Owners of restaurant located in the basement of the Dominion Building takes on the feel of Beirut in the 1940s and

Burnaby eatery within the Nikkei Heritage Centre is worth the wait for daily specials

Mia Stainsby
Sun

Manager Miyuki Azuma shows off some of the great homestyle Japanese food from Hi Genki. Photograph by: Bill Keay, Vancouver Sun

HI GENKI

6680 Southoaks Crescent, Burnaby. 604-777-0533.

www.fujiya.ca. Public hours: 11:30 to 3 p.m.; and 6 to 8:30 p.m.

– – –

Hi Genki is an oddity. But in a good way. For one, it’s in the nine-year-old Nikkei Museum and Heritage Centre in Burnaby, which also provides housing for seniors.

The restaurant serves meals to the residents but is also open to the public — dining hours for the two groups are staggered so it’s not like you’ve stumbled into a seniors’ mess hall.

If you go on the weekend, prepare to wait. The allure of a home-style Japanese meal for under $10 is stronger than the impulse to depart.

My partner and I waited 25 minutes with my poor mom, who leaned on her walker as there aren’t enough chairs to accommodate those waiting. I can’t believe no one offered a little ol‘ lady like my mom a chair.

You won’t find the usual suspects of sushi or izakaya style dishes here — it’s hearty, homestyle food. The kitchen serves up a menu-load of specials every day, a lot of them donburi style (rice bowl). There’s a rotating roster of specials and on the day I called, the menu included salmon katsu (breaded); salmon with egg on rice; prawn with egg on rice; chikara udon (a rice cake in udon; the word means ‘strong’ for how you’ll feel after you eat it); oden is a spicy hot pot with fishcakes, vegetables and egg.

My mother happened to have lost her bottom dentures and they were nowhere to be found. At the restaurant, I cut up all her food into baby pieces but she got to some Japanese pickles before I could cut it up. She liked it and would not let go; I envisioned her swallowing the daikon pickle whole, requiring me to jump into Heimlich action. Taking my mom out is always an adventure.

She liked her ebi katsu don (breaded and deep-fried prawns) with egg and rice and I, my sukiyaki don (veggies and eggs with a sukiyaki sauce over rice).

My husband had a deluxe bento with tempura, salmon teriyaki, tuna and rice. On the side, we had agedashi nasu (deep-fried eggplant served in a ponzu-like sauce).

The restaurant is run by the same folks who run Fujiya, the Japanese store and takeout with locations in Vancouver, Richmond and Victoria.

The chef previously ran Haru restaurant on Thurlow Street.

Manager Miyuki Azuma says weekends are busy, especially at lunch and if you want to avoid a wait, you might aim for an 11:30 a.m. or 2 p.m. meal, since you can’t make reservations.

A good plan would be to take in an event at the centre and do lunch or dinner.

For example, on Nov. 28, there’s a sale of vintage kimonos and other clothing, jewelry, scarves, washi paper lamps, wall tapestries and other items. (Check www.nikkeiplace.org.)

When I was there, I just missed a Japanese Farmers’ Market where Japanese vegetables, cooked foods and crafts had sold out quickly.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Widely varied bottled selection is accompanied by food choices cooked from scratch

Mia Stainsby
Sun

Pivo Public House at 526 Abbott St. is a good place to find a meal before a movie or Canucks game.

Pivo features a variety of ‘comfort pub food’ from Chef Kindsey Porteus.

PIVO PUBLIC HOUSE

Overall: ***1/2

Food: ***1/2

Ambience: ***1/2

Service: ***1/2

Price: $$

526 Abbott St., 604-608-0500; www. pivopublichouse.com. Open daily for lunch and dinner; brunch on Saturday and Sunday. Hours to extend to 2 a.m. in near future.

– – –

If I’m ever in the Czech Republic, I can go to a bar and be right at home. “Pivo!” I’d say and I’d be served a beer.

Pivo also happens to be the name of a bar in Vancouver, serving better-than-average pub food and it’s conveniently within walking distance to GM Place during hockey season.

Good luck on home game nights, though. Pivo Public House is a 60-seater, not nearly big enough to feed masses of hungry pre-game fans (as my partner found on a couple of occasions). But if you watch the game on the telly, no problem. After the rush clears, you can have a steak sandwich or sticky ribs or the popular poutine (made with Kennebec potatoes) and settle in. And of course, when you’re flummoxed looking for a place to eat before a movie at Tinseltown theatres, think Pivo just steps away.

