The frills are gone, but the tastes remain

Mia Stainsby
Sun

Refuel may not have all the refinement of its predecessor, Fuel, but it still serves delicious meals with friendly service. Photograph by: Mark Van Manen, PNG, Vancouver Sun

AT A GLANCE

Overall: 4 out of 5

Food: 4 out of 5

Ambience: 3 1/2 out of 5

Service: 3 1/2 out of 5

Price: $$

Hours: Open daily from 11:30 to midnight. Brunch on Saturday and Sunday.

1944 West Fourth Ave., 604-288-7905.

www.refuelrestaurant.com

It’s hard for casual restaurants to consistently hit home runs, given the need to rein in costs. Refuel sure hit a lot of homers over my two visits.

Good quality ingredients, great technique, especially the restaurant’s commitment to butchering and cooking their own pork from snout to tail, is quite evident.

Refuel, as you might know, was bullied into existence by the recession; it used to be Fuel, a more ladi-da restaurant, with more complex, fashionable food.

Average diners benefit from this change of life; gone are the frills and fancy service; dishes are simplified but the kitchen still reveres quality ingredients. And the talented Robert Belcham is still in the kitchen, just as tenacious as ever about serving great food. It’s homier, more robust food but without sloppiness or carelessness.

Mains cost $14.50 for a delicious burger to $22 for salmon. Plates are ample and you leave quite possibly suppressing satisfying burps. My favourite, the Polderside buttermilk chicken, features three substantial pieces of moist, flavourful chicken and comes with coleslaw and a biscuit.

Humboldt squid is battered and deep-fried, but it’s ethereally delicate.

By the way, I love the bread, too (not a bargain at $2 for three slices but it left me pining for more) and the homemade butter (50 cents).

Some of the appetizers will leave you groaning towards the main course — scrapple (pork terrine topped with fried egg on toast, a Pennsylvania Dutch dish) and the appetizer-size spaghetti carbonara (peppery and not too oily) are two such delicious, but filling appies. Proceed with caution.

Roasted bone marrow served on the bone was “too barbaric looking” for the more refined Fuel, Belcham says. “I’ve always wanted to do it, but it wasn’t necessarily fine dining.”

And neither is the dry-aged beef burger, which you can order medium-rare as the meat (chuck and neck) is ground in-house. Neck meat, he says, is an extremely flavourful part.

Ling cod, not always a dazzler, is very good here; the meat is snowy white and firm but pluckable.

Try to make way for dessert and make it the peanut and chocolate parfait with honeycomb at that. I cannot quite describe it to you because I kind of blacked out from sheer pleasure. Just take my word for it. If you like chocolate and peanuts, you’ll love this.

Belcham says business has tripled since the concept change and finds it’s worthwhile keeping the restaurant open through the afternoon for afternoon pick-me-ups; there are snacks to bridge the gap to dinner.

Service isn’t quite as polished as I remember from the Fuel days, but appropriately friendly for the place it’s become.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

New downtown club — where Lady Gaga was seen dancing on a table days after it opened — is set to become the latest celebrity hot spot

Francois Marchand
Sun

Matt Schmidt, co-owner of the new downtown hot spot Barcelona, holds one of the eight disco balls that light up his club. Barcelona, which has become a favourite for A-listers, hockey players and local VIPs, has pretty tight security in place — including a mandatory pat-down — to keep the ‘crime element’ out.

Vancouver‘s VIPs have a new port of call: Barcelona.

Fair enough, it’s not on the sunny coast of the Mediterranean (although these days, the inside of the club feels much brighter than the gloomy street outside).

However, the new downtown nightclub, located in the heart of the entertainment district on Granville Street, has been generating a lot of buzz of late, attracting more than a few rock stars, local big wigs and Canucks players.

Barcelona is quickly making its name as the hot spot to see and be seen at, and it’s something co-owner Matt Schmidt couldn’t be happier about.

“I’ll be at a restaurant or a lounge for dinner and I’ll hear other people talking about Barcelona,” Schmidt says. “That’s music to my ears right now.”

The irony is that, as opposed to other clubs that launch with a big public bang and a steady buildup to the “fireworks,” Schmidt and his partners did little to no official marketing and publicity upon opening Barcelona late last year.

In fact, the club still doesn’t have a proper sign, its entrance half-hidden behind the renovation scaffoldings that adorn the front of the Howard Johnson hotel under which it rests, a simple B-shaped logo on its doors giving away its location.

Within 24 hours of its “soft opening” in early December, the club’s Facebook group already counted over 1,000 members.

A few days later, Lady Gaga was dancing on a table in a VIP booth after one of her three concerts at Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

Barcelona was on fire.

“It was all word-of-mouth,” Schmidt says. “We really wanted to grow organically and build that ‘institution’ kind of a vibe. Now we feel confident and ready.”

Barely two months into its existence, Schmidt says he and his partners have “ironed out the kinks” and are ready to go full-steam ahead.

