Heritage Grill manages to feel as much a club as a restaurant, with generous portions of West Coast Cajun

A.R. Wodell
Sun

New Westminster’s Columbia Street is a prime example of a town’s once-bustling main thoroughfare being dealt a near-fatal blow by the rise of mall culture.

However, with a college close by, two SkyTrain stations, and the recent arrival of lofts and condos, Columbia is on the slow rebound, starting to attract a quirky mixture of bookstores, upscale shops, and formal and/or funky clothing boutiques.

The Heritage Grill is doing its part, adding its own jazz note to the redefined mix. Owner Paul Minhas says he saw “so much potential on Columbia Street” that he decided to offer “something different and unique, not just to New Westminster residents, but to Surrey and Delta as well.”

As much a club as a restaurant, the Grill offers jazz combos every evening at 8 p.m. and at noon on Sunday. (The website includes the entertainment schedule for the coming months.) Its intimate space was reclaimed two years ago from another eatery: there are four comfy booths much favoured by regulars, a scattering of large and small tables, and a minute stage area up front, under a metal palm tree.

Furniture includes recycled chairs and tables decorated in “Jack the Dripper” Pollack mode, and the best you can say about the orange on orange decor is that its shabby comfort suggests The Drive rather than the burbs.

The view through the front windows is decidedly urban, given the large grey Army & Navy store directly opposite.

But a grill is a grill, and food counts much more than ambience.

Warned by our charming waitress about the size of the entrees, we avoided appetizers. All the classics are represented on the menu, perfectly suitable for nibbling during jazz sets. But we felt an obligation to sample the onion soup, the touchstone of pub grub, and especially welcome on a drizzly November evening in May. It was deep and rich and –critical point here — the toasted cheese crouton made with a gutsy slice of good bread did not dissolve at the first touch of a spoon, but maintained its integrity.

The special of the evening was a massively generous Cajun chicken and andouille sausage stew, served atop a crisp corn cake whose relatively bland sweetness perfectly accented its agreeably gooey topping. The further you go into a Cajun dish, the spicier it gets, and soon we felt warm for what seemed the first time in weeks.

We also tried the jambalaya, which proved not quite as “traditional” as it was billed, and a good thing, too: rice with the classic celery, pepper and tomato combo, prawns cooked au point and not the least bit rubbery, plus clams, mussels, halibut, and salmon. This was a true West Coast reinvention instead of a pro forma imitation of the southern original.

Later we discovered that versatile chef Michael Colon in fact hails from New Orleans, but that his current culinary philosophy is “West Coast all the way.”

Desserts included a homemade tiramisu, a New York cheesecake, and a decadent chocolate brownie. We opted to split a serving of the startlingly funky/rich Gorgonzola and walnut cheesecake with mango/honey coulis — not for anyone who’s ever used the phrase “stinky cheese,” but close to ambrosia for those who like this kind of thing.

– – –

AT A GLANCE

The Heritage Grill

447 Columbia St., New Westminster

Open Monday to Thursday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 2 a.m., Sunday 11 a.m. to 12 p.m.

www.theheritagegrill.com

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

Kitsilano brazier grill more like old Japan than modern Tokyo, a rustic cocoon of cedar and worn rice paper

Mia Stainsby
Sun

ZAKKUSHI CHARCOAL GRILL DINER

Overall: 3 1/2

Food: 3 1/2

Ambience: 3 1/2

Service: 3 1/2

Price: $$

1833 West Fourth Ave., 604-730-9844. Open daily for dinner, www.zakkushi.com

Restaurant visits are conducted anonymously and interviews are done by phone. Restaurants are rated out of five stars.

– – –

I’ve been ignoring Zakkushi because the way things are going, I could write a column about Japanese izakayas every week. They’re the “it” restaurants of the day, luring us away from sushi love.

Menu-wise, Zakkushi Charcoal Grill Diner on West Fourth is a clone of another on Denman Street but this location has a different personality — more like old Japan than modern Tokyo.

“Some people say it looks like a sauna,” says Yuki Ikeda, a sometimes cook-sometimes waiter. And indeed, the small room is a rustic cocoon of cedar and worn rice paper.