By the way, beer fans, I did a little Googling and found this site for you: www.geocities.com/mosvends/beer.html, with “beer” translated into 78 languages. Pivo means beer in Azerbaijani, Czech, Croatian, Macedonian, Russian, Slovak and Serbian languages. However, since I’m off to tropical Vietnam soon, where beer will be a necessity, I must learn to ask for bia.

Of course, with a name like Pivo, this bar had better have a few interesting ones. It does. There’s about 35 bottled beers, including Rogue Beer’s Morimoto Soba (Oregon). “It’s a Japanese-style beer made with buckwheat instead of wheat,” says general manager Christian Brown. Iron Chef Morimoto was involved in the development of it. “It’s unlike any. Everyone’s a big fan of it,” says Brown.

In the kitchen, a surprise. Chef Lindsey Porteus is a vegan but there she is, overseeing a menu with items like chicken wings, pulled-pork poutine, cheeseburger, Cajun bourbon chicken. “She’s keeping us healthy even though we want beer and burgers,” says Brown.

“Cooking is cooking, regardless of what it is,” Porteus says. “I wanted to try something different.” Prior to Pivo, she was sous chef at Grub, a diamond in the rough on Main St.

“I guess it’s comfort pub food, except it’s cooked with a bit more love,” she says of her grub. “I cook a lot from scratch and there’s a lot more control over ingredients.” However, she says, she found customers preferred frozen pre-made burger patties to the ones made in-house. “I totally thought they were going to do well,” she says of her freshly made burgers.

Well, I totally liked her chicken sliders with hickory bacon (hard to picture her frying up bacon, somehow), horseradish, cheddar and barbecue sauce.

She slipped some pancetta into the aged cheddar perogies, making it toothsome for carnivores; roasted garlic and spinach hummus screamed health-for-you. When one orders prawn linguine (with capers, white wine and butter) in a pub, it’s with the understanding that the prawns will be rubbery and the noodles limp — that wasn’t the case here. The dish was strewn with fresh prawns, cooked just right.

However, the steak sandwich, despite the certified Angus beef inside, was chewy. And flatbread pizza (with artichokes, prosciutto, caramelized onions and feta) was thin on topping and more bread than pizza.

Next time I need to eat before or after a movie at Tinseltown, I’ll be back.

But can I ask one thing of management? The menu — I must have left my nose mark on it trying to read the faint orange print over the green background. At next printing, can you ditch the orange and go to black?

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Having breakfast or lunch in an art gallery strikes a welcoming chord

Mia Stainsby
Sun

Owner Chris Harrison at the Buzz Cafe has found the addition of a coffee bar tends to attract previously intimidated visitors to Harrison Galleries. Photograph by: Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun

THE BUZZ

901 Homer St., 604-732-9029. www.harrisongalleries.com. Open 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday; from 8 a.m. Saturday; from 9 a.m. Sunday.

– – –

Oh, heck, I’ll be the drama queen and let George Bernard Shaw make my point: “Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.”

And if you’re having one of those crude reality days, The Buzz Cafe and Espresso Bar might be a good place to charge up on the bearable life. The Buzz is tucked inside Harrison Galleries, which relocated to this downtown spot from south Granville four years ago. You can roam the extensive art gallery with a cup of very good 49th Parallel coffee or sit and have a light breakfast or lunch. The Buzz is wired in another way, with Wi-Fi, so there’s often someone tapping away on a laptop. You might also see Zbigniew Kupczynski, a regular and one of the painters the gallery represents.

Owner Chris Harrison is the second generation of the family that opened the gallery in 1958. The newish home is a 1911 heritage building that Harrison once played in as a kid. “My uncle ran Evergreen Press here and he did my father’s printing,” says Harrison. “My father was quite chuffed with that.” The space also housed Chintz & Co. before it moved a block south.

About 95 per cent of the eclectic mix of painters represented are Canadian and three quarters are from B.C., he says.

“I always joked about coffee being a passion of mine, but I saw the mix of coffee and art in New York and other places around the world,” he says, explaining the convergence. “Part of the concept was to make the art world more approachable. The biggest comment we’re getting is that people have wanted to come in but felt intimidated.” He’s sold four or five paintings to coffee customers who fell in love with a painting.

