The Pointe Restaurant - Ostrich & Halibut

Leftovers from the vacation; a couple of food pics and descriptions I've wanted to post (only one more to go)

In Tofino, B.C. at The Pointe restaurant (Wickaninnish Inn).

Good to great food, decent presentation, nice restaurant with a great view; a 4 star meal (alas, at 5 star prices).

Let's start with Sumac Crusted Ostrich Carpaccio - with a potato and roasted red pepper salad; sprinkled with Maldon salt and topped with a couple of little bread stickys



First off, we'd read this part of the menu glancingly and thought it was going to be an oyster carpaccio - which would have been really really interesting. But, still, a good starter. The sumac was very very subtle (verging on not there at all; supposed to sort of taste lemony). Last, loose the breadsticks - they're pointless.

The restaurant kitchen loves this type of dish, dead easy to make and serve:

• Get ostrich breasts (in this case local Vancouver Island ones)
• Place a few on a stretch of plastic film sprinkled with sumac (it's a spice); sprinkle sumac on top too (covering the meat well)
  
• Roll up the plastic and twist the ends - like making a sausage
• Roll in aluminium foil - keeps the plastic from unrolling and is a bit firmer in holding the shape
  
• Freeze

To serve, slice very thinly, while still frozen, with a meat slicer; it will thaw almost instantly on the plate.

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The next good one: Seaweed Crusted Halibut with Island Mushrooms (and some very nicely turned potatoes; oh, and some peas and some crab on top). Weird earthy flavor because of the mushrooms but it really grows on you.



This dish was worth it. Very correctly done fish (fresh and local) with the seaweed and mushroom flavor making it an adventure. This is what you go to good restaurants for - discovery.
The only thing was that the seaweed was not really encrusting the halibut - rather more like piled on top. But hey, that's the menu-writer's fault not the kitchen's.

I liked it so much I'm going to do picture of the other side too.



I have no how-to on making this dish. Wouldn't know where to start (fresh seaweed's hard to come by around here). I'm not even sure what kind of mushrooms those are. Anybody know?

Another dish we had is shown in an earlier post.