When Kevin Munroe and partner Shelley Bouchard opened the Mad Chef Café in Downtown Courtenay last November, their mission was nothing less than to shake up the Comox Valley dining scene. Barely two months after opening their doors, they’re already off to a good start.

The Mad Chef Café has quickly become popular with those looking for a casual dining experience with a bit of an edge, or at least one that’s different from what’s currently available. Its menu features such original creations as “The Boom! Boom! Steak and Prawn Stack,” a hearty soup known as “Sweet Curry Meets Fruit Fury” and, for those who don’t mind a little spice, “Rectum Sensation” chicken wings.

Even more controversial is the name of Munroe’s most popular sandwich: “Animals Taste Good.” But while the name may be as offensive to the militant vegan set as a leather-clad Republican cowboy on a dude ranch, Munroe insists that he’s not out to offend.

“It doesn’t matter what it says on the menu, as long as it tastes amazing,” says Munroe. And besides, when grilled chicken, crispy bacon and piles of shaved ham are topped with pepper smoked Brie and “crazy” mayo, animals really do taste pretty good.

“It’s insane food with attitude,” declares Munroe, a red seal chef who’s worked the kitchens of Valley hot spots like Atlas Café, the Kingfisher Resort and the Pier Bistro. “It’s not your ordinary menu. It’s not Italian, it’s not Mexican; it’s just awesome food with no pretension.”

Almost as popular as the food itself, says Munroe, has been what he calls the “attitude.” Each item description on the menu is followed by a clever quip, like “Welcome to the jungle,” “Who’s your Mad Daddy?!” or, in the case of Animals Taste Good, “Snort, growl, bark, moan or just do whatever it takes to get this one down!”

“Everybody’s been loving the attitude,” says Munroe. “With so much negative going on in the world today, this is a place where even the menu can make you laugh. No one laughs as much as they should.” That, perhaps more than anything else, is what the Mad Chef Café is really all about.

“We believe in fun dining,” says Bouchard. “There’s nothing worse than going out to a restaurant where you just don’t feel comfortable; where you have to watch how you sit and which fork you use. This isn’t that kind of place. It’s a place where you can relax, be yourself and just enjoy great food with great friends.
And the Comox Valley certainly has been enjoying it. In its first month of business, Bouchard says the Mad Chef Café was consistently feeding more than 100 hungry customers a day. In a cozy space that only seats 26, tables were being “flipped,” or re-sat, as many as five times during a single lunch service.
“Business has been phenomenal,” says Munroe. “So far we’ve done much better than we expected we would do.

“A lot of people have been coming in from out of town,” he continues. “We’ve had so many questions about whether we’re a chain, and everybody wants to know if we’re in their city. Even the Mad Chef Wear has been taking off!”

Munroe’s Mad Chef Wear clothing collection, available exclusively at the Mad Chef Café, includes toques, hats, onesies (in “Chick Pea” and “Bean Sprout” varieties) and t-shirts featuring memorable captions like “Tofu Ninjas Kick Ass” (the graphic depicts three SpongeBob-esque tofu nuggets kicking, punching and hurling carrot nunchuks at a defenseless donkey).

“We had 20 Animals Taste Good t-shirts made and only three of them were left after Christmas,” says Bouchard. “We’ve had a lot of people buying them for their vegan friends or vegetarian friends.”

So what’s the secret to the Mad Chef Café’s early success? Part of it surely has to do with its feisty and slightly irreverent brand, and opening up just in time for the Christmas rush likely didn’t hurt either. But what some may be inclined to chalk up as fortunate timing is at least partly due to the buzz generated by an incredibly effective publicity campaign before the restaurant even opened.

For starters, Munroe and Bouchard had been driving around the Comox Valley for months in trucks emblazoned with “Mad Chef Café” in a vibrant green font, with “Coming soon” printed just below.

“I’d have people stopping me at red lights and yelling at me, asking when we were going to open,” recalls Munroe. “People were so excited by the name; they were like, ‘What is that?’”

Young and web savvy entrepreneurs as they are, Munroe and Bouchard were also quick to take their budding venture online with a Facebook fan page. On the world’s largest social media site, the duo posted updates, photos and teasers as their building was being renovated, attracting more than 400 followers before they even opened. (Munroe and Bouchard just awarded a free cheesecake to their 500th fan last month.)

Now that they’re open, Munroe and Bouchard continue to use Facebook to share photos, stories and, perhaps most notably, their daily specials.

“We’ve been getting lots of orders for our free downtown delivery, and a lot of it is because of Facebook,” says Bouchard. “There are so many people working downtown who call or come in for our specials. We don’t even have to tell them what the special is, they already know.”

The budding realm of social media marketing is one thing, but isn’t this the ultra competitive restaurant business, where the cardinal marketing rule of “Location Location Location” rings truer than ever? Maybe so. Either way, the owners of the Mad Chef Café, which sits on Fitzgerald Avenue just an aggressively flipped burger away from Fifth Street, feel they’ve got that one covered too.

