Robert and I just returned from a weekend trip to Victoria, British Columbia. We took the seaplane from Seattle which was amazing! Viewing our beautiful Pacific Northwest from the sky is a unique treat. One moment we were waiting for our plane at Kenmore Air’s Lake Union terminal, an hour later we were checking into our hotel in Victoria. How’s that for convenience? Our hotel, the centrally located Magnolia, was also pretty fantastic. However, my favorite part of any vacation is eating!

Highest on my list of restaurants to try was Cafe Brio. Cafe Brio is known as Victoria’s “foodie” restaurant so of course I had to check it out! It is located in a very unassuming area of town, just far enough away from downtown as to not be completely overrun with tourists. The setting is casual and comfortable. Customer service is impeccable - the staff is friendly and clearly very proud of the food being served. Cafe Brio is a bit pricey but well worth the expense if you like exceptional food and a unique dining experience.

Cafe Brio’s menu is distinctive in several ways. A special fixed price menu is offered during the early seating (5:30 to 6:15.) This $29 meal includes appetizer, entrée and dessert and is a great value. Cafe Brio also has a relatively lengthy charcuterie menu. All of the charcuterie is made in house, and the menu typically features eight to ten items ranging from salami to summer sausage to pates. The meat cellar was reportedly stuffed to the gills with fresh batches of charcuterie the day were there, and our waitress was quite excited about it. Fixed price meals and house made charcuterie aside, my favorite thing about the menu at Cafe Brio is that every dish can be ordered in small or large sizes. You can go tapas styles and order a bunch of small plates to share or you can stick with a more traditional appetizer and entree approach.

Robert and I love sharing food so we decided to order a selection of small dishes. We couldn’t pass up the house made charcuterie so we started off with gin & pancetta-smoked venison summer sausage. It was smoky and spicy and not at all greasy. Delicious! This was followed by a mixed greens salad topped with poached apples and the creamiest blue cheese I’ve ever tasted (undoubtedly a local cheese.) Other dishes included made-to-order chickpea tortellini served with braised greens and a delectable red pepper broth, the “contorni” plate – seasonal vegetables prepared four different ways, pan-roasted sablefish with scallop fritters, roasted squash, nettles and a red wine emulsion, and grilled pork loin served with a sausage and potato ragout and boudin noir puree. The meal as a whole was fantastic – my favorites were the venison summer sausage, the chickpea tortellini and the vegetable plate. We paired our meal with some of British Columbia’s finest: Quails’ Gate Winery’s Pinot Noir for me and, for Robert, the Driftwood Farmhand - a lovely saison style brew that was all the rage around town during our visit.

While we were enjoying our meal, we learned that the table next to us was from Homes & Living, a magazine devoted to life in Central Vancouver Island. They were preparing to do a story on Victoria and Cafe Brio as part of their “weekend getaway” series. The getaway stories always feature an awesome island destination, a hot new car, fancy accommodations and an exquisite restaurant (the kind of lavish lifestyle readers of such magazines drool over.) The car of choice for this month’s story was a new 2010 Hyundai Genesis Coupe! The team made a big production out of trying to get a perfect photo of the restaurant with the car parked out front, providing us with plenty of entertainment in the process. Robert enjoyed getting a sneak peek at the new car while I was content to swoon over the delicious food in front of me - a perfect night out in Victoria for the two of us!

Last weekend, my sister and her husband threw a big bash in celebration of their 11th wedding anniversary. Of the several desserts served at the party, the highlight for me was the coconut cream pie courtesy of Dahlia Bakery. Chef Tom Douglas has been serving this pie at his Dahlia Lounge for nearly two decades now. It has developed quite a following here in Seattle. Even people who don’t normally like coconut cream pie are said to have become converts upon tasting Tom’s version. When I mentioned to my mom that I had the recipe, she said, “Great, then you can make it for our Easter dinner next weekend.” Doh!

For the most part, the pie was a breeze to prepare. You make a simple pastry cream using milk, sweetened coconut, fresh vanilla bean, eggs and butter. The pie crust - a basic butter crust that is spiked with more sweetened coconut - is blind baked in the oven. Once the crust has cooled, you simply fill it with the pastry cream and top it with whipped cream and even more coconut! The filling turned out great, but my crust ended up a bit doughier than I would have liked. My ingredients might not have been chilled properly or perhaps I simply under-baked the crust. Or, it could be that the shredded coconut in the pie dough results in a softer, less flaky crust. If I ever make this recipe again, I would probably try a plain pie crust instead - the extra coconut flavor in the crust really isn’t necessary.

After a lovely Easter dinner, it was time to try my pie! My family seemed to enjoy it despite the less than perfect crust. Everyone agreed that my pie had an even richer coconut flavor than the version we had sampled the previous weekend. Robert and I ate the leftovers last night – after sitting for a day and a half in the fridge, it still tasted pretty damn good! Tom Douglas’ Triple Coconut Cream Pie recipe can be found in the Seattle Kitchen cookbook and has also been written up here and here.

I made a visit to my local wine shop in search of an interesting wine to feature for this week’s winesday. When I walked in, the gentleman behind the counter looked up from his newspaper and casually offered me a sample from the two bottles he had just opened (the daily grind at the wine shop looks like a tough job!) I decided to sample The Wolftrap 2008 Syrah Blend. This wine struck me immediately as being very tasty yet rather unusual. Smoky, spicy and downright meaty – the unexpected flavors in this wine made it a perfect choice for winesday!

The Wolftrap 2008 Syrah Blend comes from South Africa. It consists of 68% Syrah, 30% Mourvedre and 2% Viognier. The Syrah provides the spicy, aromatic nose of the wine while the Mourvedre adds structure and weight. Viognier - a white wine - is used to boost the perfume profile of the wine. This wine is described as sweet & savory, a description with which I wholeheartedly agree. How you can have a wine that tastes at once like fruit and salami is beyond me, but this wine does and it works well.

Normally, I haven’t tasted the wines that I feature in advance, and I pick my winesday meals based on either the description on the label or the generic characteristics for a given varietal. This approach can be hit or miss since there is such a wide range of styles within any one varietal. This time, I knew exactly what the wine tasted like and felt some extra pressure to choose the perfect meal. The unusual flavor profile of this wine only added to the challenge. On the one hand, since it is fairly fruity and low in tannins, it would appear to be a food friendly wine. On the other hand, that smoky, beefy flavor really limits the choices. It certainly isn’t one of those red wines that can be paired with fish. This wine is perfectly suited for the one thing I don’t eat much of - meat.

Ultimately, I decided to make red beans and rice. Not the wimpy vegetarian kind that I normally make but the traditional kind using andouille sausage and smoked ham hock. This would provide the meaty flavor that I was looking for without me actually having to eat a lot of meat. It was perhaps not a perfect pairing, but was certainly good. The spicy andouille sausage was well-matched to the spiciness of the wine. The wine also went surprisingly well with the stewed collard greens I served on the side (not so much with the cornbread, though.) The Wolftrap 2008 Syrah blend is not a wine for the faint of heart. It’s savory, meaty flavor could easily be a turnoff for some. If you like trying wines that are a little bit different (and retail for under $10, are readily available and have a screw cap,) this one’s a winner!