It’s Saturday night in Penticton in the off-season. Shouldn’t be too hard to get into dinner right?
After researching a couple of taxi driver recommendations and rejecting both of them I hopped on to Google and found the Hooded Merganser.
It’s a restaurant at the Lakeshore Hotel with a fantastic view of Lake Okanogan. Well I’m pretty sure anyways. We couldn’t get in as the Young Guns tournament was in town and the place was booked until 8:30.
As we were all hungry and didn’t want to wait no matter how good the menu looked we decided to check on down the road 10 minutes to another one on our list that we had seen called The Black Antler.
However there was a 30 to 45 minute wait.
Well there is a pasta place around the corner.
Another 30 to 45 minute wait.
Is everyone in Penticton eating dinner at all the restaurants that we go want to go to at this moment?
Fortunately just across the street there is another establishment we saw with some empty tables. So like it or not we are going there.
How many microbreweries are there in this town anyways?
At any rate the beer was cold.
This is their Sunshine City Passionfruit Wheaten Ale.
I don’t remember seeing any passion fruit trees in Penticton on any of my journeys.
After some research apparently the plant can be grown in BC but I don’t think they get the yield they’d require for making large amounts but if anybody can correct me on that please, do. And if nothing else you can close your eyes and pretend you’re in more exotic climes.
Regardless it was great. The fruit flavor was very prominent and not too sour. A very nice ale.
Unfortunately nothing on the menu particularly excited me. For some reason this is the Mexican place in town?
No burrito ever excites me so went with a Street Corn Dip.
It was fine. Those tortilla chips look suspiciously like La Cucina brand though. Yes those are very good tortilla chips but in a restaurant is it really that hard to fry your own?
The more than necessary crema was a tad too sour for the amount of corn that they give you and it definitely was missing an avocado dip with it.
Earls does it better.
The restaurant itself is a nice spot. However when busy like it was tonight it was extremely loud in there.
The service was very good. The food came out fast. And the prices reasonable.
So if for some reason your first three choices for dinner in Penticton don’t work out you could probably head over to Neighborhood Brewing and grab yourself a table.
6/10