The club will finally get its proper official launch party Thursday, and the club’s guest list for that night is said to be filled with names synonymous with glitz and glamour. During the Olympics, when the city is crawling with celebs and VIPs, odds are good that a number of them will drop by.

The 26-year-old Schmidt’s Rolodex (read: BlackBerry) is a bit of a “who’s who” compendium and includes the likes of Joshua Jackson and Steve Nash, thanks to having been involved in the film industry as an art department coordinator for a number of years, following in his parents’ footsteps.

“I was kind of born and raised on sets,” Schmidt says, “but it’s always been a bit inconsistent, a ‘feast and famine’ kind of thing.”

Schmidt explains he started throwing parties when he was 19 years old, working his way up through the ranks and eventually working with various clubs around the city, managing to bring people like Danny Daze and DJ AM to Vancouver.

“It reached a point where I was going, ‘Okay, well I’m having a lot of fun doing this and I wouldn’t mind having my own place.'”

Barcelona owes its sleek internal design in part to Schmidt’s set experience and includes a number of cushy, black-leather VIP booths, a projection waterfall, wallpapers imported from Europe and custom-made wood and tile surfaces basking in a colour palette of reds, purples and golds.

“You have all these other places that have their token looks and some of them emulate these other places. We wanted something where people walk in and go, ‘Okay, this is Barcelona. This is not the old whatever-it-used-to-be, this is something new.'”

Schmidt adds that everything was meant to follow a “curved” design: walls flowing into arches, the club’s three bars eschewing sharp corners and, of course, the DJ booth designed as a half mirror ball, which Schmidt affectionately calls the “Death Star.”

“We’re going to have a real film-heavy crowd, a lot of wrap parties,” Schmidt says. “It’s interesting: we’ll have cinematographers and directors of photography critiquing my lighting and set designers critiquing the tiles and the wallpaper. It’s getting out there.”

Schmidt says the focus is for every detail to be perfect, from the state-of-the-art sound system that hits hard but still allows you to hold a conversation, to the relaxed vibe and the attentive service.

“People love that kind of personal touch,” Schmidt says. “I’m not in the liquor business, I’m in the people business.”

Of course, Schmidt isn’t going it alone.

Two of his partners, Derek Anderson and Alan Goodall, were already collaborators he knew from his party-circuit days, while the third, Leo Doueik, had cut his teeth at upscale establishments like the Time Supperclub in Montreal and the White Bar in Beirut.

When time came to pick a name for their new club, Schmidt explains Barcelona was a no-brainer.

“One, it’s an amazing, fun city and everything there is based on good food, good people and art,” he says. “I hated the idea of people coming to clubs and just standing around and being pretentious. [We wanted] something like the vibe in Ibiza and Spain.

“Another reason is that it was kind of fun to say: Bar-ce-lo-na. It was a warm name, whereas a lot of other names for nightclubs are cold, minimalist and kind of sharp, and it fit the room.”

Schmidt says there’s also a bit of a Miami/Vegas attitude behind the club’s approach to service, pointing out that it’s really hard to find clubs in Vancouver where you can really be treated like royalty.

Sometimes, he says, you’d be better off going to Earls or Milestones than some “upscale” bars to get a true service-oriented experience with a touch of class.

But what if you can’t really afford to book the high-priced booths or can’t find a way to get on the big-name guest lists?

What if you’re not really on the Veblen side of the equation and can’t really swing for tableside bottle service and high-priced libations?

Does that mean you’re out of luck and that Barcelona isn’t for you?

“I would never want to create that vibe where people feel they are less important,” Schmidt says. “Some people might come in and it might be their thing and they’re going to love it. Some people might not and I expect that. But we’re not turning away average Joes.

“A lot of my friends are starving artists and they’re still amazing people and they come in here all the time,” he adds. “They’re not buying bottles of Cristal, but they’re still having a drink at the bar and dancing their asses off on the dance floor and having a great time.”

While the club is open to the public Wednesday through Saturday (other days being reserved for private functions), Schmidt recommends Wednesdays for younger crowds, when the club offers a mix of soulful hip hop, electro and rock grooves.

The rest of the week is usually a bit more on the higher end of the spectrum, with DJs spinning a clubbier blend of dance music, and though there is no true dress code enforced, Schmidt says you should probably “dress to impress.”

That being said, the club does boast pretty tight security, using a sometimes maligned “ID scan” system to keep things in check.

A mandatory pat-down and metal detector sweep is also meant to ensure everyone feels safe, Schmidt says.

“The only people we’re trying to turn away is the crime element. No matter how much they will spend, and they will spend a lot, it will ruin the integrity of a bar.”

Considering the growing list of Alisters flooding Schmidt’s inbox with requests to attend or to book a private party of their own, there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight for Barcelona.

The trendy, boutique-style club may still just be in its “baby steps” phase, but Schmidt is ready for his new digs to truly take flight.

