Spirit of Aloha | Articles | Adventures in Dining | January/Feburary 2005

Adventures in Dining
By: JOHN WATSON

Dining Out with the Yaletown Natives

Vancouver's Yaletown eateries serve up everything from duck confit salad to brasserie items with exotic Asian touches.

When traveling, one simple rule will keep you in good stead: avoid restaurants filled with tourists and head instead where the natives go, because they know. In Vancouver, you can’t go wrong dining in Yaletown, a trendy district beloved by the locals and yet to be discovered by the tourist buses.

Yaletown got its name in the 19th century, when the Canadian Pacific Railroad moved its steam locomotive yards and repair facilities here from Yale, just over 100 miles away, and warehouses sprung up around them. Today, with a grassroots renovation in full swing, those once-rundown buildings house shining boutiques, clothing designers, architectural offices, galleries, spas, hair salons, home-furnishing stores, microbreweries high-tech companies, a BMW Mini Cooper showroom, the trendy Opus Hotel, sidewalk cafés and a great many restaurants. Ringed by new high-rise condos and other emerging residential options, the area is often referred to as Vancouver’s own SoHo or West End.

Yaletown may have the feel of a work in progress, but its best dining establishments are quite the opposite, characterized by chefs at the top of their game who showcase their creations in casually elegant rooms reflecting the ambiance of the neighborhood.

Nowhere is that more evident than at Elixir in the Opus Hotel (322 Davie St., 604-642-6787), where award-winning chef Don Letendre serves up a French bistro menu influenced by his travels around the world. A Vancouver native who apprenticed in Japan, he’s served as the executive chef at Vancouver’s Moustache Café, specializing in French-Mediterranean cuisine. Letendre’s menus include brasserie dishes with Asian and Middle Eastern touches, including spiced lamb sirloin with couscous, duck confit salad with candied walnuts, and oven-roasted halibut with fennel, roasted tomato and clams.

"My goal is to provide comfort food with exotic flavors,” explains the 37-year-old chef. “And the ideal place to do it is in Vancouver, where we have the freshest fish, the best selection of produce and the widest variety of international products.”

The Blue Water Café (1095 Hamilton St., 604-688-8078) is a coolly romantic room serving some of the best seafood in the region. Declared one of the world’s hottest new restaurants by Condé Nast Traveler not long after its 2000 opening, it won the Birks Silver Spoon Award, given by city concierges, as 2003’s Best Restaurant in Vancouver.

Heading up the colorful open kitchen is German-born executive chef Frank Pabst, who learned classical French techniques while working in Michelin-starred restaurants in the Cote d’Azur. He moved to Vancouver in 1993 to work first at the Four Seasons, then at the critically acclaimed Lumiere and Pastis. Joining the Blue Water Café at the end of 2003, he has brought the restaurant’s reputation for superb Northwest regional dining to new heights, with dishes such as arctic char on creamed celeriac with crunchy mushrooms.

Chef proprietor Pino Posteraro has turned Cioppino’s (1133 Hamilton St., 604-688-7466) into the neighborhood’s most highly regarded regional Italian eatery, winning 2003 and 2004 Vancouver Magazine Restaurant Awards as best Italian restaurant. As the magazine puts it, “On any given night, this is one of the city’s top restaurants—thank classics such as poached halibut with crispy artichokes or bass and shellfish in a bouillabaisse broth.” Winning appetizers include a wild lettuce salad with Stilton and pear slices, and pan-seared scallops with marinated yellow and red peppers and warm potato salad.

Other Yaletown dining options include award-winning C (1600 Howe St., 604-681-1164), just on the border of Yaletown in a beautiful spot overlooking the waters of False Creek, specializing in the freshest seafood cooked up by critically acclaimed executive chef Robert Clark; Circolo (1116 Mainland St., 604-687-1116), serving French and Italian cuisine in an inviting, tastefully designed room; and Shiru-Bay (1193 Hamilton St., 604-408-9315), featuring Japanese izakaya, or pub-style, foods, including roasted salmon, marinated “masa-style.”

JOHN WATSON, a San Francisco-based food and travel writer, has written for Bon Appetit, Food & Wine and the food sections of The New York Times, Los Angeles Times and San Jose Mercury News.

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