Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/108099
Gourmet Gardens At Vancouver Island's Deep Cove Chalet, Bev and Pierre Koffel have created the gardens of a lifetime along with a legacy of fine food and local history TEXT AND PHOTOGRAPHY JANET DAVIS For almost four decades, the Deep Cove Chalet Restaurant in Sidney, B.C., has been tantalizing the palates of discriminating Victoria-area residents with exquisite gourmet offerings from the kitchen of owner-chef Pierre Koffel. Born in Strasbourg, France, Pierre is renowned for Alsatian-inspired dishes such as rabbit stew with prunes, duck salad, prawn tartelette and a flourless chocolate cake with crème Anglaise. Dinner wines might include a bottle of crisp white from Chalet Estate Winery across the road, using Ortega grapes from the Koffels' own vineyard near the restaurant's entrance. So celebrated is Deep Cove Chalet that guests have included Barbra Streisand, Robert De Niro, Sean Penn, Jimmy Pattison, Bill Gates and Victoria's own David Foster, among many others. Built in 1913 by the B.C. Electric Railway as a tearoom at the terminus of its interurban line connecting Victoria to Deep Cove, the rambling, wooden building housing the restaurant features banks of picture windows framing a spectacular view of the Saanich Inlet, just a stone's throw away. The seashore, in turn, offers a sparkling backdrop to the colourful and expansive gardens that surround the restaurant, all but one reflecting the creative touch of Deep Cove Chalet's co-owner and manager Beverley Koffel. The exception is a small, four-square kitchen garden that supplies colourful leaf lettuce, arugula, vegetables and herbs for the restaurant. "That's Pierre's garden," says Bev. "I'm not allowed to go in there." Her love of flowers was evident as a young girl at Victoria's St. Ann's Academy, now a National Historic Site. Recalling the school's annual May Day procession, Bev says, "I was the one who made the bouquets for my classmates." That early training serves her well today as she creates the arrangements for the restaurant's dining tables with blossoms from the gardens. Similarly, childhood visits with her mother to Windsor Park Rose Garden in Victoria's Oak Bay inspired a lifelong love of roses, seen today in the many shrub roses in the borders and fragrant climbing roses intertwined with clematis that adorn the trellises surrounding the dining terrace. November/December 2012 BC HOME & gardEn | 59 p58-65_Koffell garden.indd 59 13-01-23 11:24 AM