“I’d love to see it continue to grow and really become an institution,” Schmidt says. “We could make a quick buck, but there’s no integrity in that. We’re in it for the long haul.

“I’ve never been more confident in a team of people and a Vancouver spot,” he adds.

“It has legs.”

—

BY THE NUMBERS

Address: 1180 Granville St. Doors: 9:30 p.m., Wed-Sat (open all week during the Olympics) Reservations: 604-249-5151 or via www.barcelonanights.ca

Cover charge: $10 (Wed/Thu), $15-$18 (Fri/Sat)

Capacity: 400

VIP booths/tables: 18

Bars: 3

Bartenders/servers: 8/6

Disco balls: 8 (and increasing)

Facebook “fans”: Over 2,000

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

There is no ‘stew on a plate’ at this underground eatery, and everything is done with flair

Mia Stainsby
Sun

Says Anderson: ‘It’s about cooking for people I’m letting into my home.’ — RIC ERNST / PNG

A server takes an order at an underground supper in Vancouver.

Next up in the underground dining scene? Specialty cuisines — like the one you’ll get at the one-year-old Secret Supper in east Vancouver. In this case, it’s vegan food.

The 25-year-old hostess, who wishes only to be identified as Anderson (her surname, because her first name is a bit unique), spends two or three days preparing vegan meals every Sunday for about 20 guests. They pay $20 for three courses.

Now a newcomer to veganism might think that’s not such a good deal for a bunch of vegetables but Anderson isn’t about tofu and tempeh cooked 25 different ways. “It’s not stew on a plate,” she says. “It’s all upper-scale.”

Her food changes every week and she never cooks the same dish twice. That’s partly because guests benefit from another project she has on the go -a vegan cookbook. Anderson, a self-taught cook, is creating new dishes for the book she plans to publish. It’ll be called Sunday Supper, she says. She refuses to use vegan cookbooks herself, calling it “cheating” and she’s a slow food devotee, shopping for organic and sustainable ingredients.

A recent menu featured carrot yam ginger soup with coconut bread; battered rosemary and sage polenta with roasted root vegetables and creamy tahini sauce; maple cashew cake layered with banana cream and dark chocolate truffle icing.

Past menus have included pizza (on olive crust); mushroom, walnut and lentil tourtiere; pear and roasted fennel salad with roasted pine nuts; chocolate mousse with warm pear ginger compote. Her creme brulees are a big hit, the maple lime creme brule, especially so. Sweet potato and coconut milk stand in for eggs and cream.

She operates out of her East Vancouver attic apartment in an old house. The kitchen’s no bigger than a walk-in closet and a cook can either have a tantrum or become hyper-organized. She chose the latter. Guests, she says, aren’t necessarily vegan or even vegetarian. Most are connected to the art and music scene and find her through word of mouth.

“Less than half the people who come are vegan. It’s not the point. This isn’t a scary thing. It’s good food,” says Anderson, who earlier in her young life, was a fashion designer and ran an art venue.

Anderson, who eventually wants to open a real restaurant, that is, a legal one, says right now, it’s about enjoying cooking for an intimate gathering. “Mostly, it’s about who’s coming into my house and less about who’s going to shut me down. It’s about cooking for people who I’m letting into my home. That’s the most important thing to me.”

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Party-on eatery designed for ‘beginner diners’ who like to make a lot of noise

Mia Stainsby
Sun

Enjoying their appetizers at Society Dining Lounge in Yaletown are (left to right) Laura Williams, Jacki Benjamin and Golya Bordian. Photograph by: Mark Van Manen, PNG, Vancouver Sun

AT A GLANCE

Society Dining Lounge

Overall: 2 1/2
Food: ***
Ambience: ** 1/2
Service: *** 1/2
Price: ***
1257 Hamilton St.
 604-629-8800.
Open Monday to Friday for lunch and seven nights a week for dinner. www.society-grg.ca

I once went with a friend to her four-year-old daughter’s violin lesson. When we arrived, violins were howling and squawking.

Her daughter lay down on the floor, tolerated the noise for a couple of seconds and then, with scrunched-up face, hands over ears, yelled: “Quit making that racket!”

That’s just what I wanted to do at Society Dining Lounge in Yaletown. The noise level was deafening, with pounding lounge music amped up and diners yelling and laughing.

It’s all fine and good when you’re 20-something and the more life seems like a rip-roaring party, the better. I am so not a 20-something. I put out the little candle on the table several times trying to read the menu by its light, and when the pretty server came by I could only marvel at how she could smile and take food orders over the ear-splitting decibels when I could barely read her lips.

“Maybe you should send text messages,” my husband shouted. His wife was not amused.

Society is the latest from the Glowbal family of restaurants (Glowbal, Coast, Sanafir, Italian Kitchen, Trattoria), a savvy, recession-proof company. So what’s with this?