“We want people to relax, feel comfortable. We want them to talk, about romance, about future. We don’t want it to be a place to come to drink and complain about work,” Ikeda says.

You almost expect to find the celebrated Japanese salarymen here, drinking an awful lot, eating, laughing, then staggering home.

The difference here is, well, for starters, there’s reggae music, which is nice and happy, but not very Japanese.

Next to us, a couple of young women drink modestly and take an interest in the food. They’re architects and note the wabi sabi quality of the room. They won’t be staggering off anywhere into the dark of night.

Yes, there’s a wabi sabi quality (it’s been described as a sad kind of Zen beauty) but I was cursing in a most un-Zen-like way clambering over the stretch bench seating with no opening allowing for graceful passage, especially challenging in a pencil skirt.

Zakkushi does offer a glimpse of the myriad of specialty restaurants in Japan.

The grill is like an elongated hibachi with charcoal heated to 1,000 F. Juggling the skewers of food requires a sure hand and impeccable timing because we want moist interiors, not coal.

One of the grillmeisters had a marathon night at the Denman Street location where orders came in for 1,400 items off the grill. He didn’t incinerate himself or the food and went home quite pleased with himself. “The timing is different for each skewer and he had to keep track of what’s on and when they come off. If he loses track, everything falls apart,” says Ikeda.

It’s been noted that Vancouverites consume shockingly more sushi than the Japanese and it appears we outdo the Japanese with brazier-grilled food, too.

At Zakkushi, dinner is the sum of many little parts and it’s nice and affordable. The skewers of food are less than $2 each.

I especially liked the tsukune items — minced chicken done up many ways. There’s rice, beef, cheese, vegetable and seafood skewered and grilled with different marinades and sauces. You can round out the meal with salad; do try the spinach and lotus root salad with sesame dressing — it’s gigantic and good for you. Sprinkles of deep-fried sliced lotus root looks like Martian food for your entertainment pleasure.

Tapas items (tuna sashimi, negitoro and avocado rice wrap, Japanese beef stew among other dishes) cost a very reasonable $4.50 to $8. The ebi mayo is something to sink your teeth into for a pleasant taste reward. The menu stretches to include rice bowl dishes, an oodle of noodles and dessert.

At both locations, I’ve resisted Pooh Bear’s Afternoon Snack: toast with vanilla ice cream and maple syrup. The green tea ice cream with red beans wasn’t bad; I’m on the fence with the black sesame seed ice cream — it’s unusual. Maybe I need to shake up my ice cream reality.

Wines are not impressive but there is a premium sake list as well as shochu (a distilled beverage with 25 per cent alcohol content), which actually goes well with the fattier grilled dishes and is consumed more vigorously than sake in Japan.

All in all, a nice place to do what salarymen do — meet, eat, have a good time.

Just hold the line on the liquor.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

If you’re feeling nostalgic for fine Italian dining, go to the freshly opened Mangia e Bevi for consistently good pastas

Mia Stainsby
Sun

With two A-list restaurants on the block already, the arrival of Mangia e Bevi triples the pleasure on the 2200-block of Marine Drive in West Van. It joins the fabulous La Regalade and Zen restaurants, so there’s French, Japanese and now, Italian food.

While everybody still loves pizza, pasta, and caprese salads, fine Italian restaurant openings have cooled over the past decade — we’ve been busy creating our own West Coast identity while gobbling tons of sushi and izakaya dishes and falling back in love with French all over again. I realized the relative absence of new Italian places when I visited Mangia e Bevi (eat and drink) and I felt something akin to nostalgia.

The place is run by a closely connected trio. Rob Parrott was chef at the Quattro restaurants (Fourth Avenue and North Vancouver, as well as opening the one in Whistler); Antonio Sauro was general manager at Quattro in North Van; and Doug Grisdale is Sauro’s brother-in-law. He managed a chain of retail stores previously and returns to his roots in West Van. As guests arrived, he was able to address many by name. Others are fans of Gusto di Quattro where Parrott last cooked.

In a corner, Global National’s anchorman Kevin Newman, fresh from his evening newscast, was having dinner with his wife. Diners range all the way from babies to eightysomethings.

