Treetop Tapas & Grill — Restaurant in Parksville

I would highly recommend ignoring the previous low ratings and giving this place a try. All of the the recent reviews seem to be great. I had possibly the best meal of my life here in June 2025.

I went in with fairly low expectations, as Cedars, the restaurant at Tigh Na Mara, is pretty mediocre. We did the dip-and-dine package while staying at the resort, and I was not expecting much for food - frozen Sysco appies perhaps.

I was absolutely blown away. As soon as I had one bite of the first course, a spring kale salad, I knew I had massively underestimated this place. The food was OUTSTANDING, and the wine pairings were not only great, they were well priced (relative to similar menus elsewhere).

I see there are a few people complaining about portions. It's bottomless - eat more! I'm a pretty big guy, with a pretty big appetite, and I would have been perfectly happy with the set menu. Of course I ordered a few extra courses because the food was so incredible, but I left very very full.

The spring/summer 2025 menu is fresh, local, playful, and expertly executed. There are fermented and picked foods, lots of seafood, some bright fruit sauces paired with savory meats, and some earthy fungi dishes. I could see a person who likes frozen spring rolls and well-cooked steak with ketchup finding some of the dishes a little intimidating, but anyone who enjoys fine dining, beyond basic meat and potatoes, will likely be thrilled with the dishes.

The citrus and cream dessert paired with Inniskillin Ice Wine was so good it literally brought tears to my eyes!

As far as I'm aware, there is nothing else in Parksville that even comes close to this caliber of food.

On top of all this, our server, Drew, was great. He was attentive, friendly, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic.

The only thing I didn't love is the fact that you have to eat wearing your robe from the spa. This isn't Bruch and mimosas, it's an elevated dining experience, and I would prefer to not feel the wind blowing on my bits and bobbles. That said, if I would happily do this again wearing only an adult diaper if I had to!

10/10 Treat yourself and make a...

We came for dip and dine. Love the spa and the dip half of the experience.

The amuse bouche was yummy and the gluten free bannock I was served as a substitute for the bread course was delicious. The rest of flavours were confusing.

Our server was almost apologetic when serving us the watermelon and beet gazpacho and mentioned that the taste was not for everyone. It certainly wasn’t! There were aspects of each dish that were okay but the beautiful ingredients used were often in overly bitter or overly sweet fruit sauces. For example, the tuna was served with large spoonfuls of strong flavoured blackberry foam and blackberry vinegar. The blackberry foam dominated the space on the plate. The green beans and cherry tomatoes in this dish were drowned in the blackberry sauce, which didn’t pair very well. The blackberry flavour was overwhelming and it was very difficult to taste anything else. It seemed like a waste of these fresh, gorgeous ingredients.

The plates seemed to get worse as we went down the menu. I found the overly bitter or overly sweet flavours often inedible and poorly paired with the ingredients they were served with. For example, last course was halibut with a potato and greens salad. The greens were covered in an extremely bitter lime dressing and so were the potatoes. The flavours of the halibut were also very bitter and the sauce was a heavy cream sauce that didn’t have much flavour. I was frustrated because this was a beautiful piece of halibut and I was not able to eat it.

The price for this meal was $100 per person and it was definitely not worth the money.

Another note: As I was scrolling though reviews post-meal to find out if others had a similar experience, I discovered that our server for the meal has left a 5 star google review for the tapas, not disclosing that that they are on staff. The server has a very unique name so it is easy to understand that it was our server. This made me wonder if any other staff members have...

Service was lovely. The food was... Unique? We found a lot of the flavour pairings less than desirable, some of them were honestly unfortunate. Took 2.5 hours for the whole service, with the first half of the menue flying out and the second half taking upwards of 15 minutes or longer between courses. My butt was so sore from sitting that long. Even if we had time to re-order the tapas, there were really none worth waiting for. While the food was very fresh and very well presented, there was such a disconnect to the palate. The cold dishes were all well cooked, while the hot dishes seemed to struggle with proper cooking temperature, and sad sad overcooked scallops. It was also notes that the menu and what was severed were not accurate, while some changes were notified to us, like the change of soup, the scallops were served with a surprise bacon jam, which for a lot of cultural/religious reasons should have been shared prior to the diner beginning their tasting. Of all the plates, which included lamb, scallops, prawns, crab, halibut, the kale salad and the sponge cake for dessert, stood out the most, both having the best balance of flavour and texture... I feel like that says a lot. There were 2 dishes we could not even finish: the take on a nicoise salad which was so bland my palate cried for tableside salt and pepper just to experience something, and the halibut with a bizarre sauce that was broken and overwhelming with saffron. The experience was fun for the first hour, but the following hour and a half we were begging for it to be over to get back home and not be wearing a robe any longer. Absolutely not worth $300. We were also not notified of auto gratuity and tipped well...