FASCINATION STREET
The new room is handsome, sprawling and already busy
Boulevard takes the baton from Fleuri at the Sutton Place Hotel, with a menu and flair set to impress the high- end crowd.
Sutton Place Hotel, 845 Burrard St., 604- 642- 2900, vancouver.suttonplace.com
Open: for breakfast, lunch and dinner, daily.
So what’s a chef most recently with Moxie’s Grill and Bar chain restaurants doing at Boulevard Kitchen & Oyster Bar at the Sutton Place Hotel, where power suits and sommeliers trump hipsters in plaid?
Before Moxie’s, Alex Chen was the executive chef at the la- di- da Beverly Hills Hotel, where generations of Hollywood stars, movers, shakers and the Fortune 100 club wined and dined. “I had one of the best jobs in Southern California with a staff of 60 cooks and eight sous chefs,” he says. “It’s a very, very busy place.”
But in 2011, he had starry ideas of his own — to compete in the Bocuse d’Or, oft referred to as the culinary Olympics. That meant forfeiting his six- figure salary, moving back to Vancouver and clearing the deck to train up for the international competition. Moxie’s allowed him to do that in exchange for consultation and some culinary development work in their kitchen. ( Moxie’s Madeira chicken rigatoni and short rib stuffed burger with truffle horseradish are Chen’s.)
Long and short, Chen competed in the 2013 Bocuse d’Or and finished ninth out of 24. That chapter of his life done, he’s back to cooking in a highend restaurant.
Boulevard takes the baton from Fleuri, which had been in need of updating for a number of years. The chocolate buffet was still a draw for chocoholics — I went last year with children who loved the idea of all the chocolate desserts they could eat. ( Turned out they were quite restrained.)
The restaurant now is autonomous from the hotel with an operational divide. The ever- popular Gerard Lounge is part of restaurant operations. ( The Gaglardi family, who operate Northland Properties Group, own the hotel as well as the Sandman Inn hotel chain, Moxie’s and Denny’s.)
Boulevard’s director of operations, Steve Edwards, brings restaurant cred from management roles at Cibo Trattoria, Araxi, Bearfoot Bistro and Cin-Cin restaurants. He’s mum on the price tag of the overhaul of the restaurant space, but I can tell you, it’s handsome, sprawling and very busy. There’s room enough for servers to gear into an elegant, purposeful glide.
It was a jolting experience after a few years covering serial hipster restaurant openings with fly- by- night 20- something servers. Here, servers virtually click their heels to be at your service and you feel they must make a very good living. They come to tableside halts, checking to see if everything’s fine. Study the wine list too long and the sommelier’s right there. Disappear to the washroom and napkins are refolded upon return.
On a second visit, a server remembered the wine I’d ordered previously. You feel like a somebody even if ( obviously) you’re not.
I wondered about the viability of high- end restaurants with the stampeding trend toward casual, fun places with great food. Boulevard doesn’t seem to be suffering one little bit. The restaurant ( with 220 seats if you include Gerard Lounge and the private rooms) was buzzing two months after opening.
On a first visit I thought they could do no wrong in the kitchen.
The oyster bar — front and centre in the main dining area — does a stellar job. It’s headed by ( Oyster) Bob Skinner, who spent 27 years at Joe Fortes and is a two- time world champ in oyster shucking.
“He can listen to oysters,” Chen says. “He can tell if there’s not enough juice. He sends back product all the time.”
The ones I sampled tasted of cool, fresh, briny ocean.
Part of the success in attracting the crowds is the familiar food, dressed to impress.
Take the too- familiar chicken wings. Oh, my gosh! My so- so attitude to chicken wings had done a 180 when I had wings at Pok Pok in Portland. I got the recipe and make them myself now. But Boulevard’s are even better.
“I grew up with Phnom Penh ( a Cambodian-Vietnamese restaurant in Vancouver) chicken wings,” Chen says.
“I took that and went at it. I love, love, love caramel fish sauce. I marinate the wings for 24 hours and they’re cooked until the meat falls off the bone.”
Often with chicken wings I’ll rip a lot of the skin off, but not these babies, lacquered with sticky, slightly sour, caramelly sauce. I chomped from skin to bone.
Chen is partial to seafood, and it shows on the menu.
The lobster, rock fish and prawns in the bouillabaisse were cooked perfectly and the broth had a lovely depth. The Snake River Farm Berkshire pork chop was at least 10 centimetres thick, moist and crowned with some crackling. The designy rectangle of pea purée, stencilled onto the plate, seemed too refined for the big hunk of meat. And for dessert, a shared calamansi tart was not only a beauty, it tasted good, too.
A second visit wasn’t a home run. Calamari à la plancha ( stuffed with chorizo and beet greens) is seared on a scorching hot plancha griddle that rockets up to 315 C. It’s served with piquillo pepper ketchup and panisse cubes. A bruschetta with cauliflower and uni purée, Oyama lardo and fresh apple with vincotto flavour had even more uni sitting on top — it was deftly balanced.
We weren’t breathing so heavily over the mains on that visit. Scallops with artichoke barigoule ( a braise), green olives and oven- dried tomatoes was a technical feat, but the flavours were muted. The scallops had a nice crusty sear, but a punchier sauce might have played well against the mild but sturdy seafood.
My husband’s burger was a disaster. The milk bun was gorgeous but it sure wasn’t up to the task of taking on the juicy meat inside. The bottom bun fell apart, as did the meat pattie. Besides, the burger was so big, it would have taken a German shepherd to open wide enough to eat it whole, so he ( my husband, not the German shepherd) picked at the broken burger with knife and fork. He growled with irritation at his not- so- manly meal and at me, as I was going gangbusters on the excellent frites.
Dessert was a pleasure. A red velvet cake was re- imagined into fine French pastry. Cream cheese frosting separated three layers and dotted the top with teardrop shapes. Nice to look at, and it still was a red velvet cake.
The cellar is not inherited from Fleuri — it has about 300 bottles.
“The focus is on organic, sustainable, naturally produced wines,” Edwards says.
Expect to pay $ 8 to $ 19 for starters and $ 18 ( the burger) to $ 46 ( a grilled rib- eye) for mains.
While elegant, Boulevard doesn’t court romance. It’s busy and it can be noisy, but not to the point of impeding conversation.
Boulevard Kitchen and Oyster Bar