Jan's on the Beach

For Janet Wait, owner and executive chef of White Rock's Jan's on the Beach, inspiration to open her oceanfront eatery emerged from a five-week vacation across the pond.

Janet recalls dining in Paris cafés and Barcelona bistros, seduced by vibrant flavours and intoxicating aromas of market-fresh food, where authentic dishes are made from scratch. At the time, she was an independent caterer. The business was flourishing and she needed somewhere to cook and create other than her home kitchen. Eating her way through France and Spain was literally food for thought, where naturally, the seed was planted: "Wouldn't it be cool to open my own place like this," she recalls, without citing any one particular spot, but at the time, she says, she chalked it up to blue-sky thinking.