The food is simple and casual. Panini (chicken cheddar chipotle, wild salmon, tuna cheddar melt, caprese and others) which sell for $8 and wraps (breakfast, salmon, turkey, chicken fajita) for $6.69. Baked goods (muffins, croissants, squares) are brought in.

The food isn’t the main attraction. Sure the panino I tried was fine; a breakfast wrap was good and the coffee is worth the trip alone.

But having breakfast or lunch in an art gallery strikes a welcoming chord. There are tables and chairs at street level and a couch for deeper relaxation. Harrison likes the art-meets-food idea enough to be dreaming bigger and is thinking of ramping it up to a bistro/wine bar, maybe in about six months. He’s not a painter himself. “Art dealers shouldn’t be artists,” he decrees, “and vice versa. They’re full-time jobs. If you have a creative streak and you end up too much on the business side, you lose the whole reason you got into the painting world.”

But there’s nothing saying an art dealer can’t be a barista or perhaps down the road, a sommelier?

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Elements Urban Tapas Parlour is an attractive space with food a notch above casual

Mia Stainsby
Sun

Elements features a tapas menu in which most of the dishes are accessible and casual. The restaurant has a sustainable seafood policy.

One restaurant that won’t be booked out or reserved to the max in Whistler during the Olympics is Elements Urban Tapas Parlour. They don’t take reservations now and that’s the way it will be through the Olympics. And, bonus, Elements is open for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

It’s tucked away on the quiet and inappropriately named Main Street, and visitors find it only when tipped off by hotel concierges. Locals might want to throw me off the Peak 2 Peak gondola for this, but Elements is a hugely popular breakfast spot. They have a full menu to break your fast — eggs bennies, duck sausage, fritattas and several versions of stuffed french toast. Squamish-tapped maple syrup is expected to be on the menu soon; it’s currently making its way through the regulatory hoops.

Elements is owned by the Wildwood Restaurant Group, which runs Wildwood Bistro at the Whistler Racquet Club and in Pemberton, as well as a cafe version at Function Junction.

According to general manager April Salonyka, the five owners have worked in Whistler restaurants, front and back for some 20 years.

Since Whistler’s full of dirt-faced mountain bikers, we walked into Elements after a day of hiking hoping we weren’t breaching Whistler etiquette too much.

We did change into sandals and since it wasn’t a hot day, it’s not like we were in desperate need of a shower — as far as we could tell, anyway — and we were welcomed in.

The restaurant wasn’t terribly busy and the two servers had time to chat with customers, but there was little engagement. Our wines were forgotten but water glasses were kept full, dishes came promptly and when plates need changing between tapas dishes, don’t ask, just do it, I say. Better service really would make a difference as Elements is attractive, it’s away from hubbub and the food is a notch above casual.

As you might have gathered from the name, Elements has a tapas dinner menu. Tapas dishes are $5 to $16 (duck confit with orange marmalade and asparagus). Most are accessible, casual dishes. We started off with Greek mini-lamb burgers (sliders) — the menu said it came with tapenade but I found tzaziki but no matter; I like it a lot.

Crabcakes weren’t stellar — too moist and sullen. A carrot, fennel, cucumber and chickpea salad was refreshing and tasty. The hot, sticky toffee pudding with dates, spices, butterscotch sauce and topped with poached pear slices and cinnamon gelato was a good recommendation — not too heavy or cloyingly sweet.

Salonyka says a must-try are the mussels from Salt Spring Island. The dish is part of the restaurant’s sustainable seafood policy. All the seafood is sustainably harvested except for the prawns.

There’s a substantial cocktail list and what the menu doesn’t say is that new on their shelves is a vodka distilled in Pemberton because of course, there’s no end of potatoes in Pemberton.

“I gotta tell you, it’s comparable to Grey Goose and Belvedere,” says Salonyka. “You don’t get the burn.”

During shoulder season, Elements is offering a $21 prix fixe with a choice from $5, $10 and $15 categories (which would add up to $30). The restaurant is also part of the Whistler Tasting Tour where $150 takes you to multiple restaurants in one evening. (www.whistlertastingtour.com)

ELEMENTS URBAN TAPAS PARLOUR

Overall: Rating 3 1/2

Food: Rating 3 1/2

Ambience: Rating 3 1/2

Service: Rating 3

Price: $$

4359 Main St., Whistler,

604-932-5569. Open daily

for breakfast, lunch, dinner.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Chef at La Taqueria travelled south to do her homework in the homeland of the taco

Mia Stainsby
Sun

Rafael Cuellar serves tacos during the lunchtime rush: Organic produce, free-range meat and a business card with a lot of attitude. Photograph by: Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun

Tripping north across the border, the cute-as-a-button Mexican taco became a North American. It went from a two-bite nibble to a meal.

