Wednesday, July 7, 2010 - North Shore News - A29
Golf at Whistler on a perfect day Mark Hood
Contributing Writer
NOTHING in the world is perfect. Yet — even with all its tribulations — life offers us the potential to grasp moments that transcend, that combine to produce quietly extraordinary experiences we barely comprehend until they are almost past. If we are lucky, they might last an entire day and we’ll realize what we’ve got soon enough to savour it before it’s gone. It began, as it often does, innocently enough. We had booked a round of golf at the Whistler Golf Club and arranged to meet at Gleneagles to breakfast at Larson Station, the new restaurant in the rejuvenated clubhouse complex. It was the kind of grey, drizzly morning that the weatherman was ordering by the truckload in the spring: not quite rainy, but not quite dry. I was joined by friends Andrew Skuse of North Vancouver’s Bio-Pacific Diagnostics, local carpenter Dan Foster and Dan Rothenbush of Lady Jane Landscaping. A confession: I was one of many who were very fond of the old restaurant at Gleneagles. With its seedy charm, casual disdain for culinary trends and good basic food, it was just the place for pre- or post-round grub and I felt the North Shore lost something when it closed. The new dining room was set up to provide a nice view, but I wasn’t willing to switch loyalties easily and arrived with low expectations. Wow. Larson Station is beautiful. As you enter from the clubhouse’s new lobby, there’s a lounge on your left, the dining area on your right and in front of you a view of the sixth fairway, the ocean and the islands beyond. The lounge has a great little bar, flat screen TVs and enough seats for you and all your cronies. There’s also a big patio that, if the sun ever comes out of hiding, will be worth a return visit to explore. Okay, it was pretty, but what about the food? Probably little smidgeons of preciously prepared gastro-art too beautiful to eat, right? Three words: Dungeness. Crab. Benedict. Served with hash brown potatoes. It was early morning so we were working off the breakfast menu, but selections were interesting, portions generous, prices reasonable and quality high. There are favourites like omelettes, waffles, French toast and eggmeat combos, but there is also organic bison hash, an egg white omelette option and some creative scramble combinations. Main course prices started at $8.95 for two free run eggs with your choice of bacon, Black Forest ham or country sausage and topped out at $16.95 for the Dungeness Benedict. The others probably ordered food of some kind, but I was too engrossed in my own choice to notice. Big juicy chunks of Dungeness crab on an English muffin topped with a poached egg and freshly prepared Hollandaise. The setting is magnificent, the food fresh and flavourful. You don’t have to be a golfer to appreciate any of that, and I’m going to make a point to return for dinner to try the evening menu. After the meal, we loaded up and headed off down the Sea to Sky Highway and onwards to Whistler. It’s hard to overstate how big an improvement the change to the highway is. Travel time is reduced, safety is enhanced, and if you want scenery, this is the place. It was still cloudy, sprinkling on and off, and there was plenty of time before we teed off, so we made another stop along the way at Whistler’s Function Junction. Perhaps the weather would improve. Our destination? A tour of the Whistler Brewing Company on Millar Creek Road in Function Junction. The Whistler Brewing Company opened in Function Junction in the early 1990s. It made some inroads into local restaurants and See Tasty page 30
AT the Arnold Palmerdesigned Whistler Golf Course, the distractions are limited only by the horizon. Whether you’re on the third fairway (above), or the 18th, you’ll find plenty to feast your eyes on, and plenty to keep you busy. The course contains a dizzying procession of bunkers, water, forests and doglegs along with some of the most magical viewpoints on a golf course anywhere.
NEWS photos Mark Hood