“If I were to open up anywhere in town it would be this location,” says Munroe. “It’s the perfect size, and we’re visible from one of Downtown Courtenay’s busiest intersections.” The restaurant occupies the former site of Orbitz Pizza, which closed down after a fire ripped through the building and forced several businesses to relocate due to smoke damage.

“I think that more than anything this corner needed to be reactivated,” says Bouchard. “A lot of the businesses that we’ve talked to on the block said that this part of Fifth Street has been dead since the fire. There was no foot traffic; you’d never see anyone on the block.”

While the growing popularity of the Mad Chef Café is certainly starting to change that, Munroe and Bouchard hope to do even more to breathe new life into the block.

Once the weather allows, the Mad Chef Café will feature a long, 18-seat patio along Fitzgerald Avenue that Munroe and Bouchard hope will become a popular summertime hangout for local urbanites. And with the Broken Spoke Coffee House, located just around the corner, planning to open its own patio in the spring, the Mad Chef Café could become the hub of a hip new urban strip.

With all the buzz and anticipation surrounding the opening of the Mad Chef Cafe, I was excited to finally try it out for myself.

As soon as I stepped through the door for my first Mad Chef experience, I knew that this would be a fun place. The vibrantly painted walls, in funky green, orange and grey hues, reverberated with the hum of the lunchtime crowd. My wife and I were fortunate to snatch the last remaining table, and so we hungrily grabbed our menus and began perusing.

If I’ve learned anything about Kevin Munroe, it’s that he doesn’t do anything half-assed. So instead of a simple one-page offering of standard fare like you might find at another brand new restaurant, we got to leaf through seven pages of soups, salads, “clubwiches” and lots more. Luckily, there was plenty of “attitude” to keep us entertained along the way.

Munroe is especially proud of his unrivalled selection of 10 different burgers—er, I mean “Crazy Mental Psychotic Insane Mad Chef Burgers”—which include chicken, duck, lamb, seafood and two vegetarian varieties. Then there are the seven ciabatta-bread pizzas, including the “Hawaiian Hammer,” the “Double Ducker” and the “Chicken Chicka Wow Wow.”

My wife, who’s a celiac, found several gluten-free options and eventually chose two appetizers, the spicy and flavourful Tongue Tantalizing Tiny Tuna Tacos and the Stuffed Alligator Pears (an avocado stuffed with fire roasted red onions, smoked corn, fresh cilantro and three cheeses).

As it turns out, the Mad Chef Café is quite accommodating of guests with dietary considerations, such as celiacs and—despite all the “Animals Taste Good” rhetoric—vegetarians. In fact, since our visit the Mad Chef Café has created a special celiac menu, highlighting items that are gluten-free or can be easily altered to be so.
The restaurant is also becoming a quick hit with kids, who receive a paper Mad Chef’s hat that they can color and wear, as well as a dish of homemade cotton candy with every meal.

As a young boy studiously colored his chef’s hat at the next table over I finally decided to try the Mad Chef Burger. My decision was made partly because of the way the menu dared me to try it (“Are you MAD enough?”) and partly because whenever Munroe talked about his signature burger he’d be overcome by the sort of giddy excitement normally reserved for high school boys who inadvertently discover a Victoria’s Secret catalog in their mailbox.
Once I tried it, I could see why he was so excited.

Several years ago I set out on an informal quest for the best burger in the Comox Valley. If the Mad Chef Burger had been around back then, it would have won hands down. The garlic and green peppercorn all-beef patty would have won the contest on its own. The piles of shaved ham and the ice cream scoop of Munroe’s homemade “kick-ass beer cheese” that slowly oozed across the patty put it over the top.

As we dined, our waitress sauntered past with a massive chocolate brownie laden with sautéed Kahlua bananas, fresh mango and ice cream. It was the Mad Chef’s most popular dessert, the Chocolate F Bomb, and it was unfortunately destined for another table. Even more unfortunate was the fact that, once I’d worked my way through my burger and a side of brick-seared yams, there was no way I could even think about dessert.

The Mad Chef Burger is certainly the best I’ve ever eaten in the Comox Valley, and it rivals the best I’ve had anywhere in the world. But Munroe and Bouchard are getting used to this sort of praise. A local food critic recently recognized the Mad Chef Café as home to the best salmon burger he’d ever eaten, and three separate Facebook fans have voted its caesar salad the best in the Valley.

Nonetheless, the Mad Chef shows no signs of complacency. Every day Munroe comes up with new features for his fresh sheet, and he’s continually experimenting with exotic new creations, much to the satisfaction of his partner.

“The other day Kevin was experimenting with a “cheeseburgerrito,” says Bouchard. “It was a cheeseburger, bun and everything, wrapped in a tortilla and baked. It was so good! Another time he made these taco shells out of asiago cheese and made beef tenderloin tacos. I could have eaten those all night!”

