Inside the century-old heritage house, I imagine a busy weekend filling the space. The tables are delicately set with white tablecloths, cloth napkins, and vases of flowers. The waitress keeps the clock in her periphery as she refills water glasses at one of her tables. She’s perfectly in tune with the chef and each guest, mentally calculating the next ten things she has to do while simultaneously making conversation.

I’ve come on a Wednesday morning and they are not open for business. The manager joins me at a small table by the window, natural light glowing behind the gentle curtains.

Her name is Teri-lynn Elson and she welcomes me into the Calico Cat Tea House.

~

‘Fine dining’ is credited to France. Traditionally, it means white tablecloths, waiters in neck ties, and no menu—your 14-course dining experience has already been chosen for you by the chef. Colloquially, it means fancy.

The Calico Cat Tea House has a lot of elements common with fine dining, but would never be categorized as such. The shelves are lined with trinkets. The wall ahead of the front door is lined with a small shop dedicated to local vendors. It looks like grandma’s house, complete with a bit of clutter and lots of personality.

At the Calico Cat Tea House, there is no sous chef or chef de partie.

The kitchen only has room for one cook. It’s a small team.

“Sometimes a little too small,” she confides in me. But that’s what makes timing so important; it’s why they have a system optimized to keep their dining room running smoothly. At chain restaurants that are more generously staffed, everyone has their own job. There’s somebody to clean the tables, somebody to serve them, and somebody to greet customers at the door.

“Here, if you’re front-of-house, you’re doing everything,” she says. “How people are treated when they come through the door, [and] the energy between the staff [is] really, really important.”

Some of the Calico Cat Tea House’s regular patrons are local to Nanaimo, but their reach has been increasing. People travel from Campbell River, Kelowna, and the United States to experience a tea leaf reading; they’re the only ones in Nanaimo to offer the service, and one of few on the island.

Tea leaf reading is a practice of divination using, yes, tea leaves as a guide.

It’s a unique dining room experience with a widespread audience, but it doesn’t qualify as fine dining—which begs the question: Why not?

Haute cuisine originated in the age of aristocracy. Where the best experience one could have with food used to be wherever there was the most of it, François-Pierre de La Varenne challenged that notion by prioritizing quality over extravagance. Born in 1615, La Varenne remains revered as a pioneer of structure in the culinary world; he chose elegant simplicity over gross abundance. His cookbook Le Cuisinier François is credited as the foundation for his successors.

Fine dining was distilled further by Marie-Antoine Carême, often hailed as the founder of French gastronomy. Born in 1784, just three short years before the French Revolution, much of Carême’s ideas harkened back to the age of cuisine that La Varenne had diverged from. Carême was interested in elaborate presentations, creating artistry on the plate.

Modern fine dining has gone a step further—it’s an experiential process. First, the food itself was refined. Then, what the food looks like. Now, it’s the space that the food occupies.

Okeya Kyujiro in Vancouver, BC, is the proud recipient of a Michelin star. The experience begins with the traditional clothing of the guests, an atmospheric room lit solely by candles, and machinations all set to begin “the precise minute of your seating,” according to the Michelin website.

The Calico Cat Tea House is slightly more casual than that.

“I think that [some restaurants] are maybe a little bit more finer than us … but it’s kind of all smoke and mirrors,” she says. I hear similar sentiments from everyone else—that fine dining exists in the imagination, but not so much in our material world.

~

Every time I asked someone, an interviewee or peer, who they thought might qualify as fine dining in Nanaimo, the answer—if they gave one at all—was always Mahle House. It is set inside a heritage house originally built in 1904, not unlike the Calico Cat Tea House in that regard. It’s classy, the place settings made with cloth napkins and a vase of flowers. But, there’s no white tablecloth.

“For us,” Craig Brimble, Dining Room Manager of Mahle House, says, “I don’t think I’d want to be called ‘fine dining.’”

The concept of ‘fine dining’ has gotten a bad rap. One word comes up in every conversation I have about it.

Stuffy

Exclusivity is no longer a feature that drives people in for fear of missing out, or bragging rights to anybody who hasn’t had the privilege to experience the same.

