It used to be that when I was traveling the Fraser Canyon and I wanted some amazing food experience, I would stop in Hope at 293 Wallace Street or Fat Jack’s just north of Boston Bar. Alas, that is no longer the case because 293 Wallace is gone, and Fat Jack’s has new owners and, well, it is just not the same.
However, I have discovered another unlikely location for good quality food in the Fraser Canyon – further up the Fraser River in the small town of Lillooet! A town with “Guaranteed Rugged” as their motto.
Lillooet seems to have quite the homegrown foodie scene happening. It is the home of Abundance Artisan Bakery, bakers of bread and all sorts of baked goodies and makers of awesome sandwiches.
The sandwiches and baked goods are so good that they sell out virtually every day. We stopped in for a visit one morning this summer and the case was full of sandwiches and baked goodies. We didn’t buy anything while there because we had other business to take care of.
When we returned a couple of hours later – they were sold out of almost everything! We will be returning to try more of the fare from Abundance.
Another place in Lillooet that I heard about through Instagram is the Reynolds Restaurant.
The food pics that people were posting on Instagram from the Reynolds Restaurant looked so amazing that I actually took a detour this summer and visited the Reynolds Restaurant (attached to the Reynold’s Hotel). We were not disappointed!
We started with pork rinds – cooked fresh and delivered piping hot right to the table. As they were placed on the table we could hear them snapping and expanding.
Pork rinds cooked fresh are NOTHING like the pork rinds you get in a bag from a convenience store. They are exquisite. And a little tub of guacamole? Yes please. These are a full 10/10 for flavour and crunch.
One of my kids loves ribs but is tired of the sticky, messy kind so when we saw dry ribs on the menu – she insisted on trying them. Another winner according to my daughter. She said they are a 10/10 but I didn’t get a chance to try them so I cannot confirm her rating.
I decided to go with the daily burger special – a grilled portobello mushroom cap with grilled yellow pepper and a slab of cheddar cheese. Add on local field tomatoes, lettuce picked fresh, a pickle, and a healthy smear of chipotle mayo, and I was in burger heaven.
The sweet potato fries were a hit with my kids. I liked them as well but the kids ate up most of them. I say the burger was a full pull again. A 10/10.
While one of my kids is willing to try almost any foodie item, my other daughter prefers to play it safe. If mac and cheese is on the menu, she’ll order that. If not, it will be a grilled cheese sandwich.
She added on a side of onion rings and was a happy kid. I was a bit disappointed that she chose plain white bread when she could have had multi-grain, rye, or sourdough, but that’s my kid.
Crazy world. Hope and Boston Bar were my unlikely foodie stops. Now it seems like with Abundance Artisan Bakery and Reynolds Restaurant doing the cool foodie stuff in Lillooet, I will be travelling further up the Fraser Canyon on my foodie tour route for the next little while.
[…] Robinsmith summarizes some of the great food in Lillooet he enjoyed. Outside of his professional life as a teacher, Stacey is also an avid foodie. Over the […]