It seems that every time we're in the neighbourhood, we decide that we'll stop in at the Clayburn General Store for lunch, and every time we pass by, it seems to be closed for some reason. Today we were pleasantly surprised to find it up and running.
Clayburn used to be a company town, built around a brick factory. Today pretty much all that remains there is the store, which is a neat little place filled with antiques. Half of it is a tea house, and the other half a candy store. I ended up with a nice spot of darjeeling and the ploughman's lunch, which is pretty simple: cheese, bread, butter, pickles. It doesn't look like much when it comes out on the plate but it's surprisingly filling.
My sister is quite enamoured with the sticky toffee pudding that you can get there, but we didn't stay for desert.
While we were busy flying around at the Pitt Meadows airport last month we happened to hear that the Chilliwack airport has the best pie in the world. Wondering if there was truth to such an outrageous claim, we decided to investigate.
My first observation was that the cafe serves a rather wide variety of pies. My second was that as the slogan of the place implies, people fly in from all over the place, just to eat there. We watched one man taxi up the tarmac and park his biplane right in front of the window. Apparently he had come a hundred miles for a piece of rhubarb pie. Unfortunately for him, they were out.
I ordered some raspberry peach pie and I must say that it put to shame every other piece of pie I've ever had. Absolutely delicious.
My grandmother used to live out in Chilliwack General Hospital and every time we went out to visit, there was never anywhere worth eating out there. I wish we had known. We could have tried all the flavours by now.
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