The Mad Chef Café is expected to celebrate its official Grand Opening sometime in February. In the meantime, it’s open for lunch and dinner Monday through Saturday at 492 Fitzgerald Avenue in Downtown Courtenay.

To browse the Mad Chef Café’s menu online, and for other information, visit www.MadChefCafe.net or become a fan on Facebook.

Time spent at Tria allows the visitor to have “a sensory experience”, says Marla Limousin (centre), who along with husband George Ehrler and chef Kathy Jerrit have formed the partnership known as Tria—combining Jerritt’s culinary studio, Nature’s Way Farm and Blue Moon Estate Winery into a unique culinary destination.

Photo by Photo by Boomer Jerritt

Tria is inspired by, and hopes to inspire in others, a love of the land, of delicious food hand-made with care and creativity, of the pleasures of sipping locally-made wine, and of the community-enhancing fun of sharing all these with friends and strangers alike.

Although bounteous farms, great local food, and, increasingly, local wines are plentiful in the Comox Valley, Tria combines these in unique and inviting ways. “It’s much more than just sitting down and eating,” says Jerritt.

Marla Limousin, proprietor of Nature’s Way Farm, the 21-year old organic farm in Dove Creek that provides a home for Tria, agrees. “You can tour the farm, pluck your own blueberries, pull your own garlic, get your hands dirty and have a sensory experience,” she says.

For instance, Tria’s monthly full moon feasts are multi-faceted events. The evening begins with a leisurely tour of the farm, stopping frequently to enjoy al fresco appetizers and a pre-dinner drink. Guests can graze and sample as they wish.

Dinner is served back at the elegant dining room or, depending on the weather, outside. Clients need to reserve ahead of time for this intimate dining event. The menu has been created just for this one night, based on what is fresh at the time. The wine is chosen carefully to pair with the food and to highlight BC wines.

The atmosphere is less like a restaurant and more like a dinner party, hosted by the people who grew the ingredients, cooked the food and created the wine. During the evening you have a chance to get to know them, and to mingle with the other guests. At the end of the night, you take home a bottle of Blue Moon wine and a pint of blueberries, or other seasonal produce.

There are many other food, farm and drink opportunities at Tria. At the simplest level, clients can drop by to purchase fresh blueberries, strawberries, salad mix, garlic and vegetables in season.

Anyone wanting a special group dinner can call and set up a custom dining event, booking the dining room ahead of time and planning the meal, drinks and pricing with Jerritt. Custom dining is likely to appeal to families, groups of friends, clubs, teams and workplaces wanting a special way to celebrate. Guests have the dining room to themselves while enjoying full service. In the summer, outside dining is also available.

As well, Tria will soon begin offering a series of cooking workshops in its kitchen. These will of course end in a meal, and the one and two day workshops will include time spent on the farm learning about harvesting, planting and composting.

Another offering, called Travelling Tria, is their mobile crepe stand, which has been operating all summer at the Comox Valley Farmers’ Market on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Hot, made-to-order crepes are served with berry marmellata made from Nature’s Way organic berries and Blue Moon Winery’s berry dessert wine. There are plans to take Travelling Tria to festivals and other special events, and it’s also available for hire for parties. The berry marmellata is the first of what will be a series of value-added products.

And of course, there is the Blue Moon Estate Winery, which is headed up by Limousin’s husband, George Ehrler. Blue Moon released its first season of wines on the day of the July full moon. All are fruit wines using local organic ingredients, either from Nature’s Way or other local sources. Although most people associate fruit wines exclusively with dessert wines, two of Blue Moon’s three varieties are billed as table wines, recommended to accompany meals.

‘Dusk’ blends three varieties of certified organic blueberries from Nature’s Way, intended to be served chilled as an accompaniment to game, duck, pork, and beef. ‘Soleil’ is a crisp and fresh table wine made from certified organic apples from Apple Lane Orchards on Denman Island. It too, is meant to be served chilled, to accompany white fish, shellfish, pork and chicken.

‘Eclipse’ is a port-style dessert wine made from Nature’s Way blueberries and Vancouver Island blackberries. It is fortified and finished in oak and pairs well with chocolate or dessert, or can be sipped on its own.

Pairing fruit wine with savoury food is not something many people think of, says Limousin, but it offers exciting possibilities. “For instance, the apple wine goes great with oysters.”

The descriptions on the wine labels have a poetic sensibility that suggests that, for Limousin and Ehrler, the hard work of farming hasn’t hardened them to the romance of it all. “Dusk is the moment of transformation from the starkness of daylight to the hidden potential of the night. [This] wine captures the remarkable colors of a dramatic sky at the juncture of day and darkness.”

There’s no doubt that Tria is bang on trend—think of the locavore movement, the slow food movement, agritourism, the burgeoning of local vineyards, the mainstreaming of organics, and even the ‘staycation’ trend of exploring one’s own backyard, brought on by the recession. But at the same time, Tria harks back to time-honored traditions and ancient customs.

