Bear's Paw Cafe

If you're anywhere in the area YOU MUST EAT HERE! I came through wells on a school trip two years ago and absolutely loved it! They managed to cater to 3 or 4 dozen kids and seemed to love doing it! Very funny and kind owners for sure! Servers were easygoing, accomadative and helpful! I loved the food personally, each dish you could tell was cooked and presented with a purpose and passion. Excellent all around dining experience!

While in the area we had two dinners here and they were both great! Very fresh ingredients and tasty entrees with new creations often. Appropriate sized appies with a deal for ordering multiples! Who knew olives on a bamboo skewer could be so mouth watering! Great beer menu with Dave providing inviting recommendations. Will return!

Only in a town with a population smaller than a business management class would the best restaurant be a tiny café with homemade mugs and mismatched tablecloths. But don’t let that fool you, the Bear’s Paw Café is probably one of the best places you can eat for a hundred kilometers. Yeah, yeah, I-I-I know that there are only ten restaurants in that range, but dammit, it’s still a title to be proud of! The Bear’s Paw cafe is the kind of restaurant I really love going to, the kind my blog was designed for. Oh sure, I love pampering myself in a posh high class restaurant, but they don’t need my promotion to succeed. That’s not saying Bear’s Paw requires it either, but it’s the type of place I love talking about. Of the five restaurants in Wells you can eat at, it tops the list among the various review sites, and five minutes into entering, I could see why--it’s proudly rustic. A radio plays local music, punctuated by an announcer mentioning the very restaurant I was inside. Local arts hangs on the wall. The few TVs present show photos from the owners’ hiking trips across British Columbia. There’s even a stage where local acts play (like that night). Bear’s Paw is more adorable than a Teddy Ruxpin after being caught in the rain. The specials are scrawled daily on a blackboard—whatever piques the cook’s interest that day. The owners were delightful if a tad blunt, maybe adoringly blunt would be a better description. They talk honestly and proudly about their food. The menu is tight and efficient, only three mains with double that for appetizers, how it should be for small places like this. It’s not lazy, it just proves the dishes are cooked to order. My girlfriend ordered their “legendary” ribs while I a hamburger—YES, a hamburger. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’ll order hamburger in a burger joint if that’s what they’re good at, though this one was delivered sans cheese. I admit that was odd, but was more surprised when I realized I hadn’t noticed until half-way through the meal. On a side note, wells must have a fascination with frogs. The store next door is called Frog on the Bog. There are drinks from the Dead Frog’s Brewery. Bear’s Paw has frog novelties scattered about including matching salt and pepper shakers. It makes me wonder why they went with the name they did...seems there was a more appropriate alternative staring them right in the face. Too late now, it’s called Bear’s Paw; they even blasted the name onto custom-made ceramic coffee mugs—OH MY GOD, THAT’S ADORABLE! Look at that! It was like they were made in their kid’s art class. I wanted to buy one. On the recommendation of the server/owner, I opted for vegetables on the side instead of fries. They were honestly quite good save for that one strange alien...I don’t know...”thing” I couldn’t recognize. Was it some odd local produce farmed downstream from agricultural runoff? No, it was just bok choy. Regardless, it was not the most edible part of the meal, though I would praise the cheese-less burger. Despite having few places to eat, Wells does have recommendations, and I can see why Bear’s Paw tops the list. As they open for the evening, I’d recommend stopping on the way home from Barkerville. It would be hard to miss the giant arrow. Food: 3/5 Service: 4.5/5 Presentation: 3.5/5 Value: 4/5 Recommendation: 4/5