Our supermarket versions of the corn taco shell are brittle while the Mexican taco shell is soft and bendable so you can fold it like a baseball mitt around the filling. We North Americans have gone even further, flattening the bottoms of the hard taco shell so it sits up straight as if to say please and thank you.

The thing of it is, if you’re going to eat tacos, it shouldn’t be a polite-society thing. Salsa should ooze and your fingers be lickable. That’s the kind of taco you’ll find at La Taqueria, which opened recently in the space vacated by Nuba, a falafel joint. The space is small and a lunchtime jam-up builds very quickly.

Often, I get tripped up when I have to give my name at the order counter but I managed to come up with a fake name without incident. (No, I won’t divulge my default name.)

The La Taqueria space has been gutted and brightened up considerably and the place is abuzz at lunch. Tacos (12 choices) are $2 for vegetarian and $2.50 for meat and fish or $9.50 for four. Tacos are the mainstay, although you can get the same fillings in quesadilla form for $4.

I had a lost-in-translation conversation with owner Marcelo Ramerez about the tagline on the business card, which reads “Pinche Taco Shop.”

“It means f—ing taco shop,” he said. That’s a bit rude, isn’t it, I say. The translation is much milder than the English meaning, he explains. But you get the picture — there’s attitude.

Ramerez grew up in Mexico in a hotel/restaurant family and prior to opening La Taqueria, he was part-owner of Le Faux Bourgeois in east Vancouver.

He brought in Tina Fineza (chef at Flying Tiger) as consulting chef and sent her to Mexico where she spent a week with his family and checked out the home of tacos. She did her homework. The resulting tacos are simple, straight-ahead, Mexican-style quickie food.

Ingredients come with better pedigree than you might expect at a taqueria. The produce is organic, the meat is free range and seafood (there’s one seafood topping) is wild and sustainable. The fish taco thus far has been albacore tuna. (It wasn’t my favourite as it was overcooked.) The meats tend to be marinated, then grilled and I couldn’t tell one from the other sometimes. But they were tasty mouthfuls — toppings include skirt steak, Pitt Meadows beef tongue; pork confit with pickled red onion; Maple Hills chicken with molé, oyster mushrooms with spicy chipotle; poblano peppers with creamed corn; Chilliwack pork marinated in chile achiote and pineapple.

Unfortunately, there’s no beer to wash it down. And for dessert, reach in the candy jar for a choice of Mexican candies.

AT A GLANCE

La Taqueria

322 West Hastings St., 604-568-4406. twitter: LataqueriaYVR. Open Monday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

A great spot to get together with pals

Mia Stainsby
Sun

The Diamond in Maple Tree Square is a conceit of opposites with the food reflecting Vancouver circa 2009 and the room looking like Vancouver circa 1920.

THE DIAMOND

6 Powell St. No phone. Contact at [email protected]; http://www.di6mond.com. Open Wednesday to Sunday from 5 p.m. to midnight.

Overall: ***1/2

Food: ***1/2

Ambience: ***1/2

Service: ***1/2

Price: $/$$

Mark Brand isn’t just a mover/shaker in the cocktail sense. He’s staked a sizable claim in Gastown: part owner of Boneta, a cool eat/drink nexus in the oldest building in Gastown; he runs Sharks + Hammers, a “homegrown” streetwear store and most recently, he and partners Josh Pape and Sophie Taverner — of a trendsetting cocktail crowd — opened The Diamond, in the second-oldest building in Gastown.

It’s on the second floor, overlooking Maple Tree Square and its stew of social classes. Look here, an agitated woman, jaywalking, eating pasta from a foil container; and there, a panhandler walking with his sign that contains an obscenity, followed by the clack-clack-clack of young fashionistas in pretty shoes and fun dresses.

