Hill Guides

"The book is noted on the cover as a 'food and wine lover's guide' and it delivers. The tone is personal but informative, and the authors recommend specific wines to try and menu items to order."
- Daily Herald, Chicago

Victoria & Vancouver Island-The Almost Perfect Eden, 4th Edition

Below is a sample restaurant write-up from our Hill Guide to Victoria & Vancouver Island. Brasserie L'Ecole and almost any other restaurant we mention in this guidebook defy preconceptions about bland Canadian food. We have experienced some of the best Chinese, Thai, Indian, French, seafood, and even Italian food in British Columbia, and we have traveled or lived there for more nearly 15 years.

Check out our List of Recipes, Sample Recipe, and List of Wineries. We also include every microbrewery and brewpub on Vancouver Island.

Brasserie L’Ecole is the best new restaurant, and maybe just plain the best restaurant in Victoria. Unpretentiously Frenchish, L’Ecole owners Chef Sean Brennan and Sommelier Marc Morrison seem to admit that they are Canadian cooking French and manage to create a very French feeling within a Canadian space.

French posters decorate the walls of the narrow bistro, the downstairs of what was once a Chinese school, hence the L’Ecole reference. Every table is cozy, and we also enjoy dining at the bar where they bar tendress is delightful and knowledgeable of wines both French and otherwise. L’Ecole offers an excellent small selection of wines from the Rhone, Languedoc-Roussillon, Loire, and Bordeaux regions, as well as several from other countries.

The onion soup is terrific ($6), as are the mouth-watering butter-fried mussels in garlic, parsley and wine, the endive salad is the curly scratchy kind, not Belgian endive, and the lamb shank and pan-fried skate wing are fabulous, with a side of Cobble Hill asparagus only $5 in season. A large bottle of Vittel is only $4, and our Bombay Safire gin martinis are huge and perfectly made. If a cheese course tempts, advise the server when you order your meal so cheeses can warm to room temperature. Brasserie L’Ecole is a must.

Brasserie L’Ecole, 1715 Government Street, (250) 475-6260, fax: (250) 475-6261, email: eat@lecole.ca, Website: www.lecole.ca. Wheelchair accessible. Hours: 5:30 p.m.-9:30 p.m. Fully licensed. Credit cards: Visa and MasterCard.