17 minute read
FOOD & DRINK
Popina Canteen’s Hamid Salimian says Michelin put Vancouver’s food scene “on the map.”
2022: a pinnacle year for vancouver food scene
Advertisement
by William Johnson
FOOD & DRINK
It’s almost two years to the day since BC provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry shocked Vancouver restaurants with a snap decision to limit alcohol sales past 8pm on
New Year’s Eve. While meant to manage concerns around parties, many in the industry felt the move was unfair to establishments and would have significant negative economic impacts.
It felt like a low point for the industry, which was already reeling from the effects of COVID laws and lockdowns.
At the time, Ian Tostenson, the president and CEO of the BC Restaurant and Food
Services Association, feared the move would end up as a fatal blow for some of its members. “I think this will push people over the edge,” he said to the
Canadian Press. “I think a lot of restaurants won’t have enough financial power to get through to the spring.”
While he was perhaps correct about closures, not even he could predict the rebound the sector appears to be enduring on the heels of national and international recognition, positive policy changes, and general momentum. In fact, when recently asked about the state of the hospitality scene over the phone, Tostenson sounds an upbeat note. “I would characterize it as
Humpty Dumpty,” he says. “We’re putting it all back together again.”
The Straight spoke to a number of industry insiders over the week. The consensus opinion when reflecting on the past year: good news and good vibes—and, most importantly, good business. Tostenson says a number of factors have led to positive sales numbers over the past year, including the end of mask and vaccine mandates, which were still in place last Christmas, in addition to heightened recognition of BC’s dining talent. “It’s been a good year for our reputations with the acknowledgements that we’ve received,” Tostenson notes.
After a series of major accolades, Vancouver ends the year with its culinary trophy cabinet full. The first hardware to land came in the spring when 21 BC restaurants made Canada’s top 100 list for 2022. Five local restaurants made the top 25, including Hawksworth (25), Oca
Pastificio (23), Boulevard (9), St. >>>
Connecting the Lower Mainland's communities through the stories that shape them
Sign up now to receive your next favourite newsletter and get local stories delivered straight to your inbox.
The authority on Vancouver startups, emerging companies, & innovative technologies
Kate Wilson, Managing Editor
Local news, local events, local everything
Ria Renouf, Managing Editor
Putting a spotlight on Burnaby's stories, identity, & people
Simran Singh, Managing Editor
Serving you & your community through independent, local-first, in-depth reporting
Tyler Olsen, Managing Editor
Ready to eat your way through the Tri-Cities?
Tina Gohar, Managing Editor >>> Lawrence (3), and Published on Main (1). It was the first time ever a Vancouver establishment landed first on the list. But this year the local dining scene is being recognized across the pond, too. Last month, La Liste, a France-based awards program ranked 21 Canadian restaurants on its list, including four from the 604.
And while it has been covered ad nauseam, locals we spoke to repeat that the Michelin Guide’s arrival in Vancouver— and the recognition of eight one-star restaurants—is the biggest development the city has seen this year.
Hamid Salimian, a culinary instructor at Vancouver Community College and co-owner of Popina Canteen on Granville Island, says, “Michelin puts Vancouver on a map.” He says there will be discussions about who got one or not, but “when you remove yourself” from the debate, “Michelin validates what we have in Vancouver, internationally.”
But chefs, beware: it’s one of the only awards that can be taken away, as Mijune Pak, a judge on multiple Food Network shows, including Top Chef Canada, reminds us. “You get [an] Oscar, you have that for life,” she explains. “You have a Grammy, you have that for life. The star—next year, you might not have it, and that’s kind of crazy.”
Pak believes all the recognition taken together puts pressure on the city’s kitchens, in a positive way. “I think all these awards Vancouver is being recognized for—it keeps the energy up. I felt like before, there was nothing really a chef could reach for. And you know, a lot of people are going to be like, ‘I don’t care.’ Some people are going to be like, ‘You know, we never needed that recognition, we’re just going to keep whatever we do.’ But no, everybody appreciates the recognition,” she argues.
But anyone in the restaurant business knows there are sweat and tears that precede the prizes. There’s the real business of running a dining establishment, and BC restaurants are still grappling with a lack of labour and a changing economy.
The sector has welcomed various wins that include the ability to permanently buy liquor at wholesale prices last year and a restaurant delivery fee cap, notes Tostenson. However, he says the hospitality industry is still learning how to “create careers that reflect the values of the current culture in the workforce right now, which is work-life balance and meaningful workplaces.”