“Inflation has pushed prices to a breaking point for everyone’s wallet,” Brimble says. The idea of an ‘exclusive’ experience is more likely to turn people away than bring them in. Although Mahle House is certainly a fancier, more expensive venture, their dining room is still full of laughter.

“It’s Broadway every night,” he explains. Every table is its own show. “Our job is to figure out what [experience you’re looking for].”

La Stella Trattoria was opened in Nanaimo 12 years ago by Ryan Zuvich, but has been owned and run by Caitlin McGarrigle since the end of 2023. Like Brimble, an old friend of hers, she’s not interested in being classified as fine dining. “Because then it turns into just a special occasions place … [Here], you can wear a hoodie. There’s no dress code.”

No chef in Nanaimo has tried for a Michelin star, so it’s hard to accurately gauge whether there’s an audience for it.

By now, most flavour combinations have been done before. That’s part of what pushes chefs to be more adventurous, and it’s why dishes sometimes look like you should hang them on your wall instead of eating them.

“They’re just kind of plating it differently,” McGarrigle says. Or, maybe an element of the dish will be a powder instead of a jelly. It is still unique, but recognizable.

For Nanaimo’s clientele, you can’t wander too far outside of people’s boundaries. Nuts on pizza might be too crazy, or octopus might be too daunting. If a dish doesn’t sell on the menu, then food gets wasted.

At Mahle House, they have Adventurous Wednesdays. It’s a five-course dinner where each of the 20 plates that you are served are off-menu items and chosen by the chef. At Melange, they have Omakase. It means ‘trust the chef.’ It allows them to creatively push themselves and their patronage, to see what works and what still needs to be refined.

Gaetan Brosseau, the owner of Melange (which is a quick six-minute walk from La Stella Trattoria) says, “Food has a lot of evolution right now.”

Originally from Quebec City, Brosseau has been in Nanaimo now for over two decades. He’s witnessed different generations of cooking, and sees a fresh one solidifying now; he recognizes elements in Mahle House from how food was done when he first came to Nanaimo, but with different plating.

“The second generation—they’re super good. They’re great people,” he says. “Camas, they will do something a bit more modern … Both [versions] are good.”

But he doesn’t see fine dining in its most traditional form being successful in Nanaimo.

“We are in the hospitality business,” he says. The menu is informed by the people that they are serving. It doesn’t make a difference to him whether you get the duck or a burger and fries. “For my restaurant, that will qualify as fine dining in the sense: we are going to make everything possible that you have a great night with us. Which we do!”

In an increasingly expensive world that necessitates becoming more and more frugal, luxury experiences have been coming under scrutiny. Experiencing fine dining is not as important as paying rent, so what can justify the price tag?

“Food is supposed to be nourishing,” Phillip Liu, the Head Chef at Melange, says. It’s not supposed to be limited, or boring, or somehow still leave you hungry.

In French, Melange means ‘mix.’ Liu speaks passionately about having an all-encompassing menu, internationally inspired food with safe options and innovative options with a range of prices. Cooking for other people is an act of care, and to eat what someone else has made especially for you is an act of appreciation.

I ask the Head Chef at Melange, Phillip Liu, “Is love an important part of fine dining?”

“Oh, yeah,” he agrees without hesitation. “Even the customer has to be in love with fine dining too, because they’re the one eating.”

In terms of why a person would go out instead of staying home, Teri-lynn Elson says it’s an opportunity to experience fresh ideas; Caitlin McGarrigle says it’s a place to get away; Gaetan Brosseau says it’s all about how it makes people feel. But as far as what the hell ‘fine dining’ actually is, the answers that I received ranged between ‘the experience’ and ‘the food’ and ‘white tablecloths.’

You know fine dining when you see it.

“If ‘fine dining’ is so vague,” Craig Brimble of Mahle House says, “Then you can say that anyone who is truly passionate about giving you an experience would be fine dining.”

François-Pierre de La Varenne and Marie-Antoine Carême might not recognize anywhere in Nanaimo as the kind of fine dining that the two of them pioneered, but if there’s one thing that Nanaimo’s culinary scene has in spades—it’s passion.