restaurantREVIEW -Dialled into great taste

Dialled into great taste

JANUARY 2007 — VOLUME 5 ISSUE 1

At the heart of Sun Peaks, where locals and visitors meet for delicious food and fun times, is Masa’s Bar and Grill. The high-ceilinged, wide-open restaurant resonates with talk and laughter. Looking for lunch or somewhere to relax with a drink, but don’t want to go far? Masa’s is mere metres from the base of the Sunburst and Sundance chairs.

Bobbe Willis is the food and beverage manager for the Sun Peaks Resort Corporation. Of the five outlets that Willis oversees, Masa’s is truly the flagship. Built in 1994 as part of the Village Daylodge, Masa’s was one of the first full-service restaurants on the hill. Since Willis came aboard four years ago, Masa’s has grown busier and more popular every year and she’s proud of how the restaurant has progressed.

“When I started, I wanted to make Masa’s the most consistent outlet on the mountain. I wanted to have a consistent, good product, rotate the menu twice a year to keep our locals interested, and maintain a good level of staff to have staff come back,” Willis explains. “This certainly has happened.”

Masa’s is a restaurant that truly has something for everyone. Willis notes that their liquor licence allows Masa’s to have a pub-style atmosphere but still accommodate families for lunch and dinner. Children are welcome until 9 p.m. when Masa’s becomes a full pub, with great activities for grown-ups.

“Pretty much every night of the week, there’s something going on,” comments Willis. “We have Yuk Yuks [on Wednesdays] and now the movie night [on Thursdays] and casino night on Tuesdays.”

Masa’s also features great live music weekly, and pay-per-view hockey nights for all the Canucks fans out there.

Willis started her career in fine dining, and the quality of the food Masa’s serves is very important to her. She explains that making simple items taste spectacular is a skill she and her team have honed in on.

“Our most popular item is still our hamburger with fries,” Willis says. “That being said, there’s a certain art form to making a good hamburger. I came from fine dining and I thought, ‘Burger and fries, how hard can it be?’ But every year I taste 20 different types of burger patties, then there’s the bun it goes on and the combination of toppings . . . I think we’ve really got it dialled.”

Willis also explains that for those with a taste for something besides burgers, there’s a huge variety of options, from delicious lunch items such as the Bruscetta chicken sandwich to lighter rice bowls and finger-licking appies including Masa’s perennially popular chicken wings. Masa’s also has a fantastic Shepard’s Pie that’s so popular it never comes off the menu.

This year, Masa’s is hosting one of the Sun Peaks Icewine Festival’s premier events, The Magic of Dessert and Wine. The event pits Sun Peaks and the Interior’s best chefs in a decadent battle for guests’ taste buds. Not only do guests get to taste each of the desserts, they’ll also judge the pairings to determine the winner.

For anyone whose New Year’s resolution includes having fun and eating great food, Masa’s will definitely help kick off the year right.

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