Clever marketing, it seems. It’s the party-on school of restaurants for the beginner diner, a market Glowbal Group could befriend, then perhaps in time, move along to their other businesses. Or, possibly, it’s for groups who just wanna have fun. The place was filled with people much happier than me. Quieter diners had escaped to the patio, warmed with heat lamps.

Two hot-pink chandeliers drop from the ceiling in the main room like inebriated octopuses. With the dark walls, you expect Jacques Cousteau to come snorkelling around the corner. The women’s bathroom door is emblazoned with a photo of a studly male; on the men’s door, a sexy woman.

The diner-style menu, the cacophony and hyperactivity, the cotton candy (part of the “Junk Food” dessert platter with a cupcake, doughnut holes, ice cream sandwich, Oreo milkshake, cookies and caramel corn) and the devil-may-care attitude to calories can only resonate with kids who haven’t seen their waists inflate like helium balloons.

At the table next to me, three young women fearlessly took on milkshake cocktails and a “flight” of french fries (poutine, chili and au natural) before their entrees arrived. The price is in the right ballpark, too, with mains costing $12 to $18, and only one dish more than $20.

I visited only once, too traumatized to return for seconds. I tried the calamari (deep-fried and excessively battered); mac and cheese balls with jalapeno (deep-fried); a pizza with chorizo, pepperoni, salami and ricotta cheese (I liked the crisp but soft-interior, nan–like crust); and lobster shepherd’s pie (generous with lobster, but not right in shepherd’s pie).

The menu isn’t adventurous, but it offers tweaks on familiar items such as lemon aioli with iceberg lettuce, truffles with mac and cheese, tequila lime dressing with wild B.C. salmon.

If I were 20, I might hang out with friends here, but I wouldn’t think it’s cool. Cool would be Main Street.

But what I am is of an age to take to the floor and scream: “Stop making that racket!”

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

All the beef served at upscale White Rock eatery is aged for 36 days, seven of those on-site, to bring out succulent flavour

Shannon Kwantes
Sun

Onyx Steakhouse & Lounge executive chef Amanda Smith and manager Sean Nelson show off the filet mignon, prime rib-eye and the White Rock restaurant’s own brand nine-litre bottle of wine. Ward Perrin / Vancouver Sun

At a Glance:

Ambience: ****1/2

Service:     ****1/2

Food:        ****1/2

Overall:     ****1/2

Hours: Sunday – Thursday

Restaurant 4:30 – 10 p.m.

The  Lounge 5 – 11 p.m.

www.onyxsteakhouse.ca

604-542-0334

1225 Johnston Rd.,

White Rock

V4B 3Y8

It’s a time of year for celebration, and Onyx Steakhouse & Lounge was having one on the night we visited. The upscale White Rock restaurant was marking its one-year anniversary and, by the time we left, it was a full house and the wine and conversation were flowing.

Onyx is a contemporary boutique steakhouse that seems to cater to the stylish 45-plus crowd, with the occasional table of younger guests. Proprietors Nicolas and Angela Popoff also own Pearl on the Rock, a few blocks away on the waterfront.

We were greeted by John Linn, the friendly restaurant director, who seated us in a cosy nook with two leather-like wing back chairs. In a booth beside us was a group of women in their mid-30s having a dinner out and clinking their wine glasses. Most of the servers were young women wearing classy black, but the occasional low-cut, cleavage-baring top had my dining partner struggling to focus on his food at times.

The menu is a la carte – all entrées and side dishes are sold separately. This is a great option for those who don’t like the side dishes that restaurants serve with their entrées, or if you’re not too hungry. The herb butter that came with the bread rolls deserves a mention – it tasted like rosemary tarragon butter, a nice change from the traditional garlic butter. We started with escargot ($9), caesar salad ($8) and roasted organic beet salad ($9). My grandmother used to make escargot that I loved as a kid, so I had to see if Onyx had resurrected the dish into something with a modern flare. I was impressed.

The escargot married perfectly with a variety of mushrooms, as did the texture of the gnocchi. The dish was rich, delightful and mouth-watering. The Caesar came with a smooth homemade traditional dressing with the zip you’d expect from a dressing made fresh. My beet salad was very tasty – slightly spicy with mixed greens and a vinaigrette.

I opted for the catch of the day, Albacore tuna ($22), while my dining partner settled on the 10-ounce filet mignon ($34) after surveying red-meat options from prime rib to porterhouse. The tuna was delicate and smooth, with a nutty sesame crust and peppers that were a sweet complement to the fish: just what I had been craving. My guest’s steak came, and his first impression was not good. He had ordered it medium well, an option described on the menu as “hot, with a small trace of pink in the centre.”

But it came back charred on the outside and fully cooked inside. On the bottom of the menu is a special section that outlines different options for how well done you’d like your steak. The scale is from blue-rare (1) to Chicago (8). Medium well is 5, but his steak was done closer to the 7, the Pittsburgh level. Tasty, but not what he’d ordered.