“It’s a return to an older form of hospitality,” says Limousin, who says she is inspired by medieval traditions. “You’re out in the middle of the countryside and you pull up to a farm. You enter someone’s space and are treated to hospitality. There’s homemade wine, food and conversation. It has a magical feel. People want the magic.”

As well, she says, Tria renews our ancient and not-quite-lost connection to the cycles of nature. “The winery was called Blue Moon to recognize that without the moon, the tides, the weather and the seasons we wouldn’t have the farm products,” says Limousin. These days, people may be vaguely aware of these cycles ebbing and flowing, but the connection has lost its intimacy. Tria really brings that home by honoring the full moon or other key dates such as solstice or midsummer with a feast, she says.

“These are markers that as a society we are lacking… unless you’re a Wiccan, but this needs to be available for the mainstream. People are wanting it,” she adds.

When I interview Limousin and Jerritt, the Comox Valley is roughly half-way through its ‘Eat Real. Eat Local 30-Day Food Challenge’, which celebrates local farms and food. My visit at Tria feels like part of that event and I am happy to be profiling local food producers. But when Jerritt says, “Let’s go tour the farm,” I agree only out of politeness, figuring it will not be of interest, because I live in a rural area and visit farms all the time—to buy eggs, produce or meat, or to visit friends. Oh, another farm, I think, somewhat jadedly.

But my indifference quickly melts away. I fall immediately and blissfully in love with Nature’s Way. The sunlight filtering through the maples, the flowing design built into the customized shingle siding, the perfect balance between ‘tidy’ and ‘natural,’ the colorful clusters of flowers—especially the big bright sunflowers—accompanying the lush rows of vegetables and berries. I feel like I’m walking inside a glorious painting come alive with scents, sounds and the caress of a gentle breeze.

“Aesthetics are very important to me,” Limousin says. “How it tastes is very important, but so is how it looks.”

Limousin’s interest in the potential of land to produce beauty is understandable: her background is in landscape architecture. She had no farming experience when she and her husband Goerge Ehrler bought Nature’s Way six years ago.

“As a designer, I was into shrubs, annuals, perennials, flowering plants, just making everything look beautiful. I looked around this place and thought, ‘Oh, I’m going to turn that greenhouse into irises.’ But I decided to give it a season doing what the previous owner did.” The act of farming transformed her into a farmer—without taking away any of her aesthetic sensibilities.

“I fell in love with lettuces,” she says earnestly, then laughs. “Just with how they look. The textures, the colors, the height. It wasn’t about flavor at that point.”

Emil Shellborn and Nah Yoon Kim create wholesome cuisine at Thyme on the Ocean in Comox.

Photo by Boomer Jerritt

Emil Shellborn isn’t afraid to swim against the current.  In fact, he’s sort of made it his mission to do just that.  The young chef and co-owner of Thyme on the Ocean has a vision of what the future of Canadian cuisine should be, and it’s not one that’s reflected in current trends.

“You can go to McDonald’s anywhere and it’s always the same,” he says, citing the most obvious example.  “That’s their business plan.  But that’s not what food, and eating, and life are supposed to be.  You’re not supposed to travel to another part of the world and have the exact same tasting thing.  You’re losing intellect and you’re losing taste.”

Thyme on the Ocean, the cozy little restaurant on Comox Avenue that Shellborn opened with girlfriend and co-chef Nah Yoon Kim in 2007, is Shellborn’s way of subtly pushing back against an increasingly centralized food production system.  Shellborn, who’s as talented as he is idealistic, embraces the “slow food” movement’s philosophies of buying fresh, local ingredients and building relationships with local producers.  All of the meat and fish on his menu come from Vancouver Island, with the exception of occasional specials on Alberta steaks, and the restaurant serves only local vegetables during the summer months.

“Sure, you can buy food from wherever, or wine from wherever, and it might be a little bit cheaper,” says the 31-year-old chef.  “But with the shipping and the environmental footprint, that’s no good.”

Shellborn worries about the future of a society that has lost its connection with the earth and whose typical cuisine is more likely to come from a frozen foods aisle than from a personal garden.  He describes stories he’s heard of people watching yellow or orange tomatoes go rotten while waiting for them to turn red, or children who visited a local farm to discover to their amazement that carrots come from the ground.

“They were dumfounded that the carrots were dirty, because at Superstore they’re perfectly washed,” he recalls, dumbfounded.  “I can’t believe that stuff—I don’t want to believe it.  But it’s a common occurrence, and it’s happening.

“What I really worry about are the generations behind us.  What are people’s kids going to do?  They’re not learning how to cook because their parents are just putting frozen things or canned things in the oven.  What are they going to do later?  They have no cooking skills.”

