Fwd:Dolly Watts, Vancouver's "Iron Chief"

Liliget Feast House brings First Nation cuisine to Vancouver

Visitors to Liliget experience the wonderful taste of wild game and seafood prepared the traditional way in a unique culinary longhouse.

There will never be a market for indigenous food in a restaurant setting in Canada. Wrong. If you want to know just how wrong, talk to Dolly Watts. As the owner-operator of Liliget Feast House and Catering on Davie Street in Vancouver, Watts - a member of the Gitksan First Nation - has taken Vancouver by storm. Customers entering Liliget arrive in what has been turned into a culinary longhouse, and experience traditional wild game and seafood as only Watts can prepare it. Entrees, served in traditional long wooden bowls made from carved cedar and alder, complete the scene.

Liliget Feast House owner-operator, Dolly Watts

The setting is superb, designed by Canada's leading architect, Arthur Erickson. A waitress described it as "his idea of an Indian longhouse, without having ever seen one." No matter, the atmosphere is near mystical with heavy cedar posts and an almost Japanese, sparse beauty.

Liliget's tranquil dining room, complete with wooden paths and loose pebbles, contains an impressive collection of Aboriginal art. The cedar tables and benches offer seating in a highly-unconventional way; guests flip the floor-level tables up to sit, with their legs lowered in a hollow.

"We grill most everything over fire," Watts says proudly. "We use alder wood so that everything we cook tastes so much like the food we used to eat in our villages." Authentic Northwest Coast dishes include halibut, salmon and caribou cooked over a green-alderwood grill. With revenues increasing each year, Watts is the author of her own business success story.

While in university, she established a small bannock stand called Grandma's Bannock. Demand was incredible and a catering business - Just Like Grandma's Bannock - followed. After that, Liliget Feast House and Catering was born in 1995. She's developed a national and international reputation, serving as a program consultant to prestigious conferences on Canadian cuisine and speaking overseas on Aboriginal cuisine.

Watts also co-founded the Aboriginal Business Club, which provides a forum for sharing successful business strategies and ideas with others in the Aboriginal community.

The recipient of numerous culinary and business honours, including an Aboriginal Achievement Award this year, Watts has developed a solid nationwide clientele.

For the full experience, the Liliget Feast Platter for two is highly recommended. It includes alder-grilled wild sockeye salmon, pacific oysters, mussels, venison strips, wild buffalo smokies, duck breast with wild berry sauce and juniper berry sauce, served with sweet potatoes with hazelnuts, vegetable kebabs, wild rice medley and fiddleheads.

Winter hours (Oct/01-Feb/28) Open Wednesday to Sunday, 5 to 10 p.m. Open daily for groups of 20 or more for lunch or dinner.

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