Customers are once again walking through the doors of the renowned Sooke Harbour House in Sooke and Rosemead House in Esquimalt after each was closed for several years due to financial woes.
New owners have each poured many millions of dollars into renovating these well-known establishments to bring them back to life by offering unique boutique hotel rooms, destination restaurants and wedding venues.
Neither is fully open yet.
Rosemead’s Janevca Kitchen and Lounge featuring open-fire cooking is holding its grand opening Wednesday. Chef Andrea Alridge incorporates elements of her Jamaican and Filipino heritage as well as her expertise with Italian food.
“Our goal is to support as many local farmers, purveyors and artisans as best we can and to really highlight the Island,” she said.
The restaurant is in the 1906 historic mansion once called the English Inn and owned and operated by passionate tourism promoter Sam Lane.
Its 28 boutique hotel rooms, most with ocean views, and Salt and Ivy spa are expected to open in spring, owner Lenny Moy, founder of Vancouver’s Aragon Properties, said Monday.
He purchased the site in 2015 from the Lanyard Group of Companies, which bought it out of receivership in 2011.
The dining room has 96 seats, including two private dining rooms, and the lounge has room for about 30 guests. An outdoor patio will hold about 80 guests.
Alridge’s menu is designed to be approachable so that parents can bring their children for a quick pizza after school or guests can have a top-end meal as well.
The restaurant and lounge are open Wednesdays through Sundays.
Once the hotel rooms open food service will be available daily, she said.
Guests are eating off crockery from the Savoy Hotel in London, England, purchased by Moy who shipped thousands of items here to furnish Rosemead.
Moy said he’s spent $17 million so far.
As the creative director, he wanted to incorporate a European type of design into the restaurant. “They try to treat the inside spaces as though it’s outdoor and they try to bring in a lot of greenery.”
Stand-out decor includes a replica red maple tree.
At Sooke Harbour House on Whiffin Spit Road, owner IAG Enterprises of North Vancouver has spent $14 million to renovate the acclaimed waterfront property, manager Manfred Agath said. IAG bought the property for $5.6 million in 2020 in a court-ordered sale.
It would have been far cheaper to tear down the building and rebuild but saving the structure saved its “west coast feeling,” Agath said.
A large new patio outside its Copper lounge has been added.
“The ambience is absolutely stunning and it’s a place where you can actually experience the west coast.”
The 28 hotel rooms opened at the beginning of the month. Its Copper Room lounge, with up to 85 seats including the patio, opened at the end of summer.
The fine dining room, with about 68 to 80 seats, will likely open around the start of December.
Already, Christmas and New Year’s dinners and company events have been booked.
“We’ve had quite a lot of interest,” he said. “We are growing every week.”
He’s hoping to expand to breakfast and lunch in coming weeks. A new head chef is arriving next month.
Former Sooke Harbour House owners Frederique and Sinclair Philip were trailblazers in serving locally grown food, including some from their own gardens. They won awards and put the hotel and restaurant on the international stage.
Ian Tostenson, chief executive of the B.C. Restaurant and Foodservices Association, believes that success is in the cards for these two establishments.
Both are iconic brands which will add to the tourism sector in the capital region, he said.
“They’re very well contained. They’re subtle. They’re smaller. They’re high quality and there is definitely a market for that.”
These days, customers are very selective about where they spend their money, he said, But “if you give them a reason they will spend it.”
Tostenson predicts success despite saying most restaurant operators are struggling. Thousands of staff have been laid off this year because “the business just isn’t there.”
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