The food, not surprisingly, is reminiscent of Quattro’s. Some dishes were better than others but pastas seem consistently good, judging from one I tried and others I eyeballed at other tables. The Cannelloni Zafferano (saffron cannelloni with braised lamb, roasted eggplant and goat cheese) in lamb broth was very good — it’s nice and light in the mouth, yet no wimp when it comes to flavour.

We started one meal with the antipasti for two and really could have ended it at that. We had bite-size pieces of smoked salmon, eggplant with goat cheese, artichoke dip, crostini, grilled mushrooms, olives, lamb sausage, grilled calamari, prawns and caprese salad.

Mussels and clams in a tarragon prawn bisque was tasty, although not shining examples of seafood; a grilled portobello mushroom over polenta with porcini truffle sauce was visually unappealing with the mushroom overwhelming the dish; the food turned black from the mushroom gills as I ate.

Two thumbs up to the duck breast with dried cherries and cassis — it was a generous piece of duck, very tender, and the sauce was great. Halibut, capped with potato galette was nicely done but a grilled wild salmon was too well done for my liking. Side veggies for the day seem to be the same on every plate.

Under desserts, Grisdale talks up the chocolate cherry shortcake with cherries jubilee but I preferred the lemon zabayone.

The wine list, assembled by Sauro, is largely Italian and he’s the guy to ask if you want an assist.

MANGIA E BEVI

2222 Marine Drive, West Vancouver. 604-922-8333. mangiaebevi.ca. Open for dinner seven nights a week. Will open for lunch starting in June.

Over-all: 3 1/2

Food: 3 1/2

Ambience: 3 1/2

Service: 4

Price: $$/$$$

Restaurant visits are conducted anonymously and interviews are done by phone. Restaurants are rated out of five stars.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Recipes are so secret staff cannot watch them being made and sign confidentiality statement

Mia Stainsby
Sun

Once cheesecake was something to get excited about. Back in the ’70s, anyway. Remember Cheesecake, Etc.? It hasn’t exactly gone down for the count, but it’s largely forgotten on South Granville Street.

Well, marketing is everything. Cheesecake 101 opened last month on Fourth Avenue in a blank, white space that shows off their wares. What’s appealing about the cheesecake is it’s as light as whipped cream and small enough for worry-free eating. You need not ingest a gazillion calories and feel weighed down with fat and guilt as you might with other cheesecakes. (On the other hand, you can if you want.)

The cheesecakes come in two sizes — bite-sized poppers ($1.50 each) or four-inch rounds (enough for one to four people). The poppers come in cartons of six or 17 for $8 and $19.

Dominic Cassettari, who runs the store with wife Katie, says his biggest compliment so far was a When Harry Met Sally vignette between a couple. The woman was reduced to moaning and groaning like Meg Ryan after trying a sample Blackberry Half & Half cheesecake. “That’s the one!” she managed to grunt.

“I was laughing so hard,” Cassettari says. “I wish I had a camera … It was perfect.”

Cheesecake 101 takes its name from the 101 flavours on the roster. Disappointingly, though, only six are on offer each day.

Cassettari’s sister-in-law started Cheesecake 101 in Campbell River four years ago then opened another in Courtenay. The Vancouver store is a template for franchising other stores.

The recipes, he says, are secrets and staff cannot be present when they’re making the cheesecakes daily. They even sign confidentiality agreements.

“My sister-in-law spent years perfecting them to be creamier and fluffier than the stereotypical ones,” Cassettari says. The most popular flavours are the candy bar-based one.

CHEESECAKE 101

1859 West Fourth Ave., 604-738-5253, www.cheesecake101.com. Open noon to 7 p.m. every day except Monday.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Just one culinary experience chef creates with a global flair for flavours

Shannon Kwantes
Sun

The Seahorse Grill in Crescent Beach is a good place to catch an early taste of summer, as well as some creative bistro flavours.

The restaurant, opened two years ago by John and Francina Kavanagh, almost blends into the background of the residential area where it’s located. Inside, the older-style wooden furniture and seafoam blue walls accented by local artists’ artwork creates a comfortable, homey ambience. A small bar that is open to the kitchen creates a social atmosphere that encourages conversation with the chef.

During our visit, John chatted with a local as he prepared his creations. Later, he made his way around the dining room, conversing with guests to see how their meals were.

