“FieldTrips” is either a day trip or a few days where I visit food areas of interest which may include farm visits, producers, wineries, restaurants and/or other places that people can visit. This is about offering Vancouver Foodster readers a chance to get out of town and take a “Field Trip” for the day or a few days to explore, learn, taste and experience.
Field Trip to Oliver with the Honda Accord Hybrid
As I always I love visiting the Okanagan during the spring and summer, test driving the Honda Accord Hybrid 2022 allowed for the perfect opportunity to take the car on the road.
Lawrence joined me for this trip to the Okanagan, we left early on a Wednesday morning and experienced a problem with tires where a symbol came up on the dash board. I have never experienced an issue like this in any of the Honda’s I have been test driving. I ended up stopping at a gas station outside of Langley and learned how to check the tire pressure based on reading the manual, topping up the air in the tires. The manual was very informative on what needed to be done next to balance each of the tires, once that was done we continued on our journey with no further issues.
We stopped for an Iced Americano and Banana Bread in Hope at the Blue Moose Café (322 Wallace St), which was about 2 hours into the driving journey. It was a delightful and popular cafe that serves up coffees, breakfast, lunch, and snacks; and made for the perfect stop at the halfway point.
We stopped in Keremeos for lunch at the K Mountain Diner (521 7th Ave, Keremeos) a cozy spot that seemed to be popular with locals. I had a Grilled Chicken Burger with yam fries while Lawrence had a Beef Burger with salad.
One of the great features is the three selectable drive modes, and the driver can choose with a push of a button located on the centre console. The Sport, EV (electric only) and Econ mode which is what I drove in mostly inside the cities switching over to Sport when on the highway.
After arriving in Oliver, we stumbled upon the Platinum Bench Estate Winery (4120 Black Sage Rd, Oliver) that has a sourdough bread bakery on site, we got to talking with one of the owners how gave us some insight into their popular bakery. We picked up a couple of loaves to eat later in the day and both were so good. Both of the flavours were very good, the Double Cream Brie and Pear Preserves Epi as well as the Asiago Cheese Epi. We were told when the bakery started out a couple years ago they do so with 2 ovens, they now have 12 ovens and bake bread daily at their outdoor bakery which sells out daily.
The next day we headed over to Phantom Creek Estates for lunch, it is a stunner located high up the mountain overlooking the Oliver valley. As I was driving I wasn’t partaking in any wine tasting that day, only had a chance to walk through their beautiful tasting room that has an amazing view of the valley.
We each had their 3 course prix fix lunch at our window table with an extraordinary view of the valley below. Here Chef Alessa Valdez has created a wonderful late Spring menu featuring as much local ingredients as available. I had the delicious Tanto Latte Burrata as my starter, followed by the outstanding Halibut with spring pea purée and the Torn Chocolate Cake for dessert.
After lunch we headed back to Vancouver driving towards the sun setting arriving home as it was already dark.
The car offers a gentle ride, spry handling, an elegant cabin, along with spacious seats. One thing I loved with this car was it’s excellent fuel economy; the Honda Accord Hybrid car battery charges itself while you are driving which truly economizes on the gas consumption.
Stay tuned for my next Field Trip outside of Vancouver.
By: Richard Wolak
Disclosure: Honda Canada provided me with the 2022 Honda Accord Hybrid to test drive, and photograph. As always, all opinions and photos are my own.