Back on property, guests tuck into Southeast Asian dishes at the pop-up Lola restaurant, helmed by Filipino-Canadian chef Elmark Andres, where the menu is written in a blend of Tagalog and English, the seafood is locally sourced, and seasonal produce comes from the Bodega Ridge farm. Or they can head to the cedar-shingled Pink Geranium, a bright, sunny all-day café and specialty food store launched in 2024, where lunch might be a warming bowl of tom kha soup (coconut, red pepper, green onion, shimeji and king oyster mushrooms) and freshly baked focaccia with rosemary and garlic confit. Regular community programming runs the gamut from poetry readings to queer opera, and a large stone inglenook fireplace invites curling up with a book and a coffee on brisk winter afternoons.
Food has an outsized importance on such a lightly populated island as Galiano, home to standout restaurants like Oxeye and The Crane and Robin—though most islanders would agree that the fine-dining temple Pilgrimme near Montague Harbour is Galiano’s most sought-after table. At the helm is Winnipeg-born chef Jesse McCleery, who opened the restaurant in 2014 after a stint at Copenhagen’s groundbreaking Noma, alongside his partner, chef Melanie Witt.
Photo: Jarusha Brown
Photo: Courtesy of Pilgrimme
Tucked in a dense forest that looks straight out of a children’s storybook, the restaurant occupies a log cabin decorated with hanging lanterns, antler accents, shearling throws, and a reproduction of Vladimir Tretchikoff’s “Chinese Girl.” It’s cozy and unpretentious, with room for just 16 diners, putting the spotlight on seasonal dishes served on sculptural dishware by local ceramicists like Ilana Fonariov.
The 12-course tasting menu is a love letter to Galiano’s bounty: foraged kelp, sea buckthorn, aronia berries (“I’ve never seen them grow outside Scandinavia,” muses McCleery), and Sichuan pepper leaves. Wild-ferment vinegars made from salal berries and grand fir needles stand in when yuzu, kaffir lime, or other Japanese citrus isn’t readily available from a grower on neighboring Salt Spring Island. True to Galiano form, almost all the fruit comes not from professional farms but from local neighbors and residents.
Photo: Courtesy of Pilgrimme
Photo: Courtesy of Pilgrimme
“There are so many people here with hobby gardens and orchards,” McCleery notes. “People drop by with a massive box of plums or apples, which we’ll trade for a pizza,” he says, referencing his other Galiano project, Charmer Pizza, a pop-up restaurant specializing in 48-hour wild-ferment sourdough made with organic British Columbia grains.
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