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Table scraps

True love down the Rabbit Hole

It was my new lover.

Fireworks, connection and everything that goes along with the bliss you can only find in your Garden of Eden stage of getting to know a new encounter.

I waited a few weeks, then months, wanting to ensure that this new noon hour coupling was everything our love at first bite promised to be. I wanted to believe, no know, that lunches at Function Junction’s newest cafe were the real deal, not a one-day roll in the pizza dough, but a relationship that would grow for many work breaks to come.

And like all great lovers, it came with an alias. James Bond is better known as 007; Clark Kent, Superman; and in my case Whistler’s Own Bake Shop had a new alias, the Rabbit Hole.

Anyone who has shopped in Nesters Market, grabbed a snack at local coffee shops or ventured down to Whole Foods in Vancouver is well acquainted with the Whistler’s Own Bakeshop cookies and bars.

Those tea-dipping little heavens — boasting ingredients such as organic rolled oats, cane sugar and pure vanilla extract — have undergone a bit of a makeover over the past few months. The days of generic plastic boxes are gone like a bad What Not To Wear episode and instead colourful boxes bling up cookies cheekily wielding names like Mojo Risin’, Carpalpedal-spasm and Menage a Trois.

The cookies were once pulled from the Whistler’s Own Bakeshop located next to Black Ohm Tattoos in Function. But with new packaging increasing sales 300 per cent, with plans to ship bars and bake-yourself cookie dough rolls across Canada, a new homestead was sought out down the street. The new Whistler’s Own Bakeshop factory devotes its efforts to mass cookie and bar production (with product never sitting longer than 72 hours on shelves) leaving the original site for a more savoury rendez vous, hence the Rabbit Hole Café.

Claudine Sellers is the taste buds behind the Bake Shop and the Rabbit Hole, leaving her partner Alex to the business and marketing end of this local adventure.

All natural, and sometimes organic and free range, ingredients are used with Claudine’s love of Whistler inspiring her recipes.

Claudine only stands still long enough to take your order at the Rabbit Hole. She is usually busy mixing freshly chopped apple and berries for pies or stacking up a sandwich order for a local coffee shop or for a single customer choosing to dine at the Rabbit Hole itself.

Bright acrylic artwork adorns the walls while furniture doubles as both seating and art — a large tree stump twists and turns into a platform for a glass table top and the side of a tree becomes a coffee table — a little bumpy for balancing your coffee (of course free trade, organic), but beautiful and unique just the same.

There is no front counter. Sometimes you need to peak your head between the two glass cases showcasing fresh scones, muffins, cookies, bars and sweets, and around the corner into the kitchen to order. Claudine’s little boy, Finnigan, is only too happy to entertain you while you wait. This is a family affair. If you miss the Rabbit Hole sign, just look for the owner’s two big white dogs soaking up the sun out in front of the store.

Soups, sandwiches, smoothies and specials are scrawled in chalk on the menu board. I still remember when my eyes first met with the Rabbit Hole chicken panini. It was love at first sight. The chicken is free range, the bread and even the mayonnaise homemade, and wow I could taste the difference all of those small details made, and my once vegetarian ways were pleased with a cruelty-free meat choice. The golden brown crusty outside, thick red juicy tomato and lean white meat inside was fresh and flavourful.

But was this lover a one trick pony?

The pumpkin donuts filled with lemon cream and dusted with sugar and cinnamon suggested probably not.

The homemade pizza crust, painted in pesto and stacked with thick slices of fresh vegetables such as zucchini and artichokes and/or roasted red peppers and garlic, quelled feelings of doubt.

And the Slovakian zemiaky (a Monday and Tuesday special of scalloped potatoes and bacon) sealed the deal as a soul mate for years to come.

Each time I try a blueberry muffin adorned with a sweet ripe peach slice (and I don’t even like muffins), I wait for the other shoe to drop.

Every taste I adventure into with a raspberry scone, I look for a flaw.

But none come.

Not only is this new love both savoury and sweet, but helpful. Still baking challenged, I grabbed a Rabbit Hole apple and blackberry pie before flying off to a dinner party. I loved the detail of a bear shape adorning the piecrust. Guests loved the fresh fruit taste, not drenched in sugary sweetness, and the flakey crust was eaten up to the very last crumb.

This is no make believe Alice in Wonderland of late hares, talking cats and mad hatter tea parties, but this Rabbit Hole sure tastes like it.