food, milling grains, and relying on local, seasonal ingredients. “There are so many parallels in our lives,” says Barr.

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At Wild Mountain, Fader is also busy with advocacy work in the Slow Food and Slow Fish movements, particularly around the issues of fishing licences and quotas takeovers by corporations and multinationals, who lease them back to fishers at shocking prices, she says.

“It can cost millions of dollars for crab fishing. Fishing families are suffering and going out of business and with them, we lose knowledge and experience.” In Sooke, about three families are operating out of the once-thriving fishing harbour and the power needs to return to the fishers, she says.

At the collaboration dinner, instead of alternating dishes on the menu as is common, the chefs worked together on each dish. They see it as a bigger picture way of moving forward, too.

Says Kienast: “We’re trying to establish a co-operative chefs’ alliance where chefs work together instead of competing. There aren’t many small restaurant owners doing everything from scratch with a slow-food philosophy.” Kienast, aware that it’s not just about tourists in Sooke, mixes the approachable and inventive on his menu.

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At Pluvio, Barr recently discontinued his a la carte menu, switching to a multi-course tasting menu only and feels the $128 price point demands a unique food experience. “Some say let the ingredients speak for themselves, but I feel that’s not fair after driving here to Ukee (Ucluelet). I have to do something special.”

The Barr-Kienast collab dinner offered a non-alcoholic pairing with each course, an option to wine pairing.

“The non-alcoholic movement is very strong. Some nights there are more non-alcohol drinkers,” says Barr, explaining diners are careful if they have to drive to Tofino after the meal. “Intuitively, people might think it’s cheaper than alcohol but non-alcoholic cocktails take way more work,” he adds.

Dinner began generously of time and labour with five snacks. “It sets the tone and mood,” Barr says. “Generosity puts people at ease.”

The two-bite snacks got juices flowing: poached, chilled oyster with kombu oil and kimchee granité; pork and chicken heart terrine with pickled veg and quince mostarda (chef Kienast is a charcuterie whiz); sunflower seed spread and pickled mussels over sunflower and seaweed crackers; fermented celeriac and ikura tart; and duck liver parfait over brioche with shoyu jelly and pear brunoise. The terrine and the duck liver parfait really showcased the chefs’ skill and expertise.

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Snacks were followed by scallop crudo brushed with shio koji and served with rhubarb, hazelnut, endive and sweet cicely — flavours and textures sent the quiet scallops to party in the mouth.

Halibut, the first of the season, was slow-poached in oil, preserving structure and lovely flavour. On the plate, there were pickled potatoes, burnt cabbage, spinach, house-cured ikura, burnt cabbage soubise sauce, and a chiffonade of tulip blossom — “like party streamers,” as Barr described it. Lots of mystery and surprise.

A lamb loin was a beauty with an assertive strata of sausage tucked on one edge. The lamb, from Stonehaven Farm in the Alberni Valley, “is exactly what I want to be working with,” says Barr. “They have a good life and are treated well.” It came with nettle and sheep cheese dumpling covered in nixtamal corn mousse, and brassica shoots with canoncito pepper jus on the side.

Kienast had some explaining to do about the next course — mycelium french toast. Kienast puts mycelium — the rootlike part of mushrooms (and great immune system booster) — in a cylinder to bind with millet and barley, honey and rose petals. It forms the earthy, grainy bread for the french toast, which is served with Vancouver Island maple syrup, grated truffle, walnuts, and candy cap mushroom ice cream. This guy’s not inventing recipes. He’s inventing food! It tasted earthy and sweetly mushroomy.

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For dessert, sea buckthorn semifreddo, winged with a chocolate tuille, joined by a chocolate rye cookie,  and enriched with caramelized white namalaka. The mignardise course was a treasure hunt for tasty sweet morsels hidden in a wooden box of sea shells. The carved box, and other box containers at Pluvio, are made for the restaurant by Richard Norwood, who previously ran Norwoods Restaurant in the Pluvio space.

On the evening before, my husband and I tried Barr’s regular seasonal menus — the $99 three-course set menu (with choices) and the $128 six-course Chef’s Tasting Menu. I felt Barr’s style of super refined cooking suits the smaller dishes, tasting menu style. And as a matter of fact, most diners must agree.

As of May 30, only the Chef’s Tasting Menu will be offered.

The tasting menu offers options of add-ons and I jumped up and down at the chance to add the popular Humdog that I’d heard about and dreamed about. Grilled, marinated Humboldt squid sits in a brioche bun, garnished with shrimp and chili aioli, fermented turnips and crispy shallots. Whoa! I see why it’s a keeper.

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The wine list, curated by Aaron Huizinga leans into low-intervention wines from B.C. and around the world from “smaller producers, made with love and care,” says Barr.

All in all, this chef-times-two dinner was exhilarating, beguiling and a journey of discoveries. I wish a very Happy Birthday to Pluvio and can’t wait to see what your future self will be.

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