Culture Reviews Going Veggie on Main

Long gone are the days when vegetarian Vancouverites were stuck with a green salad and a side of fries: plant-based options are now essential to any modern menu in the city. That’s especially true on Main Street, where chefs are making magic out of meat-free dining.

by Alyssa Hirose

The Acorn’s inviting bar; sunchoke with cranberry and agrodolce; rich lentil pâté with pickles; and the “Sounds

Even without limiting the geography to Main Street, it would be impossible to do a proper veggie-powered Vancouver tour without The Acorn. It’s like making a list of the 200 greatest singers of all time and not mentioning Céline Dion.

Despite being located conspicuously on a busy corner, the room has an intimate vibe thanks to a curtained, speakeasy-style entrance and tealights casting long shadows on dark wood walls. My dining pal and I were further warmed by thick slices of tangy sourdough topped with flaky sea salt—but, from there, the chef’s menu turned fresh and light: creamy hummus with radishes; rich lentil pâté with pickles on crunchy crackers; razor-thin slivers of rouge vif d’etampes pumpkin squash with hazelnuts and mint. The Acorn takes full advantage of the seasonal veggie rainbow, and every dish was as colourful as it was tasty.

And just when it began to feel a little too fresh, more coziness arrived: the flageolet beans with tomato and kombu pistou became my favourite part of the meal to that point, mainly due to the bull kelp, which brought an unorthodox umami twist to this perfect winter dish.

But the beans were soon bested—the sweet treat served at the end of the evening blew my mind. The Acorn’s corn ice cream is nextlevel: velvety and bright, embracing all of the natural sweetness of the vegetable. It was unlike any dessert I’ve had before, and it proved that, in the right hands, veggies aren’t just versatile: they’re infinite.

Pizzeria Grano

3240 Main St. pizzeriagrano.com

This city’s veggie scene is so hot that the folks at Victoria Drive’s Via Tevere wanted a piece of the proverbial vegan pie: their 2020 opening, Pizzeria Grano, is now one of Main Street’s freshest 100-percent plant-based haunts. My partner and I grabbed the last two bar chairs on a Friday night, securing ourselves front-row seats to the Neapolitanstyle dough show. The preparation is artful, but the experience here is more fun than fussy: watching the team hand-stretch the dough and slide each pizza into the domed brick oven adds a theatrical element, and the pies (we went with the Bee Sting and the Gorgonzola) arrive accompanied by pizza scissors and an invitation for you to cut your own slices.

I find vegan “cheese” hit or miss, but the Bee Sting nails it with both the creamy bechamel and the bubbling mozzarella made from cashews working to balance out the heat from the Calabrian chili and plant-based pepperoni. And the vegan honey really leaves you wondering why every pizza doesn’t have an element of sweetness.

The Gorgonzola again delivers on the vegan cheese front, with cloudlike dollops all over. It’s a decadent pie thanks to a roasted garlic base and tons of caramelized onions, plus a crunchy “bacun” crumble.

It’s tough to stand up to Via Tevere’s celebrity status, but Grano is easily the Solange to Tevere’s Beyoncé—a little more indie, a little less awarded, but an icon in its own right.

Burdock and Co

2702 Main St. burdockandco.com

Even three weeks in advance, the only reso I could snatch at Andrea Carlson’s Burdock and Co was at 9 p.m. on a Thursday—this 34-seat restaurant was a tight squeeze even before it earned a Michelin star last October. Now, it’s positively buzzing. My partner and I weren’t seated until 9:30 (a glass of prosecco on the house made up for the wait), simply because the diners who were occupying our table didn’t want to leave. And who could blame them?

Now, Burdock isn’t strictly vegetarian, but it has been plantforward from the start: chef Carlson is a champion of local producers and seasonal veggies. My request for a plant-based version of the tasting menu was met with a breezy “Of course!” and the first dish was a stunning take on pâté made from butternut squash and drizzled with an earthy parsley root soubise. The next dish—a pillowy puffpastry topped with delicate slices of spice-poached Red Ace beets—absolutely floored

Making Pie From Plants

Pizzeria Grano’s Bee Sting (top right) and Gorgonzola (middle right) prove that no animals need be harmed in the making of an awesome pizza.