Contemporary

from Vancouver Magazine May/June 2023

COAL COUNTRY DIAMOND

★ ANNALENA

1809 W 1st Ave., Vancouver annalena.ca

This category is fresh in every sense of the word. It’s a brand-new addition to the Restaurant Awards, replacing the former “Best West Coast.” And Best Contemporary celebrates modern culinary excellence: chefs that respect tradition, but aren’t beholden to it.

Earning the first-ever gold in this category is AnnaLena, a restaurant that also nabbed one of Vancouver’s first Michelin stars in 2022. Thanks to world-class tasting menus from chef Michael Robbins—also our Chef of the Year, see page 34—AnnaLena shines with imaginative, artistic, detailed dishes. (Case in point: BBQ chicken consommé with smoked cod, yam agnolotti and wakame oil.)

Silver belongs to L’Abattoir; our judges loved chef Lee Cooper’s sharp French technique and incorporation of distinctive Asian flavour (think steak tartare with

★ L’Abattoir

217 Carrall St., Vancouver labattoir.ca

★ Burdock and Co

2702 Main St., Vancouver burdockandco.com

HONOURABLE MENTION

Boulevard

Kitchen and Oyster Bar

845 Burrard St., Vancouver, boulevard vancouver.ca bluefin tuna otoro and shiso). “It represents a real Vancouver point of view,” said one judge. And Burdock and Co (another Michelin winner) bags bronze for chef Andrea Carlson’s carefully crafted, plant-forward dishes (rosemary-smoked potato with black garlic, anyone?) that celebrate the best of local, seasonal ingredients.

It’s a three-peat for Chef’s : for the third year in a row, it’s landed gold in this ultra-competitive category. The restaurant is one of the few places in Vancouver (and possibly North America) executing restrained, Hong Kongstyle Cantonese cooking at the highest standard. Don’t miss the sticky chicken rice: boneless chicken is layered with toothsome sticky rice and deep-fried to perfect-crisp tenderness. A newcomer to these awards, The Fish Man slays the competition with silver, winning our judges over with chef Bo Li’s take on pairing B.C. seafood with traditional Sichuan flavours. The menu is full of winners, but one judge called the sour cabbage fish hotpot—ultra-thin slices of ling cod in a spicy soup—“worth celebrating alone.” Broadway mainstay Dynasty takes bronze, both for its excellent service and for showstopping dishes like the tower of crab with spicy garlic and

★ The Fish Man

8391 Alexandra Rd., Richmond fishman restaurant.com