What Shellborn is really trying to do with Thyme on the Ocean is change the way we think about food.  He wants our children to learn to prepare meals by hand using fresh ingredients, and to understand the importance of supporting local agriculture.  Mainly, however, he wants to break our society’s addiction to processed foods and the typical unhealthy menu items that we have grown to accept as standard fare.

“It’s hard for people here to understand that concept,” he says, noting that customers still come into his restaurant expecting to find hamburgers on the menu.  “I think they associate ‘restaurant’ with hamburgers, caesar salads, chicken wings and all that typical stuff.”

Although he concedes that as a business owner he needs to tailor his menu to his market to a certain degree, he’s clearly not prepared to sacrifice his values to the extent of serving the sort of unwholesome meals that many people expect.

“You’ll never come here and have alfredo sauce with grilled chicken,” he vows, alluding to the ubiquitous denizen of many a children’s menu.

“Any time a kid comes here they can have a smaller portion of anything they want on the menu for half price.  I’m not anyone’s father or mother, but I think it’s insulting to make them eat fried fish or fried chicken just because they’re kids.  Every kids’ menu is the same thing: creamy sauces and fatty, sugary, salty stuff.  Why do you feed your kids that?  That’s the big problem with our society.  When I was a kid not long ago, half my class wasn’t overweight.  There was one kid who was fat.”

Shellborn imported many of his ideals from Italy, where he worked for three months in the kitchen of an upscale restaurant.  He fondly describes Italy as being like many countries put together, with each region having its own distinct cuisine and its own local produce that lends its unique flavor to the region’s dishes.

“That was one thing that was really amazing,” he says of his Italian experience.  “Everything tastes different depending on where it’s made, whether it’s wine or cheese or meat.”

Although Shellborn openly promotes the Italian concept of localized cuisine, and he’s spent most of his professional career cooking in the kitchens of Italian restaurants, he says that Thyme on the Ocean was never intended to be an Italian restaurant.

“Our idea wasn’t actually to have an Italian restaurant here,” he explains, “it was to have a kind of a Comox Valley restaurant, or a Canadian restaurant.  I just wanted to make local stuff, and have a contemporary restaurant where you could go and have an experience and eat something original that’s made by a chef, something that you won’t find anywhere else.”

Shellborn’s driving desire to create a recognizable identity for Canadian cuisine is another by-product of his time cooking abroad, both in Italy and in France.  French Canadians have done well, he says, with well-known dishes like poutine and sugar pie, but the rest of Canada is lagging behind.

“Being young and travelling around the world, you want to do something for Canada,” he says.  “I can’t change Canada, but I want people here to have their own cuisine.  Everywhere else, you say you’re from Canada and they’re like, ‘What’s that?’”

The mission of establishing a recognizable Canadian cuisine, however, begins to run into hurdles the moment you try to build a business out of it.  Customers can’t identify with the concept of Canadian food, says Shellborn, and if customers can’t envision what sort of meal they’ll have in a restaurant then they’re likely to bypass it for more recognizable fare.

“No one’s going to come here for bannock,” he says half-jokingly.  “But they’ll come here for pizza or pasta.”

Shellborn describes Thyme on the Ocean’s cuisine as “rustico,” meaning that it’s the same high quality that you’d find at a five-star restaurant but without the ornate garnishes, pretensions and high price that typically accompany such haute cuisine.  Shellborn and Kim have strived to make their restaurant as friendly and approachable as possible, and to encourage dialogue and the fostering of relationships between them and their customers.

The kitchen has been set up with a long, open window into the restaurant, so that Shellborn and Kim can greet and interact with customers while preparing their meals.  One of them will often even deliver the plates to each table, lending a much more personal feel to the dining experience.

While Thyme on the Ocean’s menu certainly features a distinct Italian theme, with a number of hand-made pastas, foccacia sandwiches (they bake all their own breads and pastries) at lunch and a selection of fresh, stone-baked Napolean pizzas during dinner hours, this Old World influence is offset by a host of local ingredients.

Comox Valley greens and cheeses are found in a number of salads and appetizers; spaghetti dishes feature local bison or shellfish and locally produced pork adorns an olive rosemary foccacia sandwich on the lunch menu.

The line between Old World and New is blurred in dishes like the scallopine, normally a traditional Italian dish served with veal cutlets but in this case served with strips of local pork, accompanied by black truffle mashed potatoes and finished with a wild mushroom sauce.

Even the grilled albacore tuna, a veritable staple of any West Coast dinner menu, is served alongside crispy fried potatoes wrapped English fish ’n’ chips style in a folded newspaper.  Well OK, it’s actually a photocopied newspaper, and one that contains a review of Thyme on the Ocean itself rather than the latest royal gossip from the Star, but if Thyme on the Ocean isn’t even supposed to be an Italian restaurant, it’s certainly not making any claims of British authenticity.

