Upscale fast food comes with a view
Were Popina Canteen to live up to its name, it would be a scene. In ancient Rome, popinas were dens of iniquity with patrons behaving badly — drinking, eating, debauching — the whole darn mess. About 120 of these joints remain preserved for posterity in Pompeii should you care to visit.
The Popina I speak of is on Granville Island, and there’s a relic of hedonism in the eating and drinking. Popina Canteen is four shipping containers, wrought into an outdoor fast-ish food spot, overlooking False Creek.
It’s been open for more than a month and the focus is on pristine seafood.
Added up, there’s 80 years of serious-minded culinary experience behind the food — the total number of cooking years the four top-tier chefs behind the project share. They’re Robert Belcham (Campagnolo, Campagnolo Roma, Monarch Burger), Angus An (Maenam, Longtail, Freebird, Fat Mao), Hamid Salimian (impressive Vancouver Community College Culinary Arts instructor, Earls consultant), and Joel Watanabe (Bao Bei, Kissa Tanto). They’re a power pack.
Their goal? To give fast food a makeover.
“That sector of the market is completely lacking in quality and integrity,” Belcham says. “It’s abysmal. Fast food isn’t a four-letter word.”
Popina (not to be mistaken for Pepino’s which recently opened to Instagram thunder on the East Side) does have the moves of fast food but don’t expect the prices of food court chains. There are four categories on the menu — sandwiches, seafood, toast (with toppings, of course), and salads. Prices are mostly in the $12 range but veer wildly off the fast-food course with the seafood platters at $120 for two and $180 for four. More on that later.
The chefs collaborated, adding their strong suits to the menu. For example, Belcham contributed a cheeseburger ($12, from Monarch Burger); Angus An did a lobster roll ($26); Watanabe, a falafel sandwich ($12); and Salimian, a chicken-fried Humboldt squid ($12).
“We did tasting after tasting,” says Belcham, “offered suggestions, tweaked. The whole idea was to do something super fun and extremely tasty and healthy.”
One thing’s for sure. Ingredients do not come off a GFS truck. They’re fresh from farmers or the sea.
I didn’t order the seafood platter or whole crab or lobster (both market prices were $55) because for me, that’s just asking for a dry cleaning bill. Nor did I choose the Peel and Eat B.C. pink shrimps by the pound.
I had lobster in much tidier form as a lobster roll ($26, roll made by Bread Affair). Other seafood appear on Terra Bread toast ($12).
The pink shrimp salad on toast and another, olive oilpoached albacore tuna with pickled onions and capers showcased the best of B.C. seafood. Belcham feels pink shrimp plays poor cousin to spot prawns because size matters.
“It’s maligned and thought of as cheap cocktail shrimp. I totally disagree,” says Belcham. “It’s delicious and has a better texture if treated properly.” (That is, frozen at sea in sea water and hand peeled, not by machine).
One dish that didn’t thrill was the chicken fried Humboldt squid ($12). It’s called chicken fried for the way it’s battered — usually it’s a dry to wet to dry coating (flour, egg, bread crumbs; this goes from wet to dry to wet for a crispier result. The squid was good but the gluten-free coating wasn’t as delicate as I’d prefer and the dish had too many shrapnels of hard, broken bits of batter.
Salads ($12 to $15) are equal to what you’d find in a very good restaurant, albeit not in a takeout container.
I ask Belcham if the seafood platters ($120 for two) stray from the notion of casual fast food.
“The reason (for putting it on the menu),” he said, “is we have some of the best real estate on Granville Island. You can drink beer or sparkling wine, tear apart a crab or lobster, watch the boats go by. It’s the most civilized thing you can do in Vancouver. People who love seafood are loving it, and it’s selling very well. People understand seafood is expensive.”
The chefs have the coming fall and winter to consider. They’ll be putting up more shelter and providing heat but it’ll be a challenge to make outdoor dining alluring.
Oh, dessert — there’s one, the puff cream: soft ice cream in a cream puff “bowl”.
“We’re trying to make it into something of an icon for Vancouver,” Belcham says. To be honest, I would have preferred a soft ice cream cone with a satisfying crunch.
There will be specials coming but Popina is facing a labour shortage like everyone else in the industry as they get going.
The place is licensed and you can get house-made bottled cocktails, exclusive beers by Powell Street Brewery and Joie wines.
And, this just in, Popina’s just getting started. In the fall, there will be another under a new concept.
“Popina is very transformable under different concepts,” Belcham says.
As to where and what Popina 2 will be, it was off the record.