At the mention of old buildings in Gastown, I always ask about ghosts because inevitably, there’s a story. “We had a massive native cleansing,” says Brand. “Josh is half Salish and I have some native blood from back East so we had this spiritual cleansing of the place with Salish drummers and a shaman who found a really strong presence of angry spirits still in the building. They’ve now moved on.” Way back when, during Prohibition, “diamond” was a code word for rye. In another blast from the past, the building’s owner is an interesting guy who “ran with the Rat Pack crew, ran a speakeasy and played backgammon with Bob Hope and John Wayne,” according to Brand.

Brand has got a fourth and fifth project already taking shape. A bartending school — a great idea considering his modern take on drink. The fifth project? Maybe a spinoff Diamond?

The Diamond is a conceit of opposites. The cocktails are clean, fresh, imaginative and delicious and the food reflects Vancouver circa 2009, whereas the room is Vancouver circa 1920s. In fact, it has the feel of a saloon. They try to help the poor in the neighbourhood and hire them to clean windows, sweep the street, and “keep watch.” “They’re all down on their luck,” says Brand. “All I ask of them is loyalty and honesty.”

The Diamond has a food-primary licence but to me, it’s a place to go to talk, enjoy a cocktail or two, share some dishes and savour life with your pals. I’m not saying the kitchen doesn’t deliver. The food is light, tasty and mostly under $10.

I loved the simple Peking duck and chicken (Polderside) sub with a Vietnamese bun; pork gyoza (with Sloping Hills pork) is a steal for $5. There seem to be a disproportionate number of Asian noodle dishes (three out of 10) on the menu. (Brand says the original plan was to run a noodle house and to call it Diamond Jack’s Noodle House And Cocktail Party.) The lemongrass glass noodles with market vegetables is nice and light (I ordered the $3 add-on of fish but didn’t see any); duck and soba noodles in Peking duck broth with vegetables is heartier.

There was one dessert, a coconut tapioca pudding with mangos which I couldn’t help but notice looked like a cocktail with layers of pudding, mango and lemon foam.

A couple of the to-die-for cocktails I spoke of? Bicicletta (Campari, Italian vermouth, Gewurztraminer) which goes nicely with some of the Asian flavours and the Isadora (sparkling wine, cantaloup, ginger, basil) is a real floozie and isn’t particular about who she mates with.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

It may not be fancy, but the food is good

Mia Stainsby
Sun

Victor Feng, owner of Joyce Jiaozi tastes one of the dumpling dishes prepared by his wife Jean Yan. Photograph by: Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun

A handwritten sign greets you. “No change. No phone. No public washroom. No criminal attempts of any kind.”

And another: “We respect every customer but this is not a licensed premises. One must be responsible for the penalty if he/ she consumes alcohol or smokes inside.”

Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. I think I pass muster and sit down. Unpretentious is an understatement here but if you want a taste of northern Chinese food (as in Manchurian), Joyce Jiaozi might interest you.

I’ve heard the dumplings are good and that’s all I’m here for. Jiaozi is Chinese for dumplings and here, they are made by Jean (Anglicized from Erjing) Yan daily. She and husband “I-mostly-deliver” Victor Feng are from Manchuria in northeast China and the wide-ranging menu features food from that area.

“We come from Changchun,” Feng says, “and it is called a sister to Saskatchewan. We have corn and cold.”

Lamb, wheat noodles and some neighbouring Korean influences are part of the cuisine and they have savoury filled buns from an area closer to Beijing made for them. They also included some Taiwanese dishes thrown in (deep-fried pork chop with rice, beef stew with rice, deep-fried chicken with rice) as well.

We only tried but a small fraction of the 100-plus items on the menu. We ordered steamed, pan-fried and boiled dumplings ($4, $5 and $6). Pan-fried chive pockets were my favourite. Boiled dumplings with shrimp, pork, egg and chives were good; steamed beef dumplings were less good. Yan makes all the dumplings by hand daily. In Manchuria, Feng says, dumplings are eaten at New Years, but here, since they’re so popular, they make them every day.

I really liked the Korean-influenced kimchi fried rice but I’d recommend it only for people who, like me, can inhale kimchi like an industrial shop vacuum. The stir-fried chicken with celery and peanuts is a crunchy dish with bits of chili. Stir-fried lamb and vegetables, however, did not entice. Noodle soups are another specialty but I would have blacked out had I eaten any more. For those who want to delve deeply into the cuisine, there’s marinated pork ears, beef tripe and beef tendon.

