Again on property, visitors tuck into Southeast Asian dishes on the pop-up Lola restaurant, helmed by Filipino-Canadian chef Elmark Andres, the place the menu is written in a mix of Tagalog and English, the seafood is regionally sourced, and seasonal produce comes from the Bodega Ridge farm. Or they will head to the cedar-shingled Pink Geranium, a vivid, sunny all-day café and specialty meals retailer launched in 2024, the place lunch is likely to be a warming bowl of tom kha soup (coconut, purple pepper, inexperienced onion, shimeji and king oyster mushrooms) and freshly baked focaccia with rosemary and garlic confit. Common group programming runs the gamut from poetry readings to queer opera, and a big stone inglenook fire invitations curling up with a e-book and a espresso on brisk winter afternoons.
Meals has an outsized significance on such a flippantly populated island as Galiano, dwelling to standout eating places like Oxeye and The Crane and Robin—although most islanders would agree that the fine-dining temple Pilgrimme close to Montague Harbour is Galiano’s most sought-after desk. On the helm is Winnipeg-born chef Jesse McCleery, who opened the restaurant in 2014 after a stint at Copenhagen’s groundbreaking Noma, alongside his associate, chef Melanie Witt.
Photograph: Jarusha Brown
Photograph: Courtesy of Pilgrimme
Tucked in a dense forest that appears straight out of a kids’s storybook, the restaurant occupies a log cabin adorned with hanging lanterns, antler accents, shearling throws, and a replica of Vladimir Tretchikoff’s “Chinese language Woman.” It’s cozy and unpretentious, with room for simply 16 diners, placing the highlight on seasonal dishes served on sculptural dishware by native ceramicists like Ilana Fonariov.
The 12-course tasting menu is a love letter to Galiano’s bounty: foraged kelp, sea buckthorn, aronia berries (“I’ve by no means seen them develop outdoors Scandinavia,” muses McCleery), and Sichuan pepper leaves. Wild-ferment vinegars constituted of salal berries and grand fir needles stand in when yuzu, kaffir lime, or different Japanese citrus isn’t available from a grower on neighboring Salt Spring Island. True to Galiano type, virtually all of the fruit comes not from skilled farms however from native neighbors and residents.
Photograph: Courtesy of Pilgrimme
Photograph: Courtesy of Pilgrimme
“There are such a lot of individuals right here with passion gardens and orchards,” McCleery notes. “Folks drop by with an enormous field of plums or apples, which we’ll commerce for a pizza,” he says, referencing his different Galiano challenge, Charmer Pizza, a pop-up restaurant specializing in 48-hour wild-ferment sourdough made with natural British Columbia grains.
