Vancouver Sun - Homer St. Cafe and Bar

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|| ARTS & LIFE
0 | BREAKING NEWS: VANCOUVERSUN.COM
| SATURDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2013
REVIEWS
The ABCs of best new restaurants
From light French cuisine to simple comfort food, there’s something for every taste and budget
MIA STAINSBY
VANCOUVER SUN
Absinthe Bistro
1260 Commercial Dr. | 604-566-9053
Info: bistroabsinthe.com
France, being the world’s vault for bistro
fairy dust, is where owner/chef Cory
Pearson headed after finishing culinary
school in Vancouver. Pearson’s food isn’t
overpowered by butter or heavy sauces;
it’s light, technically intelligent and tasty.
The very short menu changes over the
month but the scallops with heavenly
mashed potatoes, and beurre blanc are
a cling-on dish by popular demand. You
can have a two or a three-course meal
for $28 and $35, respectively. That’s an
awesome deal if the food is above the
ordinary and, I can assure you, it is.
Ask For Luigi
305 Alexander St. | 604-428-2544
Info: askforluigi.com
Ask not for Luigi, but for Jean Christophe
Poirier. Luigi is a made-up name but
the guy behind this pasta and appiesfocused spot is J.C., as he’s called, and he’s
toiled in some of Canada’s finest restaurants (Toque in Montreal, Lumiere under
Rob Feenie in Vancouver) but like many
other chefs, he’s been flexing his culinary
muscles in casual venues (Pourhouse,
Pizzeria Farina) in recent years. His pasta
is made daily, including an unparalleled
gluten free tagliatelle, which he’ll match
with the pasta sauces on offer.
GERRY KAHRMANN/PNG FILES
Matt Ellis prepares meals in the open kitchen at the Homer St. Café and Bar that features comfort food including shortribs with mushroom pie.
Bistro Wagon Rouge
1869 Powell St. | 604-251-4070
No website
It’s another brick in the gentrification
wall in East Van. Here, Brad Miller is in
his element with French bistro food. He
still runs Red Wagon, his lower-brow
café that’s always packed for his hearty
breakfasts and lunches. At Wagon Rouge,
the food is classic bistro, a slam dunk for
1(:
Miller, once chef at Bistro Pastis for five
years. He moved into the space vacated
by The Dockers Café, which was popular
with nearby dockworkers. Miller preserves
that slice of history, retaining a well-worn
feel. It could be parachuted into a little
French village, or maybe Marseilles, and
be right at home.
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Burdock & Co.
2702 Main St. | 604-879-0077
Info: burdockandco.com
In the largely male fiefdom of chefs,
Andrea Carlson is right up there at the
top of the heap. Her food has been more
accessible since she moved from the fine
dining realms (Bishop’s, Raincity Grill) to
more affordable cuisine. She makes the
best gluten-free apple pie ever. Whether
it’s fresh shucked oysters with finger-lime
caviar, radish, chickweed, apple and verbena sorbet; or fried chicken thighs with
charred chili vinegar, aioli and pickles,
she’s totally in control.
Cuchillo
$ 5 7
261 Powell St. | 604-559-7585
Info: Cuchillo.ca
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NICK PROCAYLO/PNG FILES
The Bibimbap with Korean ribs at the Dunlevy Snackbar.
Owner/chef Stu Irving cooks like his
personality — bold and assertive. He’s
cooked at Bin 941, Wild Rice and he
rocked the Latin menu at Cobre. At
Cuchillo, he picks up where he left off at
Cobre (before the lease was terminated).
Between the closing (of Cobre) and the
opening (of Cuchillo), Irving introduced
a new menu at Number 5 Orange strip
club, a menu that kept patrons from
escaping for lunch elsewhere. At Cuchillo,
the small plates lean toward Mexican
food but he brings in Peruvian, Chilean
and Colombian dishes, too.
Dinesty on Robson
Dunlevy Snackbar
1719 Robson St. | 604-669-7769
No website
433 Dunlevy St. | 604-569-0434
Info: dunlevysnackbar.com
This restaurant is feverishly busy, both
in Richmond and now, in Vancouver. It
doesn’t scale the heights of best Chinese
(Shanghainese in this case) food, but the
food is mouth-watering, all the same. If
you haven’t tried a xiao bun (one of those
Chinese marvels, a dumpling that holds
a soup), add it to your bucket list. You
don’t find a lot of these babies around
Vancouver. And for another theatrical
presentation, the yellow croaker is a
deboned whole fish, sandwiched inside
basketry, deep-fried and presented in the
basket. Wicked!
OK, so it’s a hole-in-the-wall. Nothing
wrong with that if the food gets you all
excited. The “snack bar” serves Korean
food in a room that hasn’t changed much
from its days as a “little old lady hair salon”
(owner Theo Lloyd-Kohls’ words). It’s not
quite Momofuku but the food is yummy,
the ambience arty, and it beats eating
under the big yellow ‘M’ for about the
same price. This was a breakfast joint until
it got the all-clear for a liquor licence this
year. That’s when chef Aarin Smith went
to work creating a vibrant dinner menu.