Amanda Smith, executive chef at Onyx, said all the beef served at the restaurant is aged a total of 36 days, seven of those on-site, to bring out the flavour.

The signature onion rings ($5) deserve recognition – I think they were the best I’ve ever had. They were full of flavour, not greasy, and crisp, not crunchy. “The onion rings were a community project, everyone had their hand in developing the recipe,” Linn said later in a phone interview.

We also snacked on the Gorgonzola mac and cheese ($7) suggested to us by our server, and sautéed vegetables ($6). The vegetables were done perfectly. Dessert was chocolate coolant ($7.50): Creme anglaise with chocolate dripping from the interior complemented by homemade marshmallow. It was delicious and not too heavy after our big meal.

Onyx seats up to 60 people in a modern room with a bar down one wall and contemporary lines, browns and wood tones and a unique ceiling design.

We stayed for a couple of hours and enjoyed ourselves and the food. Reservations can be made online.

Some restaurateurs are cautious, but others are going full-steam ahead for the upcoming year

Mia Stainsby
Sun

Scott Hawthorn (left) and Sean Heather opened a new restaurant called Judas Goat Taberna Dec. 21 in Vancouver’s Blood Alley. Photograph by: Ward Perrin, Vancouver Sun

While many restaurateurs have said ta-ta to 2009, fingers crossed, hoping to never see the devilish likes of it again, Sean Heather is in bring-it-on mode.

In the coming year, seen as an iffy one by industry analysts, his expansionary plans kick in, adding to his brood of restaurants — Irish Heather, Salty Tongue, Shebeen and Salt.

This month, he opens Judas Goat, a Spanish-influenced tapas joint. He resurrects Fetch, his gourmet hotdog stand. He opens Everything Cafe just before the Olympics (with real estate nabob Bob Rennie) in Chinatown, and plans to open a bakery in the Downtown Eastside “under the neon of the Pennsylvania Hotel” this year as well. And he’s also planning a second location for Salt.

“I have three kids and another on the way. Those things cost money,” he says, joking about what’s behind his serial restaurant openings.

He continues in a more serious vein. “There’s always opportunity in a recession and I’m always bangin‘ about, looking for that opportunity. I had the worst summer but I don’t do ‘losing money.’ I don’t work this hard to lose money. We had to think long and hard about how to get through the summer because it was really dark.”

Growing up in Ireland with 17-percent unemployment groomed him for that. What saved his Irish bacon was the “Long Table Series” where for $15, people sat at a long communal table at Irish Heather, at a one sitting/one dish meal (like roast suckling pig with cider-braised cabbage, mashed potatoes and applesauce) with a pint of good beer thrown in. It reduced staffing, kitchen and service costs which he passed on to eager diners. “We dubbed it ‘recession dining,’ ” he says.

His optimism is a stark contrast to a generally anxious industry. What’s scaring operators is July 1, says Vancouver’s Mark von Schellwitz, Western vice-president of the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association. That’s when the HST kicks into place in B.C. “As one casual diner said to us, it’s tough enough now. But [with HST] when you sit down at a full service restaurant, you know you’re going to be paying 30 per cent [with HST and tip] before you have anything to eat,” he says.

Certainly, most operators won’t be as bullish as Heather. “In general, they’ll hang tight. They’re not going to do anything expansionary until there’s clarification on the HST,” says Ian Tostenson, president and CEO of the B.C. Restaurant and Foodservices Association.

“There’ll be price-point options with small, medium or large serving sizes to choose from. They’ll find more economy in wine lists. They’ll be fit consumers, having groomed themselves to be more prudent, smart, discerning. But I think we’ll always want to buy good meals and expect quality,” Tostenson says.

This is a new world of comfort and bistro-style dining. At Refuel (recast from the higher-end Fuel thanks to the recession) chef Robert Belcham is “super-excited” about the first-time supply of wild venison, made available from a cull on Vancouver Island. “The difference in flavour is like apples and oranges. I’ve bought some shoulder to use for a ragout with rigatoni,” he says.

He also can’t wait to get his hands on Vancouver Island wheat. “We’ll have to figure out what it’s best for,” he says of the wheat his pork supplier (Sloping Hills) is growing near Qualicum. The pigs will also have the same wheat in their diet so he’s thrilled thinking about serving the pork with a pasta made from the same wheat they’ve eaten.

At Maenam Thai restaurant next door (another born-again restaurant, originally the finer dining Gastropod), chef Angus An feels the glory days of fine dining of the ’90s won’t be back soon. “Even if the economy’s picking up, it doesn’t mean pockets are filled up. People have memories, habits change and it’s hard to change back. It will be slow.”

He’ll stay the course with Maenam. “I’m scared to even analyse and make decisions about the market. The bottom line is, I know if I’m busy or not. I’ll use that as a rule of thumb.”

He’ll operate more smartly, thanks to last year’s close call.

