Sooke Harbour House, British Columbia

The extraordinary sensual beauty is overwhelming. Across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, as it was years ago for me, the Olympic Mountains are awash in pink and blue and purple. The sea calls.

Sooke Harbour House, and its visionary innkeepers, Frederique and Sinclair Philip, bought a small 3 bedroom in  1979 and in the intervening years have been honoured internationally with some of the most coveted awards for their hospitality and, above all, for their food and their attentiveness to the land and sea that they harvest and inhabit. Chefs are outside half a dozen times a day perhaps gathering a handful of sapphire blue rosemary blossoms to strew on a soup or to strip some lavender flowers to infuse into ice cream.Seals lay on boulders in a bed of kelp that fills the bay below the inn. The night, dark, filled with the smell of wood smoke and the sea and the kitchen. The summer air is soft and cool.

From  Metchosin Berkshire Pork Italian Sausage with wild oyster mushroom polenta, cranberry bean salad, roasted beets, red wine mustard reduction, grilled garlic scapes and roasted garlic aioli to the simplicity of sautéed spot prawns or a whole Dungeness crab with fennel butter, dining at Sooke, particularly when one chooses from the Wine Spectator-blessed wine cellar, is an experience unique  in Northern America.   As one restaurateur said to me years ago…”If they moved the restaurant 50 miles, it wouldn’t have the same menu.”

• Governor General’s Nation’s Table Award for Mentorship and Inspiration, June 2010
• Johansens Award for Excellence, Most Excellent Eco Resort, Condé Nast, 2010
• Gold List, World’s Best Places to Stay, Condé
• Nast Traveler, January 2009
• One of Canada’s Top Five Hotels”, Travel + Leisure, January 2009
• Grand Award, One of the World’s Best Wine Lists, Wine Spectator Magazine, August 2009
• Fodor’s Choice establishment 2008
• Sooke Harbour House was the first recipient of Eat Magazine’s Green Star Guide of Local Food and Drink Hero Award, Eat Magazine, December 2008
• Audubon International Green Leaf Eco-Rating Program, Four Green Leaf Hotel”, the highest eco-rating in British Columbia, 2004
• Ranked number eight ‘World’s Best Service’, Travel and Leisure Magazine, Reader’s Poll, June 2007
• Best Small Inn in North America, Readers poll and editors of Mountain Living Magazine, January 2007

Sooke Harbour House is one of about 250 restaurants that celebrate Food Day across Canada. Contact them at the number below to reserve a table.

Sooke Harbour House est l’un des 250 restaurants à travers tout le Canada qui participent au Journée des terroirs.

Contactez Sooke Harbour House directement, au numéro ci-dessous, afin de faire votre réservation.

Sooke Harbour House, Coastal Retreat, Spa & Restaurant
1528 Whiffen Spit Road
Sooke, BC, V9Z 0T4
T: 250 642 3421

www.sookeharbourhouse.com

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