The Begbie Room is the restaurant inside the Coast Hillcrest Hotel just outside Revelstoke. It…read moreprovides breakfast (0700 - 1100) and dinner (1500 - 2300) and acts as room service for the hotel. Attached is Guides Lounge (1500 - 2200), which shares the menu with the Restaurant, has a bar, tables, couches and a billiard table. There is also a beautiful patio with stunning views of the valley
We were staying at the hotel and decided to have dinner here as well as breakfast the next morning. The plan was to have a drink or two in the Lounge and move into the restaurant for supper. But since the menu was the same and we struck up a nice rapport with the bartender, Aaron, we decided to stay in the lounge to eat. Aaron is an excellent bartender, who creates and crafts a mean cocktail. His Blackberry Martini is particularly noteworthy. Service was friendly and personal. Our drinks were never empty and we never touched the wine we ordered with our food. The wine list is small, but we'll rounded. On tap are around a half dozen beers, 3 or 4 of which are brewing in a brewery immediately adjacent to the hotel - Mt Begbie Brewing. While we didn't have any of the beer, I have had them before and they are all very good.
We started with the Baked Brie in red pepper jelly sauce, that was tangy with a nice (but not overpowering) bite. The sauce is made in house and should be jarred and sold at the front desk. It's that good. We also had a Panzanella salad as the other starter. This is similar overall to a Greek salad, Italian style. Bocconcini instead of feta, basil instead of oregano, savoury and salty instead of sweet and tangy. Both were excellent, but the Brie was to die for.
I had the Pork Tenderloin with honey ginger soy glaze with yam and toasted cashews. It was nicely tangy with a delicate flavour of the three main ingredients. Veggies were perfectly al denté. Simple and delicious.
My wife had the Vodka, Prawn and Chorizo, which were sautéed and added to penne rigate with a vodka tomato sauce with Parmesan and fresh basil. The prawn size and portions were generous and cooked to perfection, tender and succulent. The chorizo added and nice bite in the delicate cream sauce.
For dessert, I had the cookie, ice cream sandwich. It is made in house fully from scratch and consisted of two cookies that I'll describe as "chocolate chip cookies, without the chocolate chips," surrounding vanilla ice cream. Excellent. My wife had the chocolate cake, which she found "moist, delicate and chocolatey, which is what you want in a chocolate cake."
For breakfast, the next morning, we each had an Eggs Benny: me a regular, her the vegetarian which had a tomato jam and sautéed spinach. My wife commented that the tomato jam should also be jarred and sold at the front desk. The eggs were perfectly done, soft but not runny, and properly poached in water, not cooked in a "poacher". The hollandais was very good: delicate, more buttery than lemony and nicely balanced. The accompanying potatoes were seared to a medium brown, slightly seasoned and of perfect texture. A lovely end to our stay at this establishment.