8 minute read
Reviews
GLASS ACT
Love it or loathe it, Vancouver House’s facade is part of our urban landscape—but does the troika of new restaurants located there elicit the same sort of emotions?
by Neal McLennan
It was mId-aprIl and social media was hopping with news about a flood on the 29th floor of Vancouver House gushing downward to the levels below. But instead of the usual heartfelt expressions of sympathy one normally associates with such events, there was an evident and disconcerting vein of glee: “I love the water feature!” wrote one real sweetheart. The incident was par for the course for Westbank’s flashy tower, the twisting metal rising up from a formerly dowdy stretch of North False Creek. The project was greeted with oohs and aahs when it was announced with architect-ofthe-moment Bjarke Ingels back in 2016. But a sizeable portion of that goodwill soured as rumours of it being marketed to offshore owners first and its overtly luxe leanings began to appear increasingly out-of-step in a city where the divide between the haves and have-nots seems to grow each year. Even hiring Rodney Graham, one of the most acclaimed artists the city has ever produced, to do a public art installation elicited a backlash. But does this animus apply to the restaurants that have moved into the new zone? A stroll through the compact area—they’re trying to brand the microhood “the Beach District,” notwithstanding the lack of, you know, beaches—reveals a very slick, modern little footprint clad in metal and glass that wouldn’t feel out of place in London’s Kings Cross. And the restaurants appear to be hopping.
The cozy Autostrada
THE DEETS
Autostrada
1481 Continental St., autostradahospitality.ca My guess is that when Westbank was plotting their commercial tenants, they assumed that the outpost of David Chang’s Momofuku empire would be the catalyst that drew people to the area. Well, thanks in part to COVID, there’s still no Momofuku and with both the restaurant and the developer staying mum on the status, I think it’s fair to say it ain’t opening soon, if ever. In its place (figuratively, not literally) is a different outpost—Lucais Syme and Dustin Dockendorf’s third Autostrada—that has filled the void and proved such a draw that I’m eating at the bar, by myself, on a rainy Tuesday at 5 p.m. I tried for weeks and weeks to get a reservation but it proved impossible. Seriously, even shooting long into the future and opting for Mondays and Tuesdays, I was still relegated to either the before-5:30 or after-8:30 time slots. But even at 5:00, the place is already half full, and by the time I leave 75 minutes later, it’s packed. The room isn’t huge—it seats 74—but they’ve clearly captured the attention of the locals: one fellow solo patron is clearly here for his weekly spot and a family with young kids is in one of the banquettes for what also looks like a standing reservation. It feels like the potential of Coal Harbour as a neighbourhood is finally being realized here—20 blocks to the south. The menu is recognizable to anyone who has been to either of the other two Autostradas— there are a few dishes missing and a few new additions—but for the most part it’s an exercise in “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.” (The spot briefly had acclaimed chef Stefan Hartmann at the helm, but they amicably parted ways last spring.) And it’s a wonderfully tight menu anchored by classics—tuna crudo, bucatini cacio e pepe— that allows the willing to branch out into more esoteric shapes (the fazzoletti, or kerchief pasta, has quickly become a signature) and daily specials that skew more adventurous. But it’s the two pillars of execution and value that have this place perpetually slammed. On that first pillar, all I can say is that, over the course of four years and now three Autostradas, I’ve not only never had a bad meal, I’ve never had a bad dish. The vitello tonnato is an exercise of restrained perfection—not mucked up with any “signatures” Syme might want to impart on an iconic dish, just perfectly cooked, thinly sliced veal topped with a tuna sauce that’s exactly briny enough to provide balance without being showy. The duck and anchovy ragu is a Venetian-inspired wonder—there’s not a tomato in sight, and the anchovy quotient is aggressive but perfectly offsets the duck’s richness. And then there’s the service. Even in the teeth of the staffing crunch, all three Autostradas seem to engender a rare devotion among their workers and the service is the beneficiary. An example: I order a glass of Castello di Albola Chianti— at $14, it’s near the top of their reasonable by-the-glass prices—and I spy the bartender grab the three-quarters-full bottle, uncork it, give a quick sniff and then reach down to open an entirely new one. It was refreshing in the face of my ongoing pet peeve toward so many wine-by-the-glass programs—namely, that “not gone bad” is not the same as good. It speaks to a place that is intensely customer focused: from
The clean, well lit Ça Marche
the menu to the wine list to the servers. And the customers, at least from the view of my 5 p.m. Tuesday solo reservation, are responding in kind.
