This Wild Culinary Retreat Includes Free-Diving for Your Ingredients

Culinary adventures at Nimmo Bay, plus six more remote retreats to visit.

At most culinary retreats, you wear an apron. At Nimmo Bay, a wilderness lodge set deep within the Great Bear Rainforest of British Columbia, I’m asked to squeeze into a thick wetsuit instead.

It’s day two of the annual Savour the Coast Culinary Retreat, and chef Linnéa LeTourneau is leading us on a free-diving foraging excursion. The 20-minute boat ride in the Broughton Archipelago doubles as a nature safari, with the captain pausing to point out a lumbering grizzly on the shore and an eagle soaring above the old-growth forest.

Our group of six slips on flippers and masks, and one by one, we drop into the 40-degree water. LeTourneau deftly navigates the thick kelp forest, gathering bulbous sea cucumbers and urchins. Back on board, she hands out spoons so we can scoop briny slivers of uni straight from the prickly shells.

Later that afternoon, we regroup at the lodge’s open-air deck for a cooking demo featuring our catch. LeTourneau fillets the slimy sea cucumber, then fries it into calamari-like bites and pairs it with a nori-spiked kimchi and a Viognier from Lightning Rock, a winery in the Okanagan Valley.

Nimmo Bay specializes in adventure, even when it comes to food and wine. Rather than spend days in a kitchen, we’re out in nature learning to saber Champagne (with an axe, of course), identify wild edibles, and work up an appetite kayaking and paddleboarding.

Throughout the five days, special guests like Wendy Rose and Jay Drysdale, cofounders of Bella Wines, a sparkling-wine house in the Okanagan, and local seaweed specialist Amanda Swinimer host alfresco seminars and tastings. One morning, Irvin Speck, a member of the local Gwawaenuk Tribe, accompanies us on the cedar-shaded trails behind the lodge’s nine cabins. Coastal First Nations have been harvesting food here for centuries, he shares, as he collects spruce tips that we later use to make paloma cocktails.

Meals, however, are the highlight of the week. Originally from British Columbia, LeTourneau cut her teeth at decorated restaurants in Paris and Tokyo but ultimately felt the pull of home. At Little River, Nimmo Bay’s floating restaurant, she applies her fine-dining background to a wilderness setting. Multicourse wine-paired dinners, starring dishes such as kusshi oysters with pickled bull kelp and shiso tempura, and local albacore tuna toro seasoned with smoked soy and chive, are sprinkled in with casual meals, like a get-your-hands-dirty seafood feast of clams, prawns, and crabs.

For our final lunch, we boat to a remote island where a bartender in a bow tie greets us with sea-buckthorn sours and leads us on a short hike to a fern-decorated table. Our captain spies a bear across the water just as bowls of green garlic and mushroom soup are set down. As if on cue, the staff brings over binoculars so we can bear-watch without our soup getting cold. Wild dining has never felt more refined. (Five-day Savour the Coast Culinary Retreat from $9,699 per person, nimmobay.com)

Six unique culinary experiences

Whether you have a few hours or an entire week, these food adventures will immerse you in Canada’s wilderness while showcasing the country’s distinctive ingredients.

From tree to table

Nova Scotia

Maple syrup season is March through April. Gourmet by Nature hosts 2.5-hour tours near the Bay of Fundy, where guests snowshoe into the forest to collect sap, turn it into maple syrup over a fire, and prepare three maple-spiked recipes, like maple parsnip puree. $63, gourmetbynature.ca

Forest and farm weekends

Vancouver Island

Chef and mycologist Bill Jones hosts afternoons identifying wild plants and foraging for mushrooms around Deerholme Farm, his home in the Cowichan Valley. The next day is spent in the kitchen making dishes with your harvest, like an asparagus and morel tart. $187 not including accommodation, deerholme.com

Island time

Vancouver Island Canadian celebrity chef Jade Berg’s five-hour Forage and Feast tours explore the coast by boat, with stops to harvest ingredients and tour oyster farms before sitting down to a multicourse meal. $146, wildislecooking.com

Beachcombers

Vancouver

Search the beach and tide pools for seaweed, crabs, urchins, and oysters on a two-hour, chef-led foraging adventure with Swallow Tail Culinary Adventures. Your finds will be the star ingredients in a seafood chowder enjoyed during a picnic lunch. $75, swallowtail.ca

Cultural food residency

Newfoundland and Labrador

Cookbook authors Lori McCarthy and Marsha Tulk accept just 10 participants a year for their Cultural Food Residency on the Avalon Peninsula. Intensive three- to six-day programs are tailored to each guest, combining fish-smoking and breadmaking workshops with tutorials on beach cooking and butchery. Three days from $1,343 not including accommodation, foodcultureplace.ca

A coastal feast

Newfoundland and Labrador

During these three- to four-hour workshops hosted by chef Alex Blagdon, you’ll scour the beach and forest for beach pea, spruce tips, sweet gale, and other wild ingredients, then return to The Alder Cottage cooking school near Tors Cove to master dishes like marinated mussels smothered in beach greens. $112, thealder​cottage.com

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