Grazing in Yaletown
Twenty-six restaurants participating in Taste of Yaletown, which goes to Oct. 27
From its iconic brick buildings to its stunning views over False Creek, downtown Vancouver’s trendy Yaletown neighbourhood is not short on places to explore or food to eat.
The Yaletown Business Improvement Association recently invited me to experience Yaletown and to visit a few of the restaurants featured during the 13th annual Taste of Yaletown, a two-week event featuring 26 local restaurants, running until Oct. 27.
The focus of many menus featured during this year’s event is on sharing dishes, said Annette O’Shea, executive director of YBIA.
“It allows people to try a few more things if they know they’re sharing,” she said. “It’s now more about grazing rather than a meal.”
Most of the restaurants are featuring three or four courses, so there is a lot of food to share.
After checking into Opus, a boutique hotel in the heart of Yaletown, my husband and I popped over to House Special, a new Vietnamese restaurant run by two siblings whose parents have been in the restaurant business in Vancouver for 30 years.
“My brother and I thought it was time to go off on our own and start a restaurant,” said co-owner Victoria Do. “We’ve taken a lot of recipes that my mom has worked with for a long time and put a more modern spin on them.”
We started with a flavourful Sunday dumpling, a steamed rice flour dumpling filled with ground pork, shrimp and jicama served with an Asian fish sauce and coconut milk.
Next up were four pho soup dumplings served on spoons.
Instead of the typical rice noodles found in pho, handmade beef and pork balls were wrapped with steamed rice flour wrappers.
“It’s all the flavours of pho in one bite,” Do said.
Next, was my personal favourite, an egg-wrapped radish cake that tasted like an upscale hashbrown.
Shredded radish was formed into a rectangle and pan fried to get a crispy coating around the edges.
It was wrapped in a thin egg omelette, topped with onions, shredded papaya, carrots, basil and sweet soy sauce.
For our fourth course, we had pork meatballs braised in a traditional Vietnamese tomato soup with boiled quail eggs and a fresh, hot baguette.
For dessert, Do served a delicious red bean paste cinnamon bun topped with condensed milk cream cheese icing and sweet shredded coconut.
During Taste of Yaletown, a $45 menu is available at House Special, including Mekong wonton, a shrimp and monkfish dish with pineapple and tomatoes, a caramelized charbroiled pork jowl, a Vietnamese herb-crusted beef tenderloin and persimmon panna cotta for dessert.
We could have stayed at House Special all day eating everything on the menu, but we had to save a bit of room for some liquid nitrogen ice cream Made by Mister.
“There’s no air injected into the cream, so what you eat is 100 per cent ice cream,” said manager Jean Benoit while mist billowed out of the KitchenAid mixer bowl as he poured the liquid nitrogen into the cream mixture.
We tested out the best-seller, a smooth creme brulee ice cream, made on site with egg yolks and vanilla beans.
We then took advantage of the sunshine and the complimentary bicycles offered to guests of Opus Hotel and went for a ride along the seawall from Yaletown to Stanley Park.
That evening’s dinner was at Fayuca, a Mexican restaurant.
We started with guacamole mixed with toasted pumpkin seeds and Macedonian feta, served with house-made crispy sunchokes.
Next up was grilled cactus with halloumi cheese, avocado and charred salsa verde, followed by grilled cauliflower and braised beef cheeks with butternut squash gnocchi and broccolini.
A slice of flourless chocolate cake topped with a chili chocolate mousse was the definite highlight of the night.
Taste of Yaletown guests can choose from either the guacamole or grilled cactus for an appetizer, flank steak with slowly roasted purple cabbage or grilled cauliflower for the entree and the chocolate cake for dessert for $45.
We then took a short walk to Brix and Mortar for some after-dinner drinks.
During Taste of Yaletown, Brix and Mortar is pairing B.C. wines with its entrees, one of which is a Chardonnay from West Kelowna’s Mission Hill winery.
Along with featuring dozens of menu items, Taste of Yaletown is also an annual fundraiser for the Greater Vancouver Food Bank.
The event has raised about $120,000 in 13 years.
“It’s really important to the chefs and the businesses here that nobody want for food,” said O’Shea. “The Greater Vancouver Food Bank does a really good job at using the money to get a lot more food hampers out there and stretch the food out.”
The restaurants are also participating in food recovery programs so that unused food is picked up and distributed to people in need.
For more information about Taste of Yaletown, go online to yaletowninfo.com.