Head for the Other Border: A Culinary Road Trip Through the Pacific Northwest
The happy couple and their rented Kia (Photo: Dana Drori)
I’m a proud American. My girlfriend is a proud Canadian. On a weeklong tour, we hiked, kayaked, and ate our way through both sides of the border in the Pacific Northwest. We ate especially — for as much as any other region in North America, the Pacific Northwest serves itself up on a plate. It is a cornucopia of quality edibles, from its river-run salmon to the tasty fungi that proliferate in moisture-rich Cascadian forests.
Related: Oh, Canada — You Crazy! 12 Weird Adventures Up North
A sunny day in Seattle? Nice! (Photo: Getty Images)
We touch down in Seattle, a 6.5-hour flight from New York. No rain or fog greets us here, as we’d been told to expect, just glorious sun and views of ghostly Mount Rainier. We get in too late to visit most of the shops in Pike Place Market — with its farm produce and smoked salmon.
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Tulio’s Potato gnocchi. Yum. (Photo: Tulio/Facebook)
But that didn’t stop us from eating well. Tulio, a well-known Italian restaurant, which happened to be attached to our home for the evening, Hotel Vintage, served up delicious dishes like potato gnocchi and pasta alla chitarra (succulent pork belly mingling with housemade ricotta and Washington onions). The place lived up to its excellent and unflashy reputation. The Pacific Northwest food-and-drink immersion had begun!
British Columbia’s Sea to Sky Highway (Photo: B.C. Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure/Flickr)
We hit the road early the next day in our rental Kia, cruising north on British Columbia’s Sea to Sky Highway. Blue-gray Howe Sound spread out to our left, while steep crags rose to our right. “Ah, Canada!” Dana said with a sigh. She was legitimately happy to be home.
The gondola in Squamish is new and provides amazing views. (Photo: Corbis)
After arriving at the outdoor-adventure town of Squamish, we rode the brand-new gondola, which rises up above milky fjord waters, and did some hiking. Once back down in town, it was time to eat (again). We bought groceries at a supermarket teeming with sinewy, scruffy rock climbers; back in our kitchenette, we prepared a salad and drank mildly hoppy local pale ale as the sun set.
Whistler in the morning (Photo: Corbis)
The next morning, after summiting a popular Squamish peak known simply as The Chief (it’s steep — about 2,000 feet of altitude gain in less than an hour), we headed for Whistler, about 45 minutes north.
A Canadian fave, the Nanaimo bar. Double yum. (Photo: Dana Drori)
Bloody caesars — the secret ingredient is Clamato. (Photo: Dana Drori)
Whistler is a pretty international resort town, so Dana suggested we hunt down two things that are solidly Canadian: Nanaimo bars and bloody caesars. Both were delicious, even if chocolate-coconut and clam-tomato-vodka aren’t necessarily my ideal pairing.
The venison at Araxi (Photo: VancityAllie/Flickr)
We worked up an appetite doing some shopping and finished the day with the meal of a lifetime at Araxi, Whistler’s original fine-dining spot and a pioneer in upscale regional cuisine. Chef John Walt’s local-beet salad and sous-vide venison are to die for, and they go terrifically with Meyer Family and Fort Beren wines from nearby Okanagan Valley, the Napa Valley of B.C. The perfect cap to the evening? The Cuban cigar I bought — yes, legally! — earlier in the day.
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Dana kayaking along 21-Mile Creek (Photo: Dana Drori)
Day 2 at Whistler was jam-packed, and fine dining was put on hold for activities. In the morning, we rode the Peak 2 Peak gondola, an engineering marvel that’s strung across the nearly three-mile gap from Whistler Mountain to Blackcomb. The vertical drop at one point is more than 1,400 feet. Choose a glass-floored cable car, as we did, and it’s more than enough to make you dizzy. We followed that with an easy hike near the summit, where the fog once again crept in. We scarfed down energy bars in preparation for a kayak trip along 21-Mile Creek.
Crispy quail on a waffle — new fave combo (Photo: Elliot Brass)
Back on the dining track, at dinner that night, we sampled more great B.C. vintages at the newly reconceptualizedGrill & Vine (at the Westin, where we were staying). It boasts a vacuum-seal bottle system that has broadened the selection of wines by the glass. Pretty brilliant. I also discovered a new favorite food combination: fried quail and waffle.
