Au Petit Chavignol’s offerings are impressively varied and constantly changing
Mia Stainsby
Sun
A server prepares an order at Au Petit Chavignol
AU PETIT CHAVIGNOL
845 East Hastings St.
604-255-4218.
www.aupetitchavignol.com.
Open Thursday to Monday, 5 p.m. to midnight.
Overall: 4
Food: 4
Ambience: 3 1/2
Service: 3 1/2
Price: $$
Sun Restaurant Critic. [email protected]. Restaurant visits are conducted anonymously and interviews are done by phone. Restaurants are rated out of five stars.
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If you like cheese, you’ll be thrilled. But if you’re allergic to it, as one of my colleagues is, then you might not be. Still, since he lives in Strathcona, Au Petit Chavignol will still be one of his haunts. It’s the first sophisticated foodie venue to venture into the ‘hood.
Like Campagnolo and Two Chefs And A Table before it, the cheese and wine bistro takes elan to edgy streets. In fact, the owners Alice and Allison Spurrell (mother and daughter) and Joe Chaput (married to the daughter) had to undergo criminal checks before they could get the show on the road in the neighbourhood.
“All they [the police] found out was that maybe we were boring,” Alice laughs about it now. (She wasn’t laughing at the time.)
The family owns Les Amis du Fromage cheese shops in Vancouver and West Vancouver, a destination for cheese lovers. To me, Au Petit Chavignol is all about the synergy between wine and cheese. I’ll throw bread in there, too, because together they’re a holy trinity — they complete me, they enrich me, fill some hollow at the pit of my soul.
The heart of the menu is tasting cheeses, divided into cow, goat, sheep and mixed milk cheeses. Mix and match cheeses yourself or choose from a flight, matched with a flight of wines. Cheese offerings will constantly change and patrons can look forward to adopting new ones into their lives. Prices are $4 a piece, $10 for three and $16 for five. When I visited there was only one cheese from B.C. on the list — it would be nice to see more to promote local cheesemakers.
Since I visited Au Petit Chavignol, my list of cheeses I cannot live without has grown. Brillat Savarin and La Sauvagine were my all-time favourites (both soft and triple creamy).
Now, I’m thinking Boschetto Tartufo might knock them both out of the ball park. It’s a Tuscan beauty, a mix of cow and sheep’s milk infused with white truffles. The truffle flavour lingered seductively for some time afterward in my mouth. So-o-o delicious. Brebiou (Pyrenees), Tomme Corsu Vecchiu (Corsican), Taupiniere (Perigord) and Bleu de Laqueuille (Auvergne) will visit my cheeseboard, too.
You can order condiments to go with the cheeses. For magic, try the Tupelo honeycomb with a hard cheese. Cherries in Marc de Bandol sounded great, but tasted too strongly of cognac.
Charcuterie also partners nicely with cheese and there are offerings of cured meats, a paté, terrine and duck rillettes. There are also some salads and hot dishes: raclette, fondu, mac and cheese, pommes frites, tartiflette Savoyarde (sliced potatoes dotted with lardons, Roblochon cheese and creme fraiche) and a croque monsieur and croque madame. They’re simple, traditional dishes from France. The pommes frites were excellent. The mac and cheese was loosely constructed (I like a little cohesion), but tasty.
Desserts, too, are comfort style. The bag of chocolate cookies, just baked and deeply chocolate, is an excellent way to finish your cheese fest. Apple galette is nicely handled, but a caramel tart had a tough crust and a too-runny filling.
Next door to Au Petit Chavignol , there’s a brand new Les Amis du Fromage cheese shop. It’s closed in the evening when the Au Petit is open, but if you are blown away by a cheese, you can buy it in the restaurant. Au Petit is a perfect place to have a secret love affair with cheese.
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