CULINARY DELIGHTS.
Day 257 – We got up early to book our campsite at a Provincial Park for a stay beginning two months from now. We’ve got it down now. Got our second choice site – our first choice campsite had been reserved. Rob took a long walk to the waterfalls and along the River, part of this Park. We had visited the Day Use area when we first got here, vowing to come back on a sunny day.
We spent several hours in the tent today. The weather was perfect. We had tried to make a dinner reservation at Qualicum Beach Cafe (QBC), supposedly the best restaurant in the city. They were full for dinner Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, which just made us want to go there more. After last night’s mediocre fare, we were even more determined to get into QBC. We got a reservation for “the Happy Hour menu”, served from 3 to 5 p.m. today, and a reservation for brunch tomorrow. We skipped lunch today in anticipation.
People were not mistaken about QBC being great; it was, for both meals. We’d been unable to get an outdoor, patio seat for our happy hour dinner – those tables were already taken. We were seated inside and those tables were almost empty when we arrived, but they were almost full by 5:15 with the dinner reservations coming in. We did have a good view of the Ocean across the street. In the tradition of Happy Hour, we began with drinks – Rob had a Smoked Old Fashioned; I had a Whiskey Sour. We were not blown away by either of these drinks. We ordered an appetizer called Forno Baked Focaccia. We ordered another round – Rob got an IPA (beer) that he liked, and the excellent waiter (who was also a bartender) talked me into getting a drink he had invented, the Lady in the Camp. Rob like his beer; I LOVED my drink. It was Compari, Light Rum, bitters, whipped egg white, and berry simple syrup (really hard to describe the taste except it made taste buds in different parts of the mouth tingle – Rob tasted it, too and he said the same thing). The Focaccia appetizer was very good. Then we ordered the small Caesar Salad (which was fairly large) to split. It was super good. And we ordered the Seafood Gnocchi to split (house made fresh gnocchi in a light dill cream sauce with jumbo Tiger Prawns, Sea Scallops, and fresh smoked Salmon – eat you heart out, Carol & Mark). It was amazing. For dessert we split the Lemon Tart, a restaurant specialty. Everything was perfect. We looked forward to coming back again at 12:30 tomorrow for another feast.
The weather today was 83 degrees and sunny with a light breeze.