Perhaps, consciously or not, Shellborn has hit the nail on the head with his desired concept of a Comox Valley restaurant.  After all, our seaside community is bursting with people who have migrated here from elsewhere.  A menu that had been created to appeal to such a diverse market may have indeed become one of the most accurate representations of our local citizenry.

Even the drink list reflects the geographically antipodal theme, with beers from Victoria’s Phillips Brewing Company, a selection of BC wines and other local libations balanced with a newly introduced Italian drink list featuring wines, beers and unique cocktails from the boot-shaped country.

Regardless of which influences are woven into Thyme on the Ocean’s menus, it’s easy to see where Shellborn’s passion lies.  No conversation with him about food or drink strays very far from the theme of buying local and supporting the small, independent producers.

“With our BC wines,” he says, “you generally can’t find them at the liquor store.  We go to the small ones that aren’t listed, and they’re small enough, like we are, that they only make a few hundred cases instead of tens of thousands of cases.

“You have to support them when they’re young too,” he continues, referring to small, community-based producers.  “You can’t just forget about them for 20 years and let them struggle and then when they’re (well established) reap the benefits.”

Shellborn’s nurturing attitude is perhaps in part a product of his own professional training, as he turned a raw but enthusiastic passion for cooking into a career as a chef.

Shellborn got his first cooking job at a resort near his home town of Clear Lake, Manitoba when he was 16. After he graduated from high school, he worked for three months for no pay at Amici, one of Winnipeg’s finest restaurants, where he first learned the art of Italian cuisine.  Eventually his volunteer service turned into a paid position, and over the next few years Shellborn improved his skills, completed some valuable work experience abroad and eventually became Amici’s head chef.

About five years ago, Shellborn was recruited by Il Sogno, an upscale Italian restaurant in Calgary.  Although his time in Calgary wasn’t a complete disappointment—it was there that he met Kim—he eventually grew tired of the pretension and materialistic lifestyle that surrounded him in the big city, and after two years he and Kim decided that it was time for a change.

“We decided we wanted to go for a little bit better lifestyle,” he explains.  “Calgary is like the opposite of here.  It was just the excess of everything.  After two years we got sick of it.”

Shellborn and Kim considered several communities in BC and rural Quebec before eventually deciding on the Comox Valley because of its wealth of local produce.  Although he can’t say for sure that this is where he and Kim will remain, and he even suggests the possibility of opening a restaurant in Kim’s native Korea, for the time being at least he will continue his work as a culinary crusader from his Comox Avenue stronghold.

“You can change some people’s way of thinking,” he muses, “but you’re going up against big, big, big companies.  This is just a little 40-seat restaurant and I’m a quiet guy.  It’s a real uphill battle for us as a society.”

It’s a battle that Shellborn must feel he has at least a remote chance of winning, however, for he continues to lead his troops—his growing horde of repeat customers—into the face of his well-financed and deeply rooted corporate opposition.  Battle lines have been drawn and positions have been staked.  The battlefield, for the time being at least, is Thyme on the Ocean.

“There’s no pretension—it’s just good food,” says chef Aaron Rail, centre, with Torrie Howlett and Sandra Viney at Avenue Bistro.

Photo by Boomer Jerritt

When word got out in the summer of 2007 that the owners of Atlas Café, arguably one of the most popular eateries in the Comox Valley, were opening up a new restaurant in Comox, the rumblings from armchair critics were deafening.

The multicultural flavour combinations of an Atlas-like menu would be too exotic for conservative little Comox, they said.  A funky urban-style bistro would be too hip for this sleepy bedroom community, they said.  The Comox Valley isn’t big enough for two Atlases, they said.

Today, little more than a year after opening its doors, Avenue Bistro is the hottest joint on Comox Avenue and the peanut gallery is all but silent.  While Avenue definitely evokes a contemporary urban vibe that’s cutting edge for the town of Comox, owners Trent McIntyre and Sandra Viney have worked hard to create a space that is welcoming to everyone. 

“It’s funny,” muses McIntyre on the speculation that Avenue was ahead of its time.  “All those things were being said when we opened Atlas too.  People thought it was a little too trendy.

“I don’t think Avenue is that trendy of a restaurant,” he continues.  “It might be a little bit new for Comox, but I don’t think it’s out of the realm for most people.”

Avenue is the result of what McIntyre refers to as a “natural progression” (and what Viney jokingly refers to as “workaholicism”) of the 14 years that the husband/wife team has invested in Atlas Café.  

McIntyre had been dreaming of a new restaurant for years, Viney says, and when they were finally able to step back from the day-to-day operations of Atlas a few years ago, the time seemed right to begin writing the next chapter of their story.

“We wanted to have a place that was in the community of Comox,” says McIntyre,” as well as a place that was in the community of Courtenay.  We wanted to be a part of both communities.”