“I’ll be much more careful with food costs and staff costs,” he says. And since people are cooking more at home, he might put on cooking classes and perhaps open a store in the restaurant selling his curry pastes and ingredients.

“Right now, I don’t have the time or the budget and I don’t want to spread myself too thin,” he says, cautiously.

The Olympic Games aren’t shaking off the doom and gloom, says von Schellwitz.

During February, restaurants near Olympic events and tourist areas will do well but others, he fears, will suffer from people staying home, avoiding traffic jams or watching the games.

“Downtown businesses are asking people to work from home. That’s going to have an impact. And after the Olympics, we don’t know. We don’t have a crystal ball. Will there be a post-Olympic hangover? That’s a very good question. There is one true thing, though. If we have good weather, it’s a great showcase for the city, so it’ll be good for tourism since 18 per cent of all food services are driven by tourism, not just in Vancouver and Whistler but other areas of the province as well.”

Meanwhile, the Cactus Club chain of restaurants sailed through last year’s storm although owner Richard Jaffray said it was challenging.

“Fortunately, we have such a road range of offerings, from low-to high-end, that we had a much easier ride than restaurants with more specific menus,” he says.

“In some locations, we’re actually ahead of last year.”

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Mia Stainsby
Sun

Atithi Indian restaurant needs a shout-out, so here I am, shouting out.

The jovial owner, Abhishek Roy, was the executive chef at the fancier Maurya Indian restaurant before going it on his own two years ago.

You won’t find such fancy digs here, but it’s neat and comfortable. Tables have polished granite tops and the food isn’t merely plopped on the plate. It’s plated, fine-dining style.

Roy calls it homestyle Indian food.

“It doesn’t have too much cream or spices. It’s more simple and that’s what I’m focusing on,” he says.

It’s so homey, many of the techniques and dishes are hand-me-downs from his mother.

“I always am influenced by Vikram Vij and what he’s done to Indian food. He’s an inspiration to me,” he adds.

“When I came to North America, I saw that Indian food here is on the heavier side. When Indian people started opening restaurants here, they used tomato and cream and lots of ghee because they thought it was more palatable to people here,” he says.

His mother, he says, never used cream because it wasn’t available.

“There are one billion people in India, having curries every day. They have to have simplicity or they wouldn’t get fed.”

One of the earmarks of his modern style of Indian cookery is the blackboard specials featuring ingredients he’s picked up on his daily shop, mostly at Granville Island.

“Sometimes I’ll make Bengal curry out of fresh halibut with ginger and mustard and fresh cilantro. Or I’ll get coho salmon, grill it with poppyseed curry on top.”

He tries to shop organically and definitely from local sources, he says.

Lunch is somewhat more pedestrian and served buffet-style, with about a dozen dishes ranging from butter chicken to samosas and cumin potatoes. The dinner menu offers the more interesting dishes as well as lots of specials.

You have to try the “frankie,” which is a Mumbai street food. Think of it as an Indian hotdog. Chicken or lamb is mixed with egg, paneer, vegetables and spices then is wrapped with several layers of paratha. It’s served with french fries and a mint and a tamarind dip and for $6, not a bad deal at all.

His pakoras and samosas are nothing like the heavy, dense, oily versions we’ve all munched on.

His jackfruit pakora is his mom’s recipe.

“We had a jackfruit tree at home. When the fruit was young, birds used to pick them and they fell to the ground and she made pakora out of that,” he says. There are secrets he won’t divulge but fresh ingredients play a big part, he says. “I make eight portions at a time, not 120.”

I’d go so far as to say the vegetable samosa is the most delicate I’ve ever had.

Desserts also have a light touch. The rice pudding was too liquid for my liking, but the gulab jamin was perfectly golden, perfectly round with a delicate honey accent.

At the very least, if you’re stuck for a place to grab a bite before a movie at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas, grab a frankie and samosas here.

ATITHI. 2445 Burrard St., 604- 731-0221. Open Monday to Friday for lunch and 7 days a week for dinner. www.atithi.ca

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

When 10-course meals aren’t an option, French bistros and Italian trattorias become the ‘it spots’

Mia Stainsby
Sun

Vancouver Sun / Two Chefs and a Table owners Karl Gregg (left) and Allan Bosomworth hold a duck confit salad and an apple grilled pork chop with new potatoes, beet greens, baby carrot, fennel and apple cider jus. Photograph by: Steve Bosch, Vancouver Sun

Vancouver Sun / Chef Patchen Gallagher shows the all-day breakfast at Deacon’s Corner Gastown Diner. Photograph by: Photos Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun

The year 2009 brings to mind a quote from former U.S. president George W. Bush: “It’s clearly a budget. It’s got lots of numbers in it.”

Yes, diners and restaurateurs alike were clearly budgeting and crunching a lot of numbers.

It was a sad-sack year for this dynamic restaurant city (as well as for other major cities), but there was a silver lining the average diner should appreciate.