“It’s a lifestyle, and we enjoy it,” says John, who previously owned Wolfie’s restaurant in White Rock.

The personal touch of the owners is evident both in the decor and the menu. Francina’s decorating inspirations include a fireplace she tiled with a Moroccan flair. John has worked as a chef in the Netherlands and Australia, and incorporates some of the flavours of those countries into his menu.

“I wanted to take all my travels and culinary experiences and combine them into a creative menu to suit many tastes,” he says.

My dinner companion and I started with the taro root chips and guacamole ($5.50). Taro root, like potatoes, is common in many Asian countries. The chips are similar to potato chips with less salt, and John makes them from scratch and sells them at a White Rock market.

Next we had the goat cheese roasted garlic, pesto, crostinis with infused oils ($8.95). The crostinis were creamy and rich, very satisfying, and the oils added a hint of spice but not too much.

Mussels and beer were popular in the area of Holland where John worked as a chef, so he added a variety of mussel dishes to the menu. We chose the mussels in light curry cream, with mango and smoked feta ($14). The crock came heaping with mussels and laced with carrots and leek in a delicious curry broth. The mussels were very tender. We loved the broth so much we took spoonfuls after the mussels were finished.

Our main dish was the curried mango chicken fussili with feta and vegetables ($16.95). This full-bodied main dish had a slightly different curry flavour, a little sweeter-tasting, and the chicken was sliced thinly over the fussili.

The desserts were labelled on the menu as “guilt-free,” but were hardly that. Perhaps John was referring to the prices, which were very reasonable. We opted for the homemade lemon tart with lemon sorbet ($3.95). The tart was flaky and light, with a bright and creamy lemon filling tart and sweet sorbet. It all melted in our mouths — a refreshing ending to our evening full of flavour and spice.

The restaurant has 44 seats indoors, and 16 on the patio.

“Fresh, Real, and Unscripted” states the Seahorse Grill’s business card — one marketing slogan I can vouch for.

– – –

SEAHORSE GRILL

12147 Sullivan St., Crescent Beach, Surrey

604-542-6211, www.seahorsegrill.com

Open six days a week, 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Closed Tuesdays.

Restaurant visits are conducted anonymously and interviews are done by phone.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Candour of ingredients and preparation stands out at Portobello

Mark Laba
Province

PORTOBELLO RISTORANTE

Where: 1429 Broadway, Vancouver

Payment/reservations: Major credit cards, 604-734-0697

Drinks: Fully licensed.

Hours: Tues.-Sun., 5:30 p.m.-10:30 p.m. Closed Mon.

– – –

“Fungus is your friend,” I said to Peaches.

“Last time I heard that was 10 years ago, when some guy tried to sell me magic mushrooms.”

“Listen, you gotta give fungus a chance.”

“Isn’t that what that hookah-huffing caterpillar said to Alice in Wonderland?”

“And he was a very smart man.”

“Caterpillar.”

“Whatever. He knew the score.”

“Nevertheless. Just because the place is called Portobello doesn’t mean they only have fungus on the menu.”

“Yeah but it’s like going to Italy and not seeing the Mona Lisa. Or Sistine Chapel. Or Sophia Loren. Ya haft’a eat the mushrooms.”

On and on this conversation would’ve gone, but we’d stepped into this small, harmonious space decked out in subtle tones and hues, and imbued with a kind of homey atmosphere but with better furniture. A glowing backlit red wall, cozy plush booths and elegantly simple wood seating and white-cloth-covered tables set the mood, along with music that conjured up images of lazy days on a motorboat zipping along the Italian Riviera with Marcello Mastroianni.

We had Small Fry Eli in tow and though the hostess looked a little askance at his presence initially, our waiter was warm and friendly to the little guy and had him cooked up a special order of spaghetti and toddler-sized meatballs, which the little fella enjoyed heartily. And though iced tea wasn’t on the menu they even whipped up the real thing for Peaches in the kitchen.

