SMILES ALL AROUND
CinCin still one the best spots in town
Andrew Richardson has been chef at CinCin for five years, earned awards (a gold for best Italian and silver for best upscale in Vancouver Magazine 2017 Restaurant awards and more nods from Wine Spectator, OpenTable, Canadian Association of Professional Sommeliers, and the Vancouver International Wine Festival) and, for shame, I haven’t written about the restaurant under his stewardship.
I visited recently and it was one of the most pleasant experiences I’ve had there, especially when it came to service. I know it’s theatre but the eagerness to please and bountiful smiles seem genuine. Smiles say a lot — staff are into their jobs, are treated well and management hire the right personalities. Of course, working in a tip-generating machine like CinCin helps. Our server was Jamie Laudner, a CinCin veteran, and nimble around wines and food details. My hubby appreciated that Laudner could laugh at lame jokes.
Richardson’s been loving cooking for 30 years, beginning in Newcastle, England, close enough to the northern border that his accent almost breaks into full-tilt Scottish burr. His career began when a friend asked him to pinch hit as a server.
“I loved the environment, and wanted to be in the kitchen. It gave me the spark,” he says. After cooking in a Michelin-starred restaurant and a Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant (a guide for those on sensible budgets) in Newcastle, he moved to Vancouver where he cooked at Le Crocodile, Cioppino’s, Sooke Harbour House, West, and Araxi, where he filled in as executive chef when chef James Walt took a sabbatical year.
Along the way, he had a quick fling at the famed The French Laundry in California, where he was astounded by the “staggering level of organization, commitment, creative process and fascination with food.” It raised his game, he says.
My heart skipped a beat to see souffle on the menu. I find them uplifting (groan). When I talked to Richardson, he said despite the French dish, CinCin was an Italian restaurant. Italians use the same cooking technique as souffle in sformato, and for a time that’s what appeared on the menu. Diners were probably too embarrassed to pronounce it, so souffle, it became. The Parmesan spinach souffle ($16), is crisp outwardly and wobbly inwardly and served in a cast iron pan, It didn’t disappoint and withstood two of us attacking it.
Pastas and risottos can be a starter or main. Tagliatelle al ragu ($17 for starter size) had heft with handhewn pasta and meat-laden bolognese. The sauce, cooked six hours, was assertive but had a soft landing in my stomach as it was made with veal and pork, not the more boisterous beef. The dish had a shower of grated Parmesan.
A lovely pork tenderloin (cooked over coals, $34) was served over lentils and brightened by green tomato chutney, squash, beets and carrot sauce.
Some element of each dish meets with the fire you see in the open kitchen, with the beautiful woodburning grill/oven adding not only smoke and grilled caramelization but rusticity.