Full Plate

Vincent Vanderheide, a veteran of some of Victoria’s most iconic eating spots, knows that food is intertwined with our memories. Many of his are rooted in his family farm in Abbotsford, where he lived until was five.

The seven-acre farm was home to greenhouses, chickens, cows, a vegetable garden, rows of raspberries, an apple orchard. There, he sat down to his Dutch grandmother’s delectable fried potatoes, made from a unique golden variety, and meatball soup prepared with more salt than his nurse mother would typically add. He also remembers a salad of farm-fresh tomatoes that he counts as one of his favourite dishes to this day. “We always had perfectly fresh tomatoes all the time.”

Growing up, Vanderheide considered several different paths, including computer science and horticulture, the family business. In Grade 12, he had a cool literature teacher which led him to study English at UVic, graduating in 2009. Along the way, he took a bartending course at Camosun and eventually joined the city’s hospitality business. He started at a Starbucks, then bussing at Canoe Brewpub, where he worked his way up while learning from brewer Sean Hoyne. Vanderheide discovered some top-label wines in their cellar and was inspired to earn his sommelier credentials.

Since then, Vanderheide has worked behind the bars of iconic venues, including the Empress and the Union Club. One of his favourite parts of bartending at the Empress was taking late-night customers on basement tours of the historic (and reportedly haunted) hotel. He also enjoyed giving brewery tours of Canoe and telling its story.

Victoria’s food scene is more collaborative and more about community than other cities, he says. It’s also more casual, with fewer white-tablecloth venues, and bolstered by its access to outstanding Island produce. He and Chef Samuel Harris, who met at Boom+Batten, have committed to the city’s food scene, together creating Vinuel Restaurant Group and forging the core values of stewardship, honesty and development.

In terms of stewardship, the duo saved local steak-frites fans from despair by taking over Brasserie L’Ecole and assuming the reins of Café Brio, where countless celebrations have involved scraping plates of duck breast or house-made gnocchi. The team’s new baby on the block is Dough Eyes, a family-friendly pizza place with memorable sourdough-crust pizzas, farm-to-table salads and house-made ice creams.

For Vanderheide, bringing humans together to share food—in an age where we’re being force-fed artificial intelligence—makes his work meaningful. Eating together is “a pillar of civilization,” he notes. 

A good test if hospitality is your calling is if you have “the soul of an inn keeper,” he says. If it fills your cup to fetch fresh napkins and look after people—you’re going to be awesome in the business.

Today, a salad made with organic tomatoes from Central Saanich along with sourdough breadcrumbs and the greens shiso and agretti, is featured on the menu at Dough Eyes. The salad is a tribute to the version that he savoured at his grandmother’s table. 

 —Jenny Manzer, BA '97

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