Well Seasoned: the Langley shop that cooks your holiday dinner better than you do
A small gourmet grocer on 64th with a serious take-home kitchen: weekly chef dinners, frozen lasagna and braises, party platters, cooking classes and whole holiday meals you pre-order and simply reheat.
- Where
- 117-20353 64 Ave, Langley (Willoughby, in the plaza west of 204 St) · 604-530-1518
- Hours
- Mon–Wed 9 am–5 pm; Thu–Fri 9 am–6 pm; Sat 9 am–5 pm; Sun 10 am–5 pm
- Cost
- Frozen lasagna about $25, braised beef for two about $36, the weekly chef dinner for two $55, cooking classes around $130 a seat
- Ordering
- Online for pickup, or walk in. Holiday dinners are pre-order with a cut-off; watch the site.
- Parking
- Plaza lot
- Website
- wellseasoned.ca
From the sidewalk, Well Seasoned looks like a nice little gourmet shop: oils and vinegars, salts and rubs, cheese, preserves, the hard-to-find pantry item your recipe insisted on. It is that. But the reason we keep going back is the kitchen in the back, and what comes out of it.
Gourmet-to-Go
The freezer and the deli case are the heart of the place. House lasagna, braised beef for two, flatbreads and tarts, dips and dressings, and a rotating weekly “chef dinner” — a restaurant-quality meal for two, menu changes every week, ordered ahead and picked up Friday afternoon or Saturday. We’ve done the weekly dinner on nights when nobody wanted to cook and it has never once felt like a compromise. Single portions come and go in the case; ask what’s fresh that day.
The holiday meals
This is the thing to know about. Several times now we’ve pre-ordered a whole holiday dinner — the bird, the sides, the gravy, the dessert — picked it up the day before, and spent the holiday itself reheating instead of cooking. Every time it has been excellent, and every time someone at the table assumed we’d made it. The catch is the deadline: these sell out and the cut-off comes earlier than you expect, so if Christmas or Easter is on your mind, look at the site a few weeks out.
Everything else
There’s lunch and corporate catering and party platters if you’re hosting. The cooking classes, taught by working chefs, run most weeks in the fall — pasta and gnocchi, sourdough, a regional Italian night — and sell out, so book early. The gift baskets are a genuinely good host gift when you can’t show up with wine.
When to go
Weekday mid-morning is quiet and the case is full. Late Saturday afternoon the to-go section is picked over. If you’re coming for the weekly dinner, pick-up is Friday afternoon or Saturday before close.
Go if you want a dinner you’d be proud to serve without making it, or a holiday with the cooking taken off your plate. Skip if you’re after a quick cheap lunch; this is a grocer with a kitchen, not a café.