Food tourism comes to Langford!
Langford is fortunate to be fairly close to the world-renowned destination for local food tourists – the Sooke Harbour House. A food tourist /journalist sought out the fine local food there, but also made a point of visiting a place in Langford where a foody feels at home.
In a newly published book, “The Locovore”, Sarah Elton’s describes a generic cityscape when she, “took a wrong turn and ended up driving first through a commercial area lined with big-box American stores and then into a typical North American subdivision of single-family houses and two-car garages. The place was deserted. It felt like a Sunday night.”
Luckily, food tourism redeems this Victoria bedroom community as she describes how, “Finally after a few U-turns, I found my way to the [Smoken Bones] Cookshack. It must have been where everyone in Langford was eating that night, because there was only one spot left in the parking lot. Inside was like a bar during the Stanley Cup finals. …I picked up a rib and took a bite, It was absolutely delicious. … The meal was 100 percent local and unlike anything I’d ever eaten in a restaurant devoted to local food.”
She has glowing praise for Chef and owner, Ken [Hueston] because he “is committed to cooking with locally grown ingredients in a way that is accessible to everyone. …he believes that his restaurant epitomized a new local-food order in which food grown or raised nearby is the building block of all varieties of cuisines. And on Vancouver Island, chefs like Ken have led the way by enticing the public to eat regionally.”
This could be the first time Langford is mentioned in relation with the growing tourist trade in local food toursim. Too bad the author never wrote about what’s left of the very unique South Langford area where a couple of small productive farms and rural properties still exist, and where cows still graze on grass, chickens run free on the range and local food is growing. What an enticing and rare city scene would have been promoted to all the foodies out there.
This area is so far behind the development curve, that it is now on the front vanguard of a large growing trend to local food. But not for long – it has been disappearing and almost all of it is slated for development of suburbs in the race to be just another “typical North American subdivision of single-family houses and two-car garages”.
Reviewed by Deb Harper
UPDATE: Aug 17, 2011: Smoken Bones leaving Langford
Tags: agriculture | food security | Submissions