FINE FOOD, FAIR PRICES
Top chefs explore affordable options.
Once upon a time, the gushiest kudos were lavished upon culinary jewelry, beauties on a plate so immaculately composed you hesitated ripping it apart with knife and fork. Prices for such finery floated into the 30- somethings.
The recession blindsided us a few years back and dealt some knockout blows to restaurants, but on the flip side, it gave birth to a new breed of budget restaurants: some of them, repositioned high- end restaurants and chefs.
Diners were treated to serial epiphanies of imaginative, lowcost, casual dishes by skilled chefs ( mostly in Vancouver), serving delicious gourmet grub, the sort you attack like a terrier.
These chefs might otherwise have been primping plates dotted with foam and pressed watermelon cubes. Some just did what came naturally, making affordable, delicious food.
Street food has been a big part of this trend.
Diners found excitement in delicious, inexpensive food and it clicked with our T- shirts and jeans way of being. A similar trend democratized great eating in Paris when France hit economic hard times several years ago. Three- Michelin star chefs opened up their own affordable bistros in humbler settings. But in Vancouver, there’s so much more variety and it’s so much more affordable, especially for the younger crowds who think of restaurants and bars as their living rooms.
It’s been quite some time since I last wrote in my weekly restaurant column about a high- end restaurant opening. Even the restaurants where I expected high prices ( like Pidgin, for instance, with its refined, cutting- edge food) kept prices reined in. Most restaurant openings have been in lower- rent districts such as Gastown, the Downtown Eastside, East Vancouver and Main Street.
Some chefs even operate as pop- ups or underground restaurants bypassing the monthly rent issue.
Street food might have swelled our expectations of good value: The cheap thrills ( like $ 10 and less) of eating Kick- ass Rice ( with pork belly or popcorn chicken cooked in sake, butter, dashi and topped with a poached egg waiting to permeate the works) at Le Tigre, or a free- run pulled pork Aussie pie with minty coleslaw from the Aussie Pie Guy, or halibut coconut milk curry from Vij’s Railroad Express, created a mindshift toward supercasual, delicious, fun dining.
Andrea Carlson was once an elite chef, walking the walk of local and sustainable cooking, at somewhat exclusive restaurants such as Raincity Grill and Bishop’s.
She left that behind to operate Harvest Community Foods, an organic store and ramen shop, and recently, Burdock, an organic- centric restaurant serving refined, affordable dishes ($ 10 to $ 20).
In her case, she wasn’t just following a post- recessionary market. She was addressing another development in the consumer market.
“A lot of people shop at the farmers’ markets, they care about local products and their health. It just makes sense and it’s food that should be available in restaurants to everybody, not just at exclusive places,” she says.
At Burdock, shopping organically at farmers’ markets is a tightrope walk of cost and affordability, although it creates dishes worthy of fine dining. Dishes cost under $ 20.
“We pay the same as anyone else at the farmers’ markets and we have to be extra- diligent in planning our menu,” she says. Cherries this season were twice the price she expected at the markets ( rain and frost came during the blossom) so instead of making full- fledged cherry desserts or pitching them into a lot of dishes, she’s offering cherry soda.
“People are delighted,” she says, of the affordable, sustainable food with a high- end sensibility. “Cost isn’t such a big deal for some of my guests but they’re excited to have this casual option.”
Other restaurants maintain quality with a focused, imaginative menu. Meat & Bread’s diurnal lunch lineups out the door attest to doing one thing really well — making fantastic sandwiches. Nelson The Seagull, too, hooks people with its wonderful house- made breads from which they make great sandwiches. Like many of these good- value spots, Nelson The Seagull has a lot of character, good music and youthful energy.
Pizzas, too, just keep getting better. Nicli Antica Pizzeria, Pizzeria Farina, Via Tevere, and even the food truck, PazzaRella, are building toothsome pizzas.
Bestie, which I’ll soon be reviewing, has a tiny, tight menu of house- made sausages only ( and lineups flow out the door). All right, all right, you can also get fat pretzels and sauerkraut, too. But that’s it! The city’s comfort with ethnic foods allows chefs to improvise, borrow, steal and offer a huge variety of great, affordable food. The Union gives you diversity in a bowl: Cha Ca Fish, a famous northern Vietnamese dish; butter chicken over steamed rice; nasi goring; and Shanghai noodles and bahn mi are also on board.
Tacos were reborn to be goshdarn delicious and fresh ( I’m talking about you, Tacofino and La Taqueria!) and though tacos might present a slight threat to the king of cheap eats — the burger — the latter isn’t going anywhere. StackHouse Burger Bar zeros in on them, exclusively.
Rumpus Room, on Main Street ( you’ll find it by looking for pink flamingos), builds character, garage sale by garage sale. The look is entirely eclectic, but good music and vibes create appeal as do primitive- instinct dishes such as chicken and waffles and deepfried pickles. There’s a sense of nuttiness that is literal in the case of the peanut butter burger with beef and PB.
Today, in this section, I write about Van Soba, the first freshmade soba noodle joint operating out of Tama Organic Life in North Vancouver. That’s pretty much all you get at the eensy food counter unless there’s extra buckwheat and the chef makes buckwheat cookies with them.
Keeping with the theme of cheap and delish, next week I’m on to a great little hole- in- thewall in Strathcona, with a distinct flare for Korean- inspired dishes. Guess you’ll have to keep tuned for that one!