Osoyoos Restaurants

After weeks of eating rich gourmet meals, I was craving simple comfort junk food - fried chicken. It became a joke, ever since we tried to buy a "bucket-o-cluck" at a KFC in July to bring to the beach, only to find that the location we had driven to had closed down. It's not that we eat it often, but for weeks we had a craving for the famous fried chicken. It became comical - an inside joke. We'd pass by KFC's on the highway and I'd grin with glee.

Back in Osoyoos, the night previous we had dined on rich Italian pasta. For lunch we had tomato Stilton soup and goat's cheese salad with walnuts and chicken. Lamb sausages. One weekend prior we only ate dense pate on a dark "Transylvania Peasant Bread" (no joke!) with smoked cheddar and other rich imported cheeses. Wines and sparking waters to drink. Bon Ton pastries made with thick butter cream, the kind my grandmother would serve her guests in the 50's. We'd wake up and have Jewish cheese blintzes with strawberry sauce. For another dinner, butter-fried perogies with Ukrainian sausauge. I was starting to go nauseous with any further thought of rich and heavy cuisine. Enough with the gourmet. I enjoy it, but I had too much of a good thing all at once. Blah.

So during our third night in the Okanagan, our second in Osoyoos, while the menus from the local winery restaurants looked as if they were read-outs from Gourmet magazine, I was aching for something simpler.

This is where Burgers Plus comes in.

On our way to the Desert Centre, we passed by Burgers Plus on Hwy 97. "Famous friend chicken - Kentucky style" said their sign. I looked at my boyfriend, and he looked at me. We thought the same thing. I said in my mock southern accent, "fryyyy chick'n" as we drove by.

Favorite Dish: During our walk around the Desert Centre, I mentioned how fried chicken for dinner would be ideal. Enough with the gourmet. I want something simple. So did he. So after our tour, after we had visited a fruit stand, I turned off at the Burger's Plus and parked in the lot. I grinned the biggest smile and started giggling like the silly girl that I was.

Burgers Plus is a cute little restaurant - it's an old fashioned take-out diner that also has indoor seating. The restaurant is run by a husband and wife team who claim that good food and fast service brings in customers. They're right. Their menu was huge - burgers of all types. Milkshakes. Fallafels and hummous. And fried chicken. I looked at the different options we could have. Should we get a bucket of chicken, or the chicken dinners?

We each opted for the 3-piece chicken dinner with jojo's and dip. We didn't even know what jojo's were, but it sounded good. We sat outside on the picnic tables, looking out over the apple orchards across the street. The grass was lush and it was just enjoyable sitting down ouside at a real local diner as the locals came to order their burgers and jojo's.

Within 10 minutes our food was ready, packed in neat cardboard boxes. We jumped in the van and I started our ascend up Anarchist Mountain to the B&B. We peeked into the boxes at a stoplight. Each box had a chicken wing, leg and breast cooked to perfection with a thin but extremely crispy, perfectly spiced crust. It was soooo good. Jojo's, as we discovered, were potato wedges that had been covered in batter, then deep fried. They were served with a thick sour-cream based dip. Everything was quality. Everything was so good. We took the chicken back up to the Observatory and ate it on our patio. It was definitely my favourite meal of the trip.