– Ian Tostenson
“Long term, we need to do a very good job at reminding people how awesome this industry is to work in and remarket ourselves to the public,” he says.
Part of that process, Pak advocates, is ensuring workers are making living wages “without relying on tips” so that “people see it as a professional industry that they can make a living off of.”
Deseree Lo, a chef with Blank Slate Catering and the Top Chef Canada Season 10 runner-up, believes wages in the industry have “improved tremendously,” in part due to the labour crunch. And as for work-life balance, “I think in Canada people have it very good,” she shares. “Of course, there are people who work 10, 12, 15 [hour days]—but that’s by choice.”
For what her peers in the industry can work towards or improve on, Lo says taking risks. “People need to accept differences and diversity. That’s why there are so many successful restaurants in New York or even in Chicago, or LA or Houston, because they’re able to do different things and not really worry about what people think.”
She says to achieve that in a city like Vancouver, it may require some education for patrons, including herself. “But if you explain to me where it’s from, and how it’s done, and why it’s delicious, and the story behind it … I’ll try it.” GS
A Vancouver cocktail legend resets in Mexico
by Mike Usinger
FOOD & DRINK
Dani Tatarin at Gota Gorda in Zipolite, Mexico. Photo by Joseph Nance
As endlessly beautiful as life is in Mexico’s sun-drenched beach community of Zipolite, Dani Tatarin happily admits she’s had to make adjustments since first arriving in 2019.
“The advantage of living in a small little beach town is that it forces you to slow down,” says the West Coastfamous bartender, interviewed at her Zipolite mezcaleria Gota Gorda on an oven-hot afternoon on the Oaxacan coast. “You come from Vancouver, a bigger city, and you’re used to a certain pace of things—whoever you are working with is always on city time. Here, you’re on beach time, which is like island time.”
Vancouver cocktail aficionados know Tatarin as the visionary who helped set up, and then run, the awardwinning, internationally recognized Keefer Bar in Chinatown. Today, her career path has landed her in a place that’s all swaying palm trees, charming dusty roads, and a beach that’s as popular with locals as it is with tourists. Running a bar in a spot that’s a lot like heaven is the dream of every mixologist—professional or aspiring—on the planet, right? Tatarin isn’t going to disagree, noting that one of the great things about her adopted home is that she started to look at the world differently.
“It’s like mañana, mañana, which gets you stepping back, taking a little breather, and going ‘It’s going to happen when it’s going to happen,’” she says. “That’s forced me to be more relaxed, and in general just have a more chill attitude.”
In some ways that couldn’t be more appropriate for what Tatarin is doing at Gota Gorda, a spot that’s fiercely devoted to showcasing artisanal mezcal she sources herself from small Mexican producers.
“Really good mezcal is not something that’s rushed,” she notes. “It takes the tepextate 25 years to mature before they can even start the process of making it into a liquid. So tremendous patience is involved in harvesting mezcal, and making mezcal isn’t something that happens overnight.”
Tatarin first left Vancouver for Mexico to head up the cocktail program for Acre, a sustainability-focused bar and restaurant (co-owned by the Keefer’s Cameron Watt) located just outside of Los Cabos.
“The idea was that I wanted to do a tasting room that incorporated traditional Mexican spirits, but doing traditional Mexican drinks so it was kind of a different experience than you’d get anywhere else,” she says. “I became obsessed with learning about not just mezcal, but raicilla, bacanora—all these similar distillates that are traditional throughout Mexico. But Acre was such a big project. I wasn’t just doing the cocktails and the mezcal—I was also doing the hospitality program, and then I was the operations manager for a couple of years. It was really challenging.”
And so, perhaps because there’s no point being in paradise if you can’t kick back and enjoy it, Tatarin decided to strike out and do her own thing. Initially intending to take out a loan and go big with a place in Los Cabos, she eventually decided it might be smarter to keep things small, leading her to check out Zipolite at the end of 2019.
“Three days after being here I signed the lease, got the keys, and was like ‘I guess I’m moving to Zipolite,’” Tatarin says.
Unlike Vancouver, where liquor laws make setting up a bar endlessly challenging, getting Gota Gorda off the ground was relatively easy. Seventeen days after Tatarin officially moved to Zipolite to work on the space, the bar opened for business.
“After I got the keys,” she says. “I was like ‘What do I have to do to get a business license, and do I need an inspection?’ When a guy came, wearing shorts >>>
>>> and a T-shirt, he was like ‘What are you going to do here?’ I answered, ‘Open a mezcaleria’. He said ‘Okay, turn the music down at 12:30’, then gave me a handwritten note. I paid him 2,000 pesos [Cad.$137], and that was the business license. And that was it. It was a really quick turn around,” Tatarin continues. “I had all I needed—the glasses and the mezcal—so I just needed to put some furniture in to make things look nice.”