While it certainly wasn’t a stellar year for 10-course tasting menus, comfort dining really stepped up to the plate and reminded us how delicious it can be.

We really fell in love with French bistros and Italian trattorias and good old American comfort foods done better than ever before. Places like Les Faux Bourgeois, La Brasserie, Pied-a-Terre and Jules weren’t feeling kicked around; neither were La Buca, Cibo, Nook, La Quercia, Campagnolo and Italian Kitchen.

Some high-end chefs who didn’t have the resources to rumble with a tough economy turned their considerable skills to cooking hearty, homey, comforting food. The everyday diner benefited, with the likes of Maenam and Refuel (see story, front).

The flight to lower-rent, edgier streets continued. Already, Two Chefs and a Table had settled into a hardcore corner of Main and Alexander; Salt was a haven in the aptly named Blood Alley; late last year, Campagnolo opened in a postal code better known for bar brawls.

Earlier this year, Au Petit Chavignol opened in an off-the-beaten track block of East Hastings in Strathcona serving amazing cheeses and comfort food. Deacon’s Corner zipped into a corner at the foot of Main, serving Bunyanesque breakfasts. And any day, Judas Goat is set to open next to Salt in Blood Alley.

Happily, cutting costs and corners hasn’t been at the expense of local, sustainable producers. Vancouverites are committed supporters of green products, and menus continued to give diners biographies of ingredients involved.

One rebel restaurant came out with guns blazing: Coast. The new $4.8-million, 265-seat, two-level restaurant looked like a latecomer to a dying party, but it had the backing and the smarts to weather the storm. The place, one of the Glowbal mini-empire of restaurants, is doing very well.

Finally, in 2009, something missing in action in this vibrant city has found its feet — real Spanish tapas-style restaurants — not West Coast, not Japanese, not a melange of whatever-sells kind of tapas. Considering that Spain is a rising star on the international culinary scene, it’s about time. Mis Trucos on Davie dives into Spanish deliciously; Cafe Barcelona on Granville Street is run by two Spaniards, one a former Spanish consul-general; and Judas Goat Taberna, by Gastown restaurant czar Sean Heather, is all about capturing the eating/drinking/partying vibe of Spain.

A server prepares an order at Au Petit Chavignol, a cheese and wine eatery on East Hastings Street.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Joanne SaSvari
Sun

Shallaw Kadir, proprietor of Fishworks Restaurant, displays Tunisian Sea Bass, with Japanese long beans and Soya Sabayon, in North Vancouver. Steve BoSch/vancouver Sun

You’d think, being on the West Coast and all, we’d be simply swimming in great, inexpensive seafood joints. Sure we have plenty of sushi bars and fish ’n’ chip shops but when it comes to local, sustainable and affordable seafood cooked with creative flair, the choices have been a whole lot more limited. Until now. Now we have Fishworks, a friendly little bistro on the North Shore that might even have Vancouverites braving the SeaBus to come check it out.

Fishworks is the new project of North Vancouver chef Shallaw Kadir, whose last restaurant, The Edge Bistro in Edgemont Village, earned raves for its food, ambience and creative wine list.

Kadir lives in booming Lower Lonsdale, where he recently discovered that a lovely old heritage space had become available next door to the Jagerhof schnitzel house.

“I thought about it and realized there’s no seafood restaurant in North Vancouver that’s good, local and modern,” he says. And so the idea for Fishworks was born and, a month ago, came to life.

This welcoming space is a stylish mix of vintage and modern: Floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto bustling Lower Lonsdale, soft buff walls painted with dramatic swirls, spare industrial lighting mixed with ornate Middle Eastern lanterns and comfortably modern furniture. Unfortunately, it does get a little noisy with all those hard edges, but at least it feels lively even on a slow night.

The décor is inviting and the service pleasantly, but not overly, attentive. But it’s the food and wine — not to mention the prices — that will keep guests coming back.

“It is contemporary. It is West Coast. I’ve been working in Italian restaurants so there’s a little bit of Italian. Whatever is new. The chefs, we just sit down and create dishes,” Kadir says.

Kadir and his crew have a wonderfully delicate hand with the Oceanwise-approved seafood and an exuberant one — sometimes overly so — with flavourings.

Qualicum Bay scallops, Arctic char, mussels in Thai broth, even the halibut ‘n’ chips, all arrived grilled, steamed or fried to perfection, never overdone, which is not something you can always count on in even the finest of finedining establishments. The sauces and sides, however, occasionally overwhelmed the simplicity of the seafood.

For instance, the braised rhubarb alongside that Arctic char had a tart bite that was just too strong for the delicate fish. Dishes like the already-rich lobster cannelloni or a savoury shiitake mushroom salad came with not one but two or even three different sauces. And the cream in the scallop risotto was an added richness the dish didn’t need and suggested shortcuts this talented kitchen does not need to take.