Ça Marche
1471 Continental St., camarchecreperie.com Just up the street is Ça Marche, the ode to Brittany from Maxime Bettili (Au Comptoir) that comes in the form of buckwheat crepes paired with cider. When people ask me whether Vancouver is a “world-class city,” my new response will be to ask them if their city has a Breton crepes-and-cider house. Like Au Comptoir, it nails that Gallic je ne sais quois perfectly, save for the banks of halogen lights by the windows, which illuminate the charmingly designed spot like it’s being used in a Hallmark movie called Love, Brittany. Still, it’s a wonderfully esoteric concept and while there are a few outliers—there’s a single beer on tap and buckwheat blini are available if you order caviar—if you’re here, you’re having crepes and cider, and what’s wrong with that? The saucisse ($19) mixes pork and beef sausage with bacon, pea shoots, gruyere and pepper relish and, unlike most of the other crepes, it’s folded over like a burrito. It arrives unaccompanied on a beautiful ceramic plate, and it’s homey and enjoyable (even considering that adding heat to pea shoots is not my fave idea). The jambon cru ($24) is the more traditional layout, with a nicely cooked egg in the middle of the crepe and the ends folded over. It comes with prosciutto, burrata, arugula and splash of basil-infused olive oil—it’s very Instagrammable, especially given how bright the place is. It’s another homey dish, although Tk tka few notches up the elegance scale. Dessert? More (super tasty) crepes. The cider list is relatively compact and requires you to think of cider more like wine and less like beer (at least in terms of how much it will cost you), which is fine, because the 500 ml of Salt Spring Wild Dry Cider was a perfect pairing with the food. When I visited they were just doing dinner, which is a shame because—apologies to all of Brittany—to the North American palate, crepes work best as breakfast food. They have just opened for lunch, which is great, and hopefully they can get some of that eggs-for-dinner marketing money because there’s nothing wrong with crepes at dinner, but as much as I’m proud that we have this sort of spot, I do wonder about the crepes-and-only-crepes theme in regards to long-term viability—whereas Autostrada eases right into the let’s-go-theretwice-a-month zone, right now, Ça Marche seems more like once-a-year territory.
Classic moules at Linh Café
Linh Café
1428 Granville St., linhcafe.com If anything, stepping into the neighbouring Linh seems even more Français than Ça Marche. The room is gorgeous, with bistro chairs, on-point curved banquettes and soaring ceilings, all anchored by a beautiful marble bar that one can easily imagine F. Scott Fitzgerald passing out on. This is the fancy offshoot/new location for Kitsilano’s Linh Café and, if anything, the story—Vietnam native Tai Nguyen emigrates to Vancouver and falls under the tutelage of our great French chefs before finally opening his own French-Asian fusion spot—is more impressive than the decor. But while the West 4th location always played the role of scrappy upstart, this new location is whole new level in price and sophistication, and so far it seems to be seeing really good support from the residents of the tower as well as from students at the attached word jumble that is University Canada West. At first glance the vast majority of people seem to be gravitating toward the pho, which at $17 is one of the lower-priced items on the menu. I think about it, until I spy the shaking beef (it’s since been removed from the menu) and, despite a $29 lunch dish also seeming very Fitzgeraldian, I go for it. The dish was popularized by Charles Phan of San Francisco’s legendary Slanted Door and consists of cubes of tenderloin seared in a wok (the “shaking”) with fish sauce and garlic. But when my dish arrives, there’s a major disconnect: no cubes, definitely no tenderloin, just thinly shaved beef shreds that one might expect from the Edo Japan in the Pacific Centre food court with an overturned bowl of limp, lifeless rice. And then, despite my resolve to not be a prickly pain in the ass, the questions start flying: why are we eating with cheap paper napkins at these prices? Why are the glasses from Ikea? Why... I take a breath. The service has been so friendly, my wife’s burger, though small and pre-formed, is tasty and the fries with it are top-notch. Everyone else seems to be having a great time. I fear that our default these days—with buildings, with restaurants, with someone who voted differently than you—is to go nuclear as the first step, go for the cutting sound bite, the clever riposte... but sometimes not putting the boots to something is so much more rewarding.