Feng says the meatballs “are very special.” They have lotus root, bamboo roots and eggs mixed in.

Should you wonder about the barking coming from the back, it’s not a dog in the kitchen. It is just another pre-emptive move. You’ll find, should you need to use the washroom, there’s a big German shepherd outside the back door, doing his (I’m assuming the gender) job, showing his discontent as you approach.

Joyce Jiaozi might be a hole-in-the-wall and very basic (we noted Feng, who waits on tables, fell asleep on his book at one point and the kitchen sharply rang a bell to jar him out of his slumber) but if you know your way around the menu, there are some very good value dishes.

If you’re there for lunch or early dinner, check out Panaderia Latina Bakery a couple blocks away (4906 Joyce).

I would recommend the meringue sandwich cookies. They look like two white porcupines stuck together with lovely dulce de leche. Yum!

JOYCE JIAOZI

5171 Joyce St., 604-436-5678.

Open Tuesday to Sunday for lunch and dinner. Free delivery within 3 km and minimum order of $15.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Menu a homage to land of original tapas

Mia Stainsby
Sun

Chef Kris Barnholden (centre), shows off his duck salad and shares a laugh with bartender Jonathan James (right) and manager Eryn Dorman. Photograph by: Mark van Manen, Vancouver Sun

MIS TRUCOS

1141 Davie St

604-566-3960

www.mistrucos.ca

Overall: ****

Food: ****

Ambience: ***1/2

Service: ***1/2

Price: $$

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

– – –

Before I get to the food at Mis Trucos, a cool new tapas place in the West End, let’s chat about dating.

On my first visit, a seemingly first-date couple sat nearby. He knew it all. His opinions jack-hammered and ricocheted through the room via a megaphone mouth. I went to the bathroom and his voice followed me through the walls. Just a word of advice, bud. Don’t forget: Your ears are there to help you get a second date.

Aside from being Hoovered into the voice vortex, we loved our meals. Mis Trucos (“my tricks” in Spanish) is run by Kris Barnholden (formerly of Parkside, Lucy Mae Brown, Fiction and Chez Bruce, a one-Michelin star restaurant in London); he’s brought on Jonathan James to tend bar (formerly at Uva and Chow) and Eryn Dorman as general manager.

Mis Trucos marks Davie Street’s coming of age; here you will find refined food, an homage to the land where tapas originated. Sure, Bin 941 isn’t far away, but it’s just outside the orbit of the “village.” And yep, the relatively new La Brasserie, with its Franco-German-style food, is great at traditional comfort food. Mis Trucos is somewhat Main Street boho but the food is beyond casual, closer to upscale and sophisticated.

The menu is short and bounces off traditional Spanish tapas and it’ll change with the seasons. Barnholden is spot-on with so many of the dishes, balancing flavours and textures. And don’t you think it’s about ruddy time someone came along to show off Spain with a modern spin, considering the centre of gravity in European cuisine has shifted to that country. Barnholden delivers Spanish and Mediterranean food with bright, clean, fresh flavours. (The spanking white-surround interior turbo boosts the fresh feel but is it only me? Does it make you think of straitjackets?)

The dishes are small (they range from $4 to $18) and they are to be savoured. My all-out favourite was the white truffle risotto with lobster and creme fraiche; each element had its part to play. There was almost as much lobster as rice and the truffles quietly hummed throughout.

A dish I’d eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner and a midnight snack is the piperade with Serrano ham and slow-cooked egg. A snowdrift of a grated Picorino cheese capped the egg, which was poached sous vide. Break the orange yolk and it goes to work as an earthy sauce. Gazpacho in a shot glass was a gulp of fresh liquid tomato with avocado creme and a surprise crab at the bottom. A special, vegetarian coca (a Catalan pizza-like dish) had a topping of rice, spinach, raisins and pinenuts.

Other dishes I liked were cured duck and melon salad with a sherry reduction; cured white salmon with beetroot, apple, creme fraiche. I was hoping the brandade (a salt cod-and-potato dish) would be a baked version, but this was warm and cooked stovetop.

