Metro newbies that tickled our tastebuds
2016 additions to the local dining scene were a diverse bunch
Picks for best new restaurants for this year mirror our morphing demography and subsequently our tastebuds.
Six of the Top 10 are Asian — that is Japanese, Chinese, Japanese/ Italian, Japanese/French and Vietnamese. Dishes like char siu, Hunan chicken, sashimi, ramen, banh xeo and banh mi aren’t even ethnic or foreign any longer — it’s really Vancouver cuisine. We’ll really have arrived when we’re comfortable with snake wine, squirming octopus (at the risk of suction cups choking you to death) and balut (unhatched chick in an egg).
Mott 32, a highbrow Chinese restaurant that’s promised to take Chinese food to another level, was expected to open in Trump International Hotel and Tower in the fall. The opening is now Jan. 18, two days before Donald Trump’s U.S. presidential inauguration.
But Vancouver diners are happiest taking their culinary highs in lowbrow casual spots. Places like Mott 32 and David Hawksworth’s grand Nightingale restaurants are few and far between.
Heritage Asian Eatery is the least expensive of the newcomers (great Asian rice bowl dishes), but it’s got me hooked. The chef’s worked in Michelin-starred restaurants and in some of Vancouver’s most sophisticated kitchens, but he’s channelling his accumulated experience into delicious, simple, rustic food that he’d like to eat himself.
Kissa Tanto performs a deft highwire act, balancing two unlikely cuisines (Japanese and Italian) in a cool, sultry room with lots of soul, conjuring a retro jazzy era.
Makoto Ono is another chef with top-notch credentials (most recently the chef at avant-garde Pidgin restaurant), but his new spot Mak N Ming is unpretentious (850 square feet, 28 seats, a kitchen made for two skinny chefs). He throws his creative energy into three- and six-course tasting menus, his Japanese heritage weaving in and out of French techniques.