We began with a Caesar salad ($7) and the calamari pizzaiola ($10), because I’m a sucker for cephalopods with suckers. These tender pieces of squid were pure pleasure, unencumbered by batter as most calamari dishes are and simply sauteed in tomato sauce and speckled with capers, olives, herbs and garlic. The Caesar was equally satisfying and, as we all know, it’s the dressing that emboldens the leafy personality of romaine, and this mix had it in spades from its light creamy consistency to the hint of anchovy. And the triangular crispy hot bread was excellent.

For mains Peaches dug into the fresh salmon tossed with fusilli pasta and finished with cream sauce ($14). I ventured into the veal done up with mushrooms and a Marsala wine sauce ($22), with a colourful display of steamed, grilled and sauteed veggies on the side. The veal was beautifully cooked and the Marsala, with its fortified nature, added an alcoholic oomph tempered by butter. The mushrooms were at their best, soaking up all the saucy flavours. The salmon fusilli was a perfect marriage of freshness and simplicity.

Perhaps that’s what best sums up this restaurant’s dishes. From classic osso bucco to creamy risotto to pan-seared prawns flambeed with cognac in a rose sauce, plus the pasta selections, it’s the candour of the ingredients and preparation that stands out. And sometimes it’s a toddler’s tastebuds that are the best proof of that, as Small Fry Eli displayed, giving us two tiny thumbs up and a face covered in tomato sauce.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Culinary luxury done simply and tastefully.

RATINGS: Food: A-; Service: B+; Atmosphere: B

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

Hopefully the installation of sound-absorbing baffles will reduce the noise or all the lovely food will drown in the cacophony

Mia Stainsby
Sun

Modernism has its drawbacks. Chow, a much–

anticipated restaurant, is a glam arrangement of straight-edged bones and hard surfaces.

When eager foodies converged, the room became a megaphone. Voices rose in a crescendo as everyone yelled in ever-escalating decibels. My fight-or-flight response kicked in and I battled hard, trying to converse with my partner. Other couples, I noted, looked defeated and sullen. Groups loved the party atmosphere, making merry around the table.

Lesson learned, the owners are improving acoustics with sound-absorbing baffles built into the paintings that hadn’t yet adorned the walls when I visited. Hopefully, that will do the trick. Otherwise, all the lovely food (and it is) will drown in the cacophony.

The man behind the food is Jean-Christophe Poirier, who’s been sharpening his skills in some fearsome kitchens: the celebrated Toque! in Montreal as well as C and Lumiere restaurants in Vancouver. His food is assertively delicate. Let me start by describing the best lemon tart I’ve had — I keep ordering them, hoping for that holy grail of a perfect balance of sweet and sour encased in golden richness. The crust, so often thick and pasty, was as delicate as porcelain, crumbling into shards when my fork struck.

His menu will morph daily and weekly depending on what suppliers have on offer. He chants the mantra of any progressive Vancouver chef: fresh! local! organic! sustainable! He does buy locally as much as possible and even lists his suppliers on the menu. And in the newest trend among chefs, he’s doing some of his own butchering. He orders whole organically raised pigs from Sloping Hills Farm in Port Alberni and offers different cuts through the week as he works through it, front to back.

Dishes are appetizer sized and prices vary from $8 to $27. A warm calamari salad featured ever-so-tender calamari atop ratatouille, atop a shaved fennel salad; pepper-crusted ahi tuna with a cube of potato salad was gorgeous, albeit, there were only three small nibbles of tuna — just one more piece would have made for a sharing plate; roasted sablefish came with silky cauliflower puree and caramelized fennel and a perfect square of pork terrine; ricotta cheese ravioli is delicious with trumpet mushrooms, fresh fava beans and a curry froth.

And you do tend to froth at the mouth here — three of my dishes came adorned with froth, or foam, as some chefs call it. A milk froth on the lemon tart, curry froth with the ricotta ravioli, and onion froth with a delectable risotto. The risotto, in fact, was under a blanket of froth. I’m not a froth/foam fan but at least at Chow, the foam doesn’t quickly dissolve into nothingness.

Organic chicken, re-shaped into crisp-skinned orbs was so good, I ate the skin — avoiding skin is usually one of the few ways I expunge calories in my promiscuous eating life.

The wine list is one of the better small lists I’ve seen with unique offerings, although they stray from the ‘local’ here, going more global; servers seem knowledgeable or at least trained to help in the choosing. A cocktail list (about half the restaurant is a bar/lounge) is similarly thoughtful and even the coffee was right on.