The bibimbap brought me to my knees.
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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2013
| BREAKING NEWS: VANCOUVERSUN.COM
ARTS & LIFE ||
| 0
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Farmer’s Apprentice
1535 West Sixth Ave. | 604-620-2070
Info: farmersapprentice.ca
It’s death defying for a chef to spin out
new dishes daily and on the spot. The
business dies unless the chef is really
experienced, creative, and can nail the
dishes. In David Gunawan’s case, it’s
check, check, check. The food is haute
(hay-smoked quail is certainly no diner
dish) but the tone of the room is casual
enough for jeans and going outside to
say hello to Gyoza (who is his dog, chilling patiently on the patio). In summer,
farmers decide the fate of the menu.
They bring in what’s at peak and Gunawan transforms them. He manned the
kitchens at West and Wildebeest before
opening his own place. While Wildebeest
was more about beasts, Farmer’s Apprentice tends to love vegetables more and
gives them a lot of love. One evening, I
had a composition of white beets, kohlrabi, verjus sorbet and honey yogurt; it
was like Michelin-starred veggies. On the
other hand, the Shaoxing wine-braised
pork terrine with pickled veg was a drool
fest for meat lovers.
MARK VAN MANEN/PNG
Burdock & Co. on Main St. is a lively
spot where Chef Andrea Carlson
serves dishes like oysters with radish
and Kasu.
PIDGIN
350 Carrall St. | 604-620-9400
Info: pidginvancouver.com
The target of protesters against gentrification in the Downtown Eastside but Pidgin
has won more supporters than avoiders.
But it is indeed an anomaly of haute food
(albeit at mid-range prices) amid poverty.
Chef Makoto Ono will serve you dishes
you’ve never met before, such as sea
urchin with cauliflower mousse, ponzu
jalapeno salsa, dashi and paper-thin
slices of cauliflower or yakisoba inspired
calamari with bacon, squid ink sauce. For
patrons to have pushed past the placard
waving and name-calling, there’s gotta
be alluring food inside. And there is.
Homer St. Café & Bar
898 Homer St. | 604-428-4299
Info: homerstreetcafebar.com
In the tumult of the nervous economy
of a few years ago, we discovered our
restaurant bliss point at casual, affordable places. Homer St. Café was about as
fancy as it got in 2013 and it’s a bistro,
albeit a pretty fancy one, anchored by a
fire-engine red Rotisol Grande Flamme
Olympia roasting multiple spits of free
range chicken. The lower level of the
bistro is clean and chic in white Carrera
marble; the upper level is more conservative in dark wood. The executive chef is
Marc Andre Choquette of Tableau at the
Loden Hotel. Homer St. Café celebrates
comfort foods (like shortribs with mushroom pie in a cast iron casserole and
garganelli pasta with lobster).
KIM STALLKNECHT/PNG FILES
The Dinesty on Robson restaurant is a busy spot with large glass windows showcasing the chefs at work. Included in
the Shanghai-style menu are hard-to-find xiao buns, delicious dumplings with soup inside.
Kessel & March
1701 Powell St. | 604-874-1197
Info: kesselandmarch.com
Considering the live-work artists’ studio
in the building, Kessel & March leans
toward bohemian. The food, however,
isn’t low rent. Chef/operator Tony Marzo
has paid dues in the culinary boot camps
of several Michelin-starred restaurants
in London, including a stint where he
plucked perfect tulip petals and readied
them for filling and steaming. He has also
cooked at Café Brio in Victoria (at a time
when it was my favourite restaurant in
the city). Kessel & March has the feel of a
café but the chopped-up lay-out isn’t the
most intimate. However, the small plates
encourage closeness. He frequently
changes up the dishes but his soups are
really creamy and velvety and if he’s got
ricotta gnocchi on, it should be tried.
LONGTAIL KITCHEN
810 Quayside, New West. | 604-553-3855
Info: longtailkitchen.com
I’ll take a pass on the real Longtail taxis of
Thailand (noisy, smelly, demonic drivers) but I do love Longtail Kitchen. But
it’s a long-distance romance for me and
it’s a cross I must bear. Chef Angus An
(of Maenam Thai restaurant) celebrates
Thai food, street-style at the New West
Quay, only it’s better than most you’ll
find on Bangkok streets. A clam bake for
two, grilled hen, fish curry on rice, crispy
chicken wings, oysters po’ boy style — all
delicious!
L’Ufficio
3687 West Fourth Ave. | 604-676-1007
Info: Laquercia.ca/lufficio.html
Run by Adam Pegg and Lucais Syme,
who channel artisanal Italian food at La
Quercia and La Pentola. They opened
this little place, next door to La Quercia,
a great spot to stop in for Italian wine,
cheese, charcuterie and antipasti. A must
try is the culatello di Zibello, a beautiful
cured ham, with fresh-from-Italy burrata.
For those who are more famished, there
are some big-appetite dishes, too, from
the La Quercia kitchen.
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