The Last Chapter of Off The Hook

After a great deal of thought, we have decided to close Off The Hook at the end of September.

As we reach the peak of our busy season in our fourth summer in business—and our best year to date—we have decided that it is time to shift gears and embark on a new adventure.

For as long as we have been together, we have talked about someday travelling the world as a family. Our daughter, Coakley, turns 13 this month, and we realized that if we are ever going to make that dream happen, this is our moment. So, with very mixed emotions, we have decided to offer the restaurant building for sale or lease and spend the next year travelling together.

Four years ago, we bought a shuttered old restaurant and set out to breathe new life into the building. Since then, we have faced one challenge after another: renovating the property, navigating countless details and bureaucratic obstacles, hiring and training a great staff and building a restaurant of which we are incredibly proud.

It has been a privilege to share in your engagements, birthdays, anniversaries, celebrations of life and countless other special occasions. Many of our guests have become friends, and we are deeply grateful for the support this community has shown us.

None of this would have been possible without the wonderful staff of Off The Hook. They show up every day and give this place their absolute best. We are perpetually thankful for their hard work, dedication and passion. Rebecca, Angelica, Oshun, Jules, Paige, Cody, Misha, Corbin, Hamish, Isaiah, Lillah, Branden, Kyle, Julie, Jackey, Allegra and Niccola: thank you for everything you have done to make this restaurant what it is. Jack Martinez, Sofiya Wilkinson, Dylan Hroch, Sky Sanderson, Sudip Shrestha and JJ Love were all critical in the early success of this business, as well. We could not have done this without the hard work and talent that all of our staff contributed every day.

I would also be remiss if I did not single out my husband, Justin. I have missed a handful of services over the past three years because of the occasional illness, but Justin has never missed a single one. We have been open for almost 600 nights of service, and there has never been a night when he was not in our kitchen. He holds this restaurant to the highest standards and never stops working to improve what we do in every way. Very few restaurants are run with that level of dedication.

But then, this has never been a normal restaurant.

What other restaurant changes not only its menu, but its entire cuisine, every week throughout the winter? We’ve cooked nearly twenty different cuisines, roasted whole hogs, thrown summer prawn boils and grown thousands of zucchini flowers each year. We’ve taught sushi and pasta classes, made pizza, sold fish & chips and homemade soft serve from our Snack Shack and smashburgers at the Fall Fair. We’ve put every bit of energy we have into making Off The Hook a truly special, welcoming and delicious experience.

Our sanity may be debatable, but our passion for hospitality is not. We have loved the constant challenges, the evolution of this restaurant and everything we have learned along the way.

We remain profoundly grateful to this wonderful country for welcoming us and allowing us to become citizens, and to everyone in this community who supported our dream of creating a special restaurant on Salt Spring Island. We are keeping our home here and plan to return to Salt Spring in a year, in time for Coakley to begin high school.

Every day of Off The Hook has been both an education and a privilege - from the bottom of our hearts, thank you.

--Santina & Justin Oppmann

P.S. We will be open until late September, so please come and see us for some pecan prawns, zucchini blossom tempura or a yuzu margarita before we go.

Our August prawn boil dinner is now sold out but we still have tickets available for the Labour Day weekend pig roast.
https://www.exploretock.com/offthehookrestaurant/event/610766/fourth-annual-off-the-hook-pig-roast

And if you know someone who has always dreamed of having their own restaurant on Salt Spring, please send them our way
https://www.collierscanada.com/en-ca/properties/for-sale-renovated-commercial-building-in-salt-spring-island/can-321-fernwood-salt-spring-island-bc/can2021278