I wondered why the Qualicum Beach scallops with asparagus aioli was poached in olive oil rather than sauteed for that golden, caramelized finish. The answer was a clue to what’s behind the bright, fresh flavours: There was no hood vent in the kitchen when he took it over (the previous tenant managed without frying and grilling) so Barnholden decided to cook with sous vide equipment, induction burners (uses electromagnetism to heat steel or iron pots, leaving the cooktop cool) and a convection oven. He has to think twice as hard to keep the menu varied. Winter, when the body craves fat, will be a challenge, I suppose, but I think braising and roasting can compensate for that.

I’m told I just missed huckleberry season, a disappointment as wild huckleberries from the B.C. Interior send me back to childhood. Barnholden, who’s worked as a chocolatier and pastry chef, had a dessert of almond praline mille feuille with chocolate mousse and cherry syrup; another featured thinly sliced mango rolled cannelloni-like, filled with mascarpone and strewn with blueberries and micro-mint.

Wines are mostly Spanish and priced to match the foods, and James’ cocktails step up to the plate. The signature is Cohombro o Pepino (cool as a cucumber) with easy-breezy honeydew and cucumber.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Stella’s on Cambie delivers a brew for every occasion, but the food is hit and miss

Mia Stainsby
Sun

Server Flavio Martins moves past the bar with a tray of beer, a specialty on the menu at Stella’s on Cambie. Photograph by: Jenelle Schneider, Vancouver Sun

STELLA’S ON CAMBIE

3305 Cambie St., 604-874-6900

stellasbeer.com/cambie

Open 7 days a week, brunch, lunch and dinner. No reservations at dinner.

– – –

The EU is headquartered in Belgium as are the Smurfs and Tintin. It’s famous for waffles, frites and Edda van Hemstra Hepburn-Ruston, better known as Audrey Hepburn (born in Brussels).

But for a certain someone I know, it’s beer that rocks Belgium. Absolutely delicious beer. And I’ll bet Dean Mallel, one of the owners of Stella’s on Cambie (which stepped into the old Tomato Fresh Food Cafe spot a few months ago) can’t see beyond beer, either.

This is the second Stella’s (the first is on Commercial Drive) and you’ll find 40 to 60 Belgian beers with 16 on tap. “At last count, there were about 600 different beers in Belgium and we’re just in the process of bringing in another three, four lines of Belgian beer that will be exclusive to us and Chambar. We have a wine list but we convince almost everybody to drink beer,” says Mallel. “That’s if they’re over 19,” he adds.

Mallel, with partners Don Farion and Craig MacMillan, also run the two Incendio restaurants, known more for pizza and pasta. The one in Gastown was best by fire last January and won’t reopen until mid-October.

The food at Stella’s on Cambie should be, and is, beer friendly with prices to match. You’ll find lots of sharing plates and at this location you can get a prix fixe menu ($22 for two courses, $28 for three) as well as entrees (all $17) and the kitchen tries to source locally and seasonally. Tapas dishes run from $5 to $14 so they’re in the beer price ballpark.

The only nods to Belgian food are the eight mussel dishes (moules) and frites.

All the mussels are from Saltspring Island and the kitchen burns through a thousand pounds a week with broths carrying flavours of Thailand, Madrid, Mexico, New Orleans, Persia and France. Shame there’s only one with beer (Stella Artois, cilantro, lime and butter). The mussels are $8 for half a pound and $14 for a full pound.

On the brunch menu, I noted the absence of Belgian waffles which would amp up the Belgian theme.

Although the kitchen had a good batting average over my two visits, I cannot say all is well.

I liked the mussels (I tried half orders of the Stella Artois and New Orleans); lemon parmesan cauliflower “popcorn” was fun, healthy and tasty; beer and chili-braised beef brisket taquitos with guacamole and chimichuri were soul friends with beer; a halibut dish with pea and pancetta basmati “risotto” and the wild sockeye with smoked corn and black bean salad and cherry tomato salsa were great buys at $17.

Dishes that didn’t excite were the Thai-spiced grilled jumbo shrimp (tough) and the Fraser Farms pork tenderloin with chocolate baked beans, johnny cake and Granny Smith apple sofrito. The pork lacked flavour and the johnny cake was too crumbly but the baked beans went down very well.

The comfort-style desserts didn’t win us over. Cardamom chocolate torte didn’t deliver a chocolate punch and had a dense pudding texture; apple rhubarb crumble turned out to be apple blueberry crumble and oddly devoid of blueberry flavour.

I’d take a pass on them but I wouldn’t discourage locals from stopping by.

It’s lively, the beers are great and so is some of the food.

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