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sip & savour

This year is the first trial run of Salt Spring’s Sip & Savour event to be held this coming Friday & Saturday September 23 & 24. Celebrating the fall harvest is the theme and guest’s taste buds will experience some flavour sensations. Sip & Savour is a celebration of Salt Spring – its food, farmers, beverage and community.

The weekend starts off at the Hastings House with local chefs & vintners creating a 7 course gala dinner with wine pairings. There are only 120 tickets available to this dinner & rumour has it that ticket sales are going fast!

Saturday afternoon from 1pm until 4pm the Harbour House will host the hub of activities for the “grazing” event. This is where one can roam around the beautiful organic garden and taste samples of all the chef’s favourite dishes & other local faire. Rock Salt Chef, Jonathan Duquette will be serving a twice baked fingerling potato with beet cured salmon gravlax topped with David Wood’s lemon goat cheese and finished with a chive garnish. When asked, “Why do you cook?”, Jon replied, “I love to cook for the beauty of food. It is like a mystery or a voyage of discovery to take a raw ingredient and turn it into something miraculous”.

Rock Salt Restaurant & Café is very pleased to be a part of Sip & Savour and is thankful to Janet Coulston of the Chamber of Commerce & the many volunteers who have joined in with enthusiasm to make it all happen. In a conversation with Janet earlier this summer, we had a chat about the possibilities Salt Spring has for being a special place to visit year round. Janet seems like a woman who makes things happen & really has a clear vision of Salt Spring’s possibilities. Sip & Savour is a fine example of what can take place by coordinating all the businesses and having great volunteers. Our chef, Jonathan says that he loves this type of event for the comraderie it promotes amongst all the chefs & restaurants as well as for the bit of healthy competition to create superb dishes.

In an “email” interview with volunteer Lara Gossett we discovered that Lara’s role is to encourage local chefs, caterers and local cheese makers to participate in the Sip & Savour Saturday Grazing event. Lara got involved as a volunteer because of her passion about our island and its possibilities for sustainability. She is an avid foodie that adores local ingredients, growing her own food, and participating in a community of phenomenal possibility. Lara is the wife and business partner of a particularly fabulous coffee roaster who as a team started Mt. Maxwell Roasters in February of this year. Mt. Maxwell Roasters has been an amazing journey thus far, offering up a variety of fantastic coffees to locals and tourists alike from venues such as the Saturday Market, Bruce’s Kitchen, Fernwood Cafe and Country Grocer. Lara expects some of the highlights of Sip & Savour to be “the food the farmers the wine/beer/cider/coffee, the conversation, the music and so much more”.

The Chamber has full intention to make this an annual Salt Spring Extravaganza. If you are interested in getting involved they still need volunteers for the day of the event, you can contact Janet Clouston at the Chamber of Commerce, 250-537-4223, and she will forward interested volunteers to the right person.

We will be seeing you & your taste buds this weekend!