Chow is definitely a contender as hot, haute restaurant, but not if you need earplugs.

– – –

CHOW

Overall: 4

Food 4

Ambience 2

Service 4

Price: $$$

3121 Granville St., 604-608-2469. Open for lunch and dinner, www.chow-restaurant.com

Restaurant visits are conducted anonymously and interviews are done by phone. Restaurants are rated out of five stars.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Chef Robert Phua moved over from the Banana Leaf and has brought his magic to another restaurant

Mia Stainsby
Sun

Let me put it this way. The chef at Tamarind Hill is the same one who was behind the Banana Leaf success. There’s now three Banana Leaf restaurants in Vancouver.

Chef Robert Phua moved over to Tamarind Hill last year and is still cooking similarly delicious food, redolent with spices and herbs, only he’s trying a little fusion in some dishes.

So among dishes like the satays, curries, gado gado, green papaya and mango salad, nasi goreng and char kuey tow and other dishes, he’s slipped in Indian samosas, and Indonesian dishes like murtabak (roti wrap with choice of meat and curry dip) and mee goreng, plus an Indian black peppercorn and garlic butter seafood sauce.

Appies are $3 to $7.50; meat dishes are in the $12 range; vegetable dishes are $10 and seafood ranges from $12 to $17. (You mix’n’match 10 sauces with 10 varieties of fish.)

I go weak at the knees for Hainanese chicken and I loved it here. The Hainanese chicken rice, too, is a must. Green papaya mango salad comes in a huge mound and the nasi goreng was nicely spiced and strewn with bits of beef, shrimps, egg, tomato and green bean.

The room is a cocoon of burnt orange walls, dark blue ceiling and touches of eastern architectural details (like the antique Indian door).

Wine offerings are more than decent with good budget choices and includes B.C. offerings from Blue Mountain and Burrowing Owl.

[email protected]

– – –

TAMARIND HILL

628 Sixth Ave., New Westminster, 604-526-3000. Open for lunch and dinner, 7 days a week.

Restaurant visits are conducted anonymously and interviews are done by phone.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Some of the freshest fare in the Royal City draws both dine-in and takeout customers

Alfie Lau
Sun

Amidst the Queensborough Landing shopping mall is a sushi restaurant that not only serves an underserved community, it’s drawing customers from all over the Lower Mainland.

Tora Sushi, opened by owners Shannon and Glen Obara in December 2006, is the culmination of a dream. The couple wanted to start their own business and scouted out the Queensborough location as ideal because of the lack of competition and the ability to draw from both New Westminster and Richmond.

Glen chose the Tora name, which means tiger in Japanese, because he was born in the year of the tiger.

“The first couple months have really been wonderful,” Glen said. “It’s really exceeded our expectations with how many customers keep coming back. It’s been phenomenal.”

The couple weren’t exactly resting on any laurels, as prior to opening Tora Sushi, Glen worked for two decades as a prosthetics technician while Shannon continues to be a stockbroker in downtown Vancouver. Glen is training to be a sushi chef and in the meantime relies on three expert sushi chefs, Andy Chen, Koji Tanaka and Susumu Machida, to provide some of the freshest sushi in the Royal City.

One recent weeknight, the place was all hustle and bustle during its evening rush, with both dine-in and takeout diners keeping Glen and staff very busy.

We got the last table and decided to go with a mix of hot and cold foods.

Starting with the hot dishes, we went with the chicken yakitori, unagi (barbecue eel) rice bowl and miso soup.

For sushi, we went with the deluxe 10-piece sashimi, which included tuna, sockeye salmon, snapper, surf clam and scallops, along with single nigiri portions of salmon roe (ikura), tuna belly (toro), roe (tobiko) and surf clam (hokkigai) and the spider roll, which contained deep-fried soft-shell crab.

My gourmet friend loved her roe, as she had also hoped to have herring roe (kazunoko) — Obara tries to fulfill special requests as long as the food is in season — and I almost had to fight her off for the sockeye salmon sashimi.

She found the unagi a bit overdone and commented that the miso soup needed a bit more punch but her attention was clearly focused on the sushi and sashimi.