With smooth, clean lines and a modern décor made up of complementary chocolate browns and creamy whites, Avenue’s ambiance at first seems more Park Avenue than Comox Avenue.  Two deep, rounded booths that guard the entrance to an elevated lounge are a melding of 70s retro and 21st century chic, and patrons of the lounge itself are entertained by two flat-screen TVs that bookend a sleek cream-coloured bar.  The open-concept dining room below hums with the eclectic energy of the community during peak hours.

If Avenue’s décor is avant-garde, its winter menu is anything but.  The guiding culinary philosophy at Avenue, as expressed neatly on the back of its drink menu, is to “continue the time-honored tradition of the classic French bistro with seasonal and local fare simply prepared and served in an atmosphere that is both warm and embracing.” 

This philosophy is embodied in dinner entrees like the chargrilled double pork chop, served with apple compote and crispy polenta, and the prime rib with Yorkshire pudding that’s served exclusively on Sundays.

Chef Aaron Rail, who just joined the Avenue team in September after applying his art to the menus of Victoria hotspots such as Café Brio and the Oak Bay Marina, has created a fall menu that warms the heart as well as feeds the belly.

“Food has to be relatable,” says Rail.  “It’s hard to enjoy something if it doesn’t evoke anything in you.  We have a braised chicken dish with pappardelle that we call chicken noodle.  It’s like a brothy, sumptuous winter dish, something you can eat and maybe remember eating chicken noodle soup as a kid.”

Avenue’s “mac and cheese,” another popular pasta featured on both the lunch and dinner menus, is another example of this type of nostalgic, feel-good cuisine.

“There’s no pretension there,” says Rail.  “It’s just good food.” 

Avenue’s menu changes with the seasons in order to take advantage of the bounty of fresh local ingredients that give the Comox Valley the nickname “Land of Plenty.”  From Eatmore winter greens to Natural Pastures cheeses, Avenue’s breakfast, lunch and dinner menus are graced by a variety of home-grown products, and it’s a trend that Rail expects will continue.

“It used to be a cachet to use local, but now it just makes sense,” he says.  “When you consider that most suppliers now are charging diesel charges and gas charges to deliver, and things have got to come from California or Mexico or Costa Rica, you’re paying as much for the freight as you are for the product.” 

McIntyre agrees.  “I think what Aaron and I are trying to do is really adhere to the bistro style, and adhere to the local products and adhere to the seasons,” he says.  “We’re trying to combine all those things and bring home some comfort food that people can relate to over the winter months that is easy on the pocketbook and easy on the eyes.”  

Complementing Avenue’s selection of hearty, comforting entrees is a drink list that rivals any in the Comox Valley, at least in terms of geographical variety.  While patrons expect a restaurant’s wine list to feature bottles from all around the world, they don’t necessarily expect that the beer list will be equally diverse.  

For those who like a taste of the exotic in their barley pop, Avenue offers selections from beer-producing heavyweights like Germany and the UK, but also from unexpected places like the Czech Republic, Japan, India and even Jamaica.  Those simply craving the hoppy comforts of home can choose from local microbreweries like Phillips and Vancouver Island Brewery, both out of Victoria, as well as a selection of micros and traditional domestics from across Canada.

Lisa and Martin Metz, founding owners of Tita’s Mexican Restaurant, have been sharing their passion for food with local residents since their business opened in the spring of 2000. They didn’t know what to expect when they first hatched the idea of bringing a taste of Mexico to the Comox Valley, but they should have had some inkling when they decided to name the place after the main character from the Mexican novel and movie Like Water for Chocolate.

Lisa Metz takes a break on Tita’s vine-covered patio to sample some restaurant favorites, including the popular Molé con Pollo.

Photo by Photo by Boomer Jerritt

“Tita is the youngest daughter, so she has to do all the cooking for her family. She falls in love with a man but isn’t allowed to be with him, so he ends up marrying her sister just to be near her,” says Lisa Metz. “So Tita uses her cooking as an outlet, and that is how she conveys her love for him and the whole range of her emotions in this horrible situation.”

In a classic example of Mexican literature’s magic realism, Tita’s quail in rose petal sauce fills her sister with such passion that she has to leave the dinner table to have a cold shower and the shower ends up bursting into flames.

You might not find rose petal sauce on the menu at Tita’s Restaurant, but you may just feel a little bit of magic when you spend an evening sampling their authentic Mexican fare. Then again, maybe it was the tequila… but I digress.

So, just how did a small, stucco Sixth Street house transform into a brilliant yellow Latin jewel surrounded by fruit trees and a lush patio garden, busy every night of the week with an ever-growing and constantly contented clientele? What’s the story behind this Tita?

Lisa Metz spent her teenage years in Courtenay and had family here when she returned to the Valley in 1999. “I came back because my mother had cancer and was dying, and this was my last chance to spend some time with her,” Metz says. “Then she started to get better and, of course, we wanted to believe she would continue to get better, so I had to get busy—I couldn’t just sit around doing nothing. So we decided to open the restaurant, which was a rather large thing to take on. She did eventually pass on, but here I am still doing this.”

