“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 Langley
Heading to the Fraser Valley is something that I do fairly often, the drive is approx 45 minutes from Vancouver making it an easy trip to visit some of the local area restaurants, farms and other sights. This time around I spent the day eating my way around the different areas from Fort Langley to Langley.
Lawrence joined for this day trip and we started the morning with brunch at Grounds and Greens, a fairly new plant-based eatery in Fort Langley.
Started off with a couple of coffees, for me it a Cortado with oat milk and for Lawrence it was his usual Americano. For brunch they offer a wide selection of bowls, as well as toasts, baked goods and more and it’s all made in-house by the passionate team.
I had the Influencer Bowl, a tasty bowl with lentil & almond rice, roasted sweet potatoes, crispy tofu, snap peas, spinach & arugula salad, cilantro & pumpkin seed pesto, cherry tomatoes, vegan parmesan & soy mayo; while Lawrence had The O.G. with coconut yogurt, homemade granola, banana, fruit compote & coconut flakes.
We also tried a selection of their baked goods, all were good, but our favourites were the Carrot Cake cookie, S’mores cookie and the Monkey Business muffin; we also had the Pistachio croissant and the White chocolate pistachio tahini cookie.
This is a great spot for everyone whether you are vegan or eat everything.
Our next stop nearby was located inside the Fort Langley National Historic Site of Canada you will find Tradish’s at The Ancestor Cafe where Chef Sarah Meconse Mierau and her team serve up delicious Indigenous fare.
We started off with a selection of their refreshing drinks, I had the Saskatoon berry and sumac lemonade, Lawrence had the Smokey juniper cherry.
It’s all about bannock tacos and more here and it’s all made in-house by the team. As it happened the day we visited there was a special event taking place and the cafe was featuring Caribbean Indigenous fusion food in addition to their regular menu. I had the tasty Caribbean jerk chicken bannock taco, while Lawrence had the Elk bannock taco.
We picked up some of their popular medicinal jams getting the Raspberry Dandelion and the Blackberry Sage.
For only $9 for adults you can get admission into this historic park and you need to pay the admission in order to visit this cafe.
Next up it was dinner at a new Langley based winery, Otter Trail Winery that opened 5 months ago which has a gorgeous view of their vineyard. We enjoyed a wonderful dinner sitting inside with the large wine tasting bar that surrounds the room amidst the view outside through open air doors on a warm dry evening.
Started off with their house-baked Focaccia and their olive oil balsamic dip that’s made with balsamic and chilli, parmesan and herbs.
The Meatball Buratta is one of the star dishes with its braised meatballs in tomato sauce and warm burrata; and the Spinach Salad with it’s port & mustard vinaigrette featured their own blueberries from the vineyard and for crunch the cajun maple meringue walnuts were divine.
The Black Cod dish was spectacular as was Prawn Ravioli with a white wine cream sauce with a hint of garlic and shallots.
The Blueberry Cheesecake was delicious with their own blueberries; the Fruit Pavlova was a special dessert feature that should be made permanent. It was very good.
The winery also likes to support the various producers located nearby and in addition to their own wine they are also selling other products such as Sweet Kat’s chocolate and more.
We were told they recently brought on a new Executive Chef who is Michelin starred who arrived from France, watch as the menu evolves throughout the coming seasons. We enjoyed a couple of tasters of their own wine, currently being made for them by an Oliver based winery; this will shift over time to their winery once their grapes are matured for harvest.
There are many new restaurants and cafes located throughout Langley that you can visit over the fall, winter and beyond.
Disclosure: Thank you to Tourism Langley for the assistance and for hosting us, all photos and opinions are mine.
By: Richard Wolak