I can’t ever get enough of the sockeye salmon and tuna sashimi, but found room for the yakitori, a flavourful and juicy chicken breast nicely marinated.

The spider roll went down smoothly although I probably smothered it in too much soya sauce.

As for the other sashimi servings, the scallops were so good I contemplated ordering more while the hokkigai was a bit too rubbery for my liking. The snapper was fine, but paled in comparison to the tuna and salmon.

We finished off our meal by sharing some French vanilla ice cream, our second choice because they had run out of mango.

The Obaras plan to add some summery twists to their menu when the good weather comes, as they want to incorporate mango and pineapple flavours into their various rolls. And with patio seating adjacent to Starbucks, customers will be able to enjoy their food outside.

‘The best thing about this job is I’m meeting so many customers who have given us positive feedback,” Glen said later in a telephone interview. “This really has been a lot of fun.”

– – –

TORA SUSHI

Unit K-120 — 805 Boyd St. in the Queensborough Landing shopping centre, 604-526-8672

Open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and from noon to 8 p.m. on Sunday.

Restaurant visits are conducted anonymously and interviews are done by phone.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

The Emperor’s old clothes

Mark Laba
Province

AKBAR’S OWN

Where: 1905 West Broadway, Vancouver

Payment/reservations: Major credit cards, 604-736-8180

Drinks: Fully licensed

Hours: Mon.-Sat. lunch, 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m.; dinner, 5 p.m.-10 p.m., closed Sun.

– – –

Those Mughal emperors really knew how to live. I mean, after all their warring and conquests, palace building and art collecting they truly worked up an appetite befitting empire building and liked to sit down to a great feast.

And, boy, did they know how to dress up a prawn. This crustacean never had it so good until it met up with these patriarchs of India’s history and donned various curried accoutrements as beguiling and intoxicating as a jewelled sari twinkling beneath a setting sun on a prime piece of Goa beachfront.

There’s no place in this city that reproduces this food so consistently as the long-admired Akbar’s Own, named for the famed Mughal ruler. Peaches and I stepped into this serene setting to find just the faintest wisps of sitar music drifting through the room and the kind of muted quiet in which you can hear your bald spot widening. There’s a casual elegance that permeates the place, from the ornately carved wooden chairs to the wall art to the banquette-seating upholstery.

We began our journey through the world of Kashmiri and Mughlai dishes with an order of vegetable ($4) and an order of shrimp pakoras ($8). Served with mint chutney, truly a delightful way to awaken the tastebuds from their meditative slumber and give them the old heave-ho into the rites of spring. The shrimp are especially tasty, anointed with ginger, garlic and sesame seeds before their plunge into the deep-fryer.

Next up: butter chicken because, although an old standby in East Indian restaurants, a lot of places mess it up, the flavour getting sucked down into some murky miasma and the poultry just a sad rendition of a once happy and sprightly chicken with its whole future before it. Not so here. Tender chicken in a creamy tomato-tinged gravy with butter and cream and no oily-surface slick.

Along with this we had the Prawn Masala ($15) and Alu Gobi ($9), two more popular requests for many folks and here they’re done up wonderfully with subtle spicing and moderate heat.

In fact, the sari-wrapped servers never ask how you like your dishes spiced so you take what you get but everything tends towards the moderate. To scoop the stuff up we tried the sesame-seeded moti naan ($2.50).

In the end, I never did taste the Kashmiri dishes because the sauce is studded with grated apples and raisins and I don’t like cooked fruit. It might throw doubt upon my abilities as a food reviewer but, hey, I’ve eaten pig’s ears, snails and tofu baloney, so I figure I can be cut a little slack.

But I will return to try the Fish Mumtaz with a hot-and-sweet sauce spiked with capsicum or the Lamb Badhshhahi ($12.50) that I want to order just to attempt the pronunciation. Truly a majestic feast and, though I may not be an emperor, I am descended from borscht-belt royalty — if you count my Uncle Al in a pink leisure suit doing his Jerry Lewis imitation at bar mitzvahs.

THE BOTTOM LINE

An old caravan route of flavour as consistent as the desert sands.

Grade: Food: A-; Service: A; Atmosphere: B+

© The Vancouver Province 2007