The next day, it was a full day’s drive to Portland, partly because of the bottleneck we hit at the border. “America’s a security state,” Dana teased. My response: “Too many Canadians desperate to get in!” It was late when we let ourselves into the accommodations that we’d booked on Airbnb: a loft-style cabin with art posters on the wall and microbrews in the fridge. Very promising; very Portlandia.
Breakfast at Sweedee’s (Photo: Dan Klimke/Flickr)
Dana and I had decided in advance to make Portland our shopping stop, in addition to all the eating. The bohemian sensibility leaves ample room for cool new brands and treasure-filled vintage shops. After breakfast at Sweedeedee, a local favorite popular for its artisanal everything, we started in the chic Pearl District, arguably the city’s greatest concentration of upscale restaurants and storefronts.
Freckled woodblock chocolate ice cream from Salt & Straw (Photo: Rick Chung/Flickr)
Then it was the arty Northeast District, where we savored artisanal ice cream at Salt & Straw, which is run by nouveau dairy wizards. The line is out the door and contains about a half-dozen people in bike shorts. Dana and I share a cone of “freckled woodblock chocolate,” which is specked with Oregon sea salt and roasted cocoa beans and is crazy delicious.
The onion custard terrarium from Castagna (Photo: Liquidnight/Flickr)
We weren’t exactly starving when we got to Castagna, a sophisticated dinner spot in the transitional Southeast District. Luckily, the portions there were far from overwhelming. Chef Justin Woodward’s focus is more on subtle, concentrated flavor combinations — like the onion “terrarium” arranged with sugar snap peas and droplets of charcoal oil — than on getting filled up. It was a meal that transported the taste buds.
Coffee at Coava is some of the best in town. (Photo: Dana Drori)
We bid goodbye to Portland the following morning with coffee at Coava, recommended as the best coffee in town — which is no small feat for a city obsessed with java.
The Painted Lady restaurant in Newberg (Photo: Dana Drori)
Our next stop? The wine country gateway of Newberg, just south of Portland. It’s a charming and accessible destination for a weekend trip, and the historic main street is lined with tasting rooms. (The Willamette Valley, an excellent cool-climate wine region, is known for its pinot noir.) But we skipped the stand-up sampling tour in favor of a multicourse dinner at The Painted Lady.
An out-of-this world steak with black-garlic potato puree and sunchoke was especially memorable, and we had no excuse to regulate the pouring of more Oregon wines — including my favorite, a delicately fruity 2007 pinot noir from Ayres Vineyard — because we stayed in the adorable two-bedroom cottage that the restaurant owners rent out next door.
A view of Olympic National Park (Photo: Getty Images)
I wish we’d set aside more time for Olympic National Park, a 4.5-hour drive from Newberg. The park occupies nearly a million acres of western Washington. We took the more scenic route through the Columbia River tributaries and old cannery towns of Route 101. We also squeezed in a brisk driving tour along the park’s main road, which threads through both north-woodsy hills and primeval-seeming rainforests. For lunch, we managed a brief walk on a windblown beach and a picnic at Lake Quinault.
The sun setting at Lake Crescent (Photo: Dana Drori)
Our lodging (literally) for the night was Lake Crescent Lodge — built in the ’30s, this unpretentious place evokes the classic American summer. Kids jumped off the dock; retirees watched the lake from wicker chairs.
We were hastily wrapping up our trip, stopping in the Victorian seaside town of Port Townsend for lunch and returning to Seattle aboard a ferry plying Puget Sound. Our final stop was for a drink at Black Bottle, a stylish “gastrotavern” in the neighborhood of Belltown. I ordered a squeaky-clean lager hailing from the city’s own Maritime Pacific Brewing Company.
Originally, my girlfriend and I had planned to keep a running tally between America and Canada, marking trip highlights down as points for our respective countries. In the end, though, we found ourselves too busy enjoying ourselves to bother. As we flew home on the redeye, full of sensory memories of the Pacific Northwest, the question of which side of the border might win that little competition we’d imagined seemed irrelevant.
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