We were supposed to do our taxes this weekend, but that didn’t happen. Instead, we decided to rent a car and take off to Collingwood for the night. We booked ourselves into a quaint little inn called Beilds House Country Inn & Spa. It was a nicely arranged inn, with a very definite country feel to it; not usually our taste, but we knew what type of place it was before we arrived and it was just for one night anyway. The staff was very friendly and the dinner that night was delicious. The chef, Jerry, was a local from Collingwood who had worked for a while in the restaurants up in the nearby Blue Mountains resort. He’d been working in the Beilds House kitchen for a few months now and seemed to enjoy the slow down in pace, which afforded him more time to focus on the quality, rather than quantity, of the food.
And this was evident as we sat down for dinner. Now, take a deep breath and get ready for this: I had a wild mushroom, charred scallion and truffled goat cheese bruschetta for starters, followed by grilled portobello mushrooms stuffed with oven dried tomatoes, asparagus and herbed goat cheese, topped with a walnut and basil pesto for the main dish. My dessert consisted of baked phylo wrapped brie cheese drizzled with a sun dried currant and thyme sauce. El Franco had Zinfandel-poached pear, blue cheese and candied hazelnut salad with a blackberry vinaigrette, followed by gnocchi with toasted cashews and butternut squash in a herb and olive oil broth. He then finished his meal with Pineapple Barbados – warm caramelized pineapple ring topped with vanilla coconut ice cream in an orange rum sauce.
We were so impressed with the food that we sent a glass of wine to the kitchen for the chef. He then came out to thank us and stayed for a while to chat, at which point I discovered he was actually a grad from George Brown College’s Chef School.
One of the reasons for the road trip to Collingwood was to check out a nearby spa called Le Scandinave. We took time out to take a short ride to the spa, which had a great view of the ski slopes on Blue Mountain. However, when we got there we discovered that the place was very popular and there must’ve been around 60 or 70 cars in the parking lot! We took a look into the hot springs-style spa from the top of one of the bridges, and it was packed with bathers. It was actually too busy for our liking, so I don’t think we’ll ever use the facilities.
Still, it was great to take a road trip like that, just spur of the moment. Beats doing taxes any day!
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I was born in England, spent