On the other hand, the steamed honey mussels were perfection in a bowl: plump pillows of tender flesh in a bright little palate teaser of a lemon grass-basil-chili-coconut broth. It was so good, we mopped up every last drop and contemplated ordering more.

Other highlights were the clam chowder, which had the perfect ratio of clams and vegetables to lightly creamy soup; the crispyet-tender battered halibut; the six big, fat, caramelly Qualicum Bay scallops perched atop that creamy risotto; and whatever creative inspiration Kadir is featuring that day.

Accompanying all this great seafood is an equally great wine list that explores the world for interesting and affordable choices. Look for unusual varietals like Alvarinho, Garganega and Madeleine Angevine as well as all the usual suspects. And look for unusually low prices, as low as $25 a bottle, and all except for a handful of reserve reds under $60.

The food, too, is surprisingly reasonably priced for this quality: starters range from $6 to $14 (for half-a-dozen oysters) while the most expensive mains, the sake kasu-marinated sablefish or beef tenderloin, are only $25.

“My guests come here and they can’t believe that they can find that food at that price,” Kadir says, adding, “It’s not going to change for the next six months. Every six months I’ll change the food menu and the wine menu. But I don’t think it will go much up. I’ll look at the pricing then — I have to make some money, too — but I will try to stay as reasonable as possible.”

And who knows? Maybe some of the city’s other seafood restaurants will be inspired to do the same.

Combination of delicious food and warm service makes for a perfect outing

Michelle Hopkins
Sun

At Steveston’s Tapenade Bistro (from left) Bill Laboucan, Tina Merces, Justin Cheungand Chef Alex Tung with organic beet risotto. Ian Lindsay/Vancouver Sun

When the blustery weather comes, there’s nothing I crave more than good down-home comfort food. At Steveston’s Tapenade Bistro they not only know how to do it well, they take it up a notch. The portions are generous and the menu contains some rare gems that you don’t tend to see at your local Mediterranean eatery. The service is personal and warm: If owner Vince Morlet is in the house, he personally greets each guest at the door.

So on a recent cool fall night, my dining companion and I headed over to Tapenade. I knew we were in for a treat, as I have dined here often. On this occasion, however, there was a surprise. Alex Tung, the restaurant’s longtime executive chef, had recently returned from a six-month hiatus, bringing with him some fabulous new dishes.

The chef, who recently unveiled the bistro’s new fall menu, has always been big on sustainable food practices. “My team is definitely cooking with more of a conscience and, wherever possible, we source the local, the free-range, the organic and sustainable products,” says Tung. “We’re committed to sustainable seafood and recently got on board with the Vancouver Aquarium’s Ocean Wise program.”

However laudable their ethical standards might be, the real reason to come to Tapenade is the food. While you are deciding on what to have, warm bread is brought to your table. I have to stop myself from indulging too much because I know what’s coming. I started with the beet risotto appetizer ($11) because I knew it would be simply delicious — and it was. If you like risotto, I highly recommend it. Is the secret in the aged Carnaroli rice, the red beets, the goat cheese, Rice Crispies or the sherry vinegar reserve? Whatever, I was tempted to order it for my entrée as well.

My dining companion was equally impressed with his harvest salad ($9). It is a refreshing palate cleanser, with Barnston Island organic greens as a counterpoint to the tangy, sherry maple vinaigrette sprinkled with dried cranberries, poached pear, crisped ham, candied pecans and blue cheese.

For a main course, my companion opted for the sablefish ($28). It was textbook: moist, ovenroasted and maple-glazed, served with couscous, cherry tomato, saffron and confit garlic. I went for the Prawns Provençal ($24) — sautéed tiger prawns, crispy gnocchi, buttered peas, pearl onions in a wonderfully flavourful Provençal pan sauce.

As always, the plating is a delight, done with a little flair and drama.

Tung’s food philosophy is simple: “We use as much seasonal and organic product as possible and love supporting the local farmers and local suppliers,” he says. “Most of the vegetables and herbs were supplied by Barnston Island Herbs, the mushrooms were foraged on Vancouver Island and the squash in the soup came from a local farm on No. 3 Road.”

Adds Tung: “We’re having lots of fun here, not taking ourselves too seriously. We’re not fine-dining, we’re a neighbourhood bistro with good food, great service and fantastic wine.”

When choosing a wine, the first thing you notice is that owner Morlet has really thought out the wine list. You aren’t going to find pages and pages to choose from; rather, there are more than 100 really good wines, with a strong focus on the finest from B.C., California and France. We went with B.C.’s Old Main red by Kettle Valley on the Naramata Bench. It was smooth and full-bodied, just the way I like it. Although it is said you should have white wine with fish, I still believe this red paired well with our meal.

Many restaurants talk about consistency, and that’s something that Morlet and his staff have worked on. Tung crafts fantastic meals and you will receive superior service from Morlet’s longtime staff in great surroundings. What’s not to like?

Tapenade seats 72 inside and, during the summer the heated patio can hold 70.