“Rather large thing” is a bit of an understatement. It took eight months to turn the house into a fully functioning restaurant, nevertheless when they opened the doors people were literally standing in line to get in and have a meal.

“It was a little overwhelming at first. Right from the beginning we were outrageously, painfully busy—we had line-ups out on the sidewalk. And we were serving people very slowly because we didn’t know how to do things that fast,” Metz remembers with a laugh. “So that was the first thing that changed. We had to come up with very efficient systems to feed people more quickly.”

With Lisa working in the kitchen and Martin handling the bar and dining area, it was all hands on deck as they worked to catch their breath. After being open for just two years, they decided to add an addition to the east side of the house and expand the dining area—two very busy and successful years, obviously.

Chef Ronald St. Pierre shows off some Comox Valley farm fresh ingredients going into the dishes served at Locals.

Photo by Boomer Jerritt

The original inhabitants of the Comox Valley recognized the incredible bounty of the land and so named their slice of Island paradise “Komoux,” roughly meaning “Land of Plenty.” With schools of salmon teeming in the ocean, mushrooms and berries exploding from the forests, great soil and a climate ideal for agriculture, the people of the K’ómoks First Nation were able to thrive off of their land’s natural abundance.

Today, in a time where the food on our plates is more likely to come from across the ocean than from the farm down the road, one local chef is making it his mission to re-introduce the concept of local cuisine in a globalized community.

Ronald St. Pierre is the owner of Locals – Food from the Heart of the Island. The Comox Valley’s newest restaurant, Locals is also the only one dedicated exclusively to showcasing the local producers that our land still supports.

Originally from St. Pie-de-Bagote, a small farming community in rural Quebec, St. Pierre was amazed at the quality of the Comox Valley’s locally produced foods when he arrived here 17 years ago.

“When I came to the Comox Valley, for me it was an eye-opener to see how plentiful the Valley was in food resources,” says St. Pierre. “I’ve seen things I’ve never seen before coming to the Valley, like getting shrimp that are so fresh you put them in your sink and they’re still twitching. Or getting fresh scallops delivered to the restaurant and they’re clapping in the sink. For me it was like, ‘Wow!’

“All the fresh stuff from the ocean, everything from the forests, everything that the producers are growing; there’s so much and it’s all here and it’s all available and it’s all fresh!”

Locals’ menu features a wide selection of that bounty, such as Valley-raised meats, fresh seafood and local mushrooms, vegetables and cheeses. Even the wine list, comprised exclusively of BC wines, includes several selections from the Comox Valley and elsewhere on Vancouver Island.

St. Pierre has no shortage of local goodies from which to choose. The Comox Valley is home to nearly 500 working farms on both land and sea that inject almost $41 million into the local economy, and the local agriculture sector is only getting stronger. In fact, the amount of agricultural land in the Valley increased 32 per cent last year, according to the Comox Valley Economic Development Society (CVEDS), in a year when most parts of BC saw their agricultural land decrease or remain the same.

Country Guide, Canada’s leading agriculture magazine, has even recognized the Comox Valley as one of eight “hot spots in agriculture”. While the recognition honours the Valley’s wide range of agricultural products, it also recognizes a special attitude toward local food within the community, says CVEDS executive director John Watson.

Ronald St. Pierre hits the Saturday morning Farmers’ Market looking for ingredients.

Photo by Boomer Jerritt

“Our community works on this culture of food, and it works on this perception that we need to keep the place green,” says Watson. “You can talk about fads and 100-mile diets and organics and different things that are important, but what I believe is most important is providing good quality local food to the consumer. We can do that here in the Comox Valley better than is done in other places, and I think our producers are doing it better.”

Locals, Watson says, is a great boon to Comox Valley agriculture. “It’s the perfect example of bridging the gap between the producer and the consumer,” he says. “It’s a perfect example of what we could be doing here in the Valley. There are lots of restaurants that are supporting local food, there’s no question about it. He’s just taken it to the next level.”

For St. Pierre, that next level goes beyond simply serving quality local food, and it has a lot to do with the long-term sustainability of the community. His approach embraces everything from supporting local farmers to recycling whenever possible, and he proudly states that Locals donates all of its food waste to a neighbour who uses it to feed her pig. He cites a recent statistic that claims that only three per cent of the food consumed on Vancouver Island is actually produced on the Island.

“When you think about that, it’s pretty bad,” he says. “If we have an earthquake, or something goes wrong and all communication was to stop, there are a lot of people who would be going hungry.

“On a personal level, I do believe that the population in general should be more aware of their sustainability,” he continues. “That’s the philosophy of Locals—not only to serve the food but also to be that sort of liaison between the public and the producer, and to raise awareness within the population in general. I think it’s still a minority of people who have that awareness. There are about 70,000 people in the Valley, and only about 2,000 a week go to the farmers’ market. That’s a very small percentage.”