Hitting a sweet spot between Architectural Digest-worthy industrial chic and traditional Oaxacan cantina, Gota Gorda is just a one-minute walk from Playa Zipolite, which boasts pristine sand and endlessly rolling waves, and—as the country’s only fully-sanctioned nude beach—a vibe that’s the epitome of bohemian. As idyllic as the town is, Tatarin has made some of her best memories hanging out with small-batch mezcal producers in often-remote places that most tourists will never see.
“I work with something like 10 different families in Oaxaca, and then some in other states,” Tatarin notes. “I don’t buy any mezcal where I haven’t met the family and then seen where it’s made. The process in every state is quite >>>
Gota Gorda is a bar committed to the idea that mezcal is made for sipping, not shooting.
Geographies of Solitude
A FILM BY JACQUELYN MILLS
AN IMMERSION INTO THE RICH ECOSYSTEM OF SABLE ISLAND
“ARRESTING VISUAL AND AURAL STORYTELLING”
- THE GLOBE & MAIL
NOW PLAYING - IN CINEMAS ONLY!
TICKETS AND SHOWTIMES AT VIFF.ORG
1181 SEYMOUR ST. VANCOUVER filmswelike.com >>> different, and also different based on the traditions of different families. Oaxacan mezcal—if you compare the process to Durango or San Luis Potosi—it’s going to be very different, from the plants to the terroir to the way that they ferment and distill it. So I have to be there and see what’s going on so I can explain that on the bottle, or to my staff selling it at the bar.”
Featured at Gota Gorda, and adjacent gift shop, are the different mezcal varietals sourced by Tatarin, all hand-bottled and artfully labelled on site. Of the opinion that all mezcals are created equal? An afternoon over flights at Gota Gorda will quickly shift that thinking, whether you’re sipping artisanal offerings like honey-kissed Cuixe Joven from mezcalero F. Garcia, or the sinfully smoky ancestral Tepextate Joven from L. Vasquez in the town of Sola De Vega.
Mezcal has become big business over the past decade, to the point where celebrities from LeBron James to Cheech Marin to Breaking Bad costars Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul are among those with their own lines.
“When I first came to Mexico and
here it’s all just laid-back. i get up early to see the sun rise
– Dani Tatarin
started learning about mezcal, there were maybe like 150 or 200 brands,” Tatarin says. “Now there’s something like 1,000. Anyone with money who wants a mezcal brand can buy one, and it’s seen as cool to have one. For me, that was never the thing. I fell in love with the product and I wanted to be able to share something that I felt was special. So the process isn’t just about slapping a label on something made in bulk in an industrialized process. It’s more about finding the people and the families who are making mezcal, and who’ve made it for hundreds of years. Then it’s about putting the mezcal in a package where no one goes, ‘We’re going to chug this.’ It’s really all about appreciating it.”
Kind of like the way that Tatarin is more than appreciating life in Zipolite. Living the dream? Absolutely.
“I miss Vancouver, and the places that I used to go to—the Keefer Bar, Chinatown, and Bao Bei, and all the places that I used to go to,” she says. “But I don’t even know if the city would be the same now that I’ve been away for a bit. For me, when I go back to cities now, it’s very much a culture shock. Living here in this little beach town, anytime you leave, it’s like going to the future where they have elevators and running hot water. So I miss cities, but then whenever you get to a city, it’s like, ‘Wow. This is a lot to process.’
“Here it’s all just laid-back,” Tatarin concludes. “I get up early in the morning to see the sun rise, and love the sunsets. You walk the beach with your dog and it’s a chill time. In Mexico beach places it’s not always like you have direct access to the beach. Zipolite isn’t like that. It is its own little vortex with its own special energy.” GS
FOOD & DRINK mocktails for the holidays? Yes please
By Amanda Siebert
For most Canadians, the holidays are a time “to eat, drink, and be merry”—but in this writer’s experience, that has often translated to “eat, drink, and be hung over.” Drinking in excess is very much the norm during the month of December, so for folks who are trying to avoid alcohol, it can be a challenging time. But as more people choose to lead “sober-curious” lives, alcohol-free options abound, and thankfully, they’re infinitely better than your grandad’s near-beer.
