A spotlight on White Spot
By Jerrison Oracion, Senior Columnist
This story is dedicated to Anthony Bourdain because he made food look cool.
I saw a White Spot commercial last month where it shows everyday life in British Columbia. White Spot is a place to go to have breakfast, lunch, or to have a great family dinner. The commercial shows that it is part of BC’s culture and at the end of it, I found out that the restaurant is 90 years old. I go to White Spot frequently to have a good dinner, and we here at the Other Press go there sometimes for staff meetups so we can get a lot of appetizers to share with everyone. It has a long history that makes it our local favourite.
White Spot was founded by Nat Bailey in 1928 where it began as a food cart that served hot dogs from his Model T truck. It was so successful that he opened a drive-thru on Granville Street and 67th Avenue that served chicken dinners. As the years went by, more people were going to the restaurant so they had to open more locations, and in the 1960s the Triple-O burger was made! In my opinion, it is one of the best burgers in the province. It has everything that you want in a burger and while its Triple-O sauce is still a secret, it adds more flavour to it. In 2003 Chuck Currie was made the Executive Chef and began the practice of putting the Red Seal chefs in the White Spot kitchens—meaning that the chefs had to go through a culinary apprenticeship, which resulted in better, fresher food.
White Spot has many signature dishes. They have Nat’s Dry Ribs, Pirate Paks, hand scooped milkshakes, and their pies which are made with fresh local produce and are available during the summer.
To celebrate the 90th anniversary of the restaurant, they have a special menu to commemorate the occasion. By popular demand, they brought back their classic chicken dinner with “Chicken in ‘The Straw,’” which is a quarter chicken deep fried on a nest of fries with coleslaw on the side. It has the warmth of home cooking and the chicken is juicy and very crunchy. Their dessert offering is the Strawberry Cheesecake Tart and the tartness of the strawberry and the sweetness of the cheesecake makes it balanced.
I for one, am super excited to try all of these classic White Spot dishes and wish them another happy 90 years!