SOCIAL PRESSURE ON HIGH
“I think for the majority of people, the pressure to drink is higher during the holidays,” Naomi Grace tells the Straight by phone. Grace is a self-described multisensory medicine-maker, artsy-fartsy rabble-rouser, and sommelier with two decades of experience in the hospitality industry. She has lived an alcohol-free lifestyle for four years and specializes in crafting zero-proof cocktails that offer all the balance and viscosity of their alcoholic counterparts (without the lousy side effects).
“When I worked in the service industry, holiday Christmas parties basically meant ‘booze fest.’ For people who don’t drink, there weren’t many options,” she says. “It can feel very isolating, and often people who are planning office parties don’t think about folks who don’t drink unless they don’t drink themselves.”
Fiona Hepner is a co-founder of Sansorium, a Vancouver-based online retailer of non-alcoholic wine, beer, cider, spirits, mixers, and cocktails who, like Grace, avoids alcohol. Although she knew from the age of 17 that it wasn’t for her, the social pressure to drink was omnipresent.
“I did drink for a while until I was pregnant, and then I felt this huge weight lifted off my shoulders,” she says. Learning about the term “sober curious” gave Hepner the language to talk about her relationship with alcohol.
“I really wanted to be myself and feel authentic when I went out, so you’ll still see me dancing on tables without it,” she says. “I found innate joy in myself that was already uninhibited. When I took alcohol out, people wondered what I was on.” (She says people are often shocked when she responds with, “It’s just me.”)
Multisensory artist Naomi Grace enjoys a zero-proof cocktail. Photo by Amanda Siebert
ZERO-PROOF DOESN’T MEAN ZERO FUN
Until recently, alternatives to alcohol haven’t exactly been sexy, and part of the problem has to do with the language we use to describe them. For Grace, the word “mocktail” is a prime example of the insinuation that something is less-than because of its absence of alcohol.
“‘Mock’ denotes something fake, and that for a drink to be legitimate, it needs to have alcohol,” she says. “There’s so much to the act of sharing drinks as a group. There’s the ritualistic aspect, the communal aspect, the chemistry aspect, the artistic aspect, and the sensory aspect. Alcohol is just one part of the cocktail.”
This idea was something Hepner came up against when starting Sansorium: “There’s so much language around sobriety attached to abstinence implying less fun, less adventure, less experience; that it wasn’t as beautiful, as sensual, or as sexy.” Her curated online shop is a counterpoint to the idea that alcohol is required to have a good time.
“Alcohol inspires us to think it’s going to make us more comfortable, when in fact, that’s probably happening for about 30 minutes. That’s definitely not the case at 2am, and probably won’t be the next day,” says Hepner.
Sansorium’s alcohol-free lineup offers a way to extend the comfort and pleasure of the drinking experience, she says: “It’s something that reflects the technicolour version of life that I think being alcohol-free means.” FLAVOURS FOR THE HOLIDAYS
If you think it’s impossible to recreate holiday classics like spiced eggnog, mulled wine, or a rich stout without ethanol, Sansorium’s collection is out to prove you wrong. But it’s not spirits or beer the shop is known for—it’s the wines.
“We put a lot of focus on high-quality wines,” says Hepner. One customer favourite, Australia’s Edenvale, has been creating non-alcoholic wine for more than 13 years and has won several international awards.
“Their sparkling Shiraz is one of the best non-alcoholic wines I’ve tasted to date,” she says. “It’s definitely a full-bodied experience, and we know especially in the reds, it’s hard to achieve that when you take out alcohol.” It’s the sparkling whites, though, that Hepner considers the “gateway” from alcoholic to nonalcoholic wines for their flavour profile, consistency, palate, and tone.
One of Grace’s favourite holiday beverages is inspired by her AfroCaribbean roots.
“Something we drink every Christmas is called sorrel, a cultivar of hibiscus known by many names throughout the African diaspora,” she says. “It’s a red drink made from hibiscus tea, and the way that I grew up drinking it was boiled with cinnamon, cloves, orange peel, and allspice.”
To transform it into a zero-proof cocktail, Grace blends in ginger beer and a zero-proof spiced rum—a drink she’s named the Rosemary Brown, after the first Black woman in Canada to be elected to a provincial legislature.
“I think alcohol is here to stay because it’s steeped in tradition, but if event planners are willing to offer more options, it’s going to allow more people to feel included, and it’s also better for their bottom line,” says Grace.
“I’m glad to see there are more elevated non-alcoholic options available. It’s a market that hasn’t been fully tapped into yet, but it’s a market that’s always been there.” GS
Find the recipe for the Rosemary Brown and other zero-proof drinks online at straight.com.
