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Posted Jul 1, 2009, 4:36 AM
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Ferris Wheel Hater
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Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 8,371
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Okay I figured this was the best thread for this post, I'm not a big fan of creating more threads then needed. I enjoyed reading it and figured I'd share it. Seems like Vancouver is moving up when it comes to drinking and I couldn't be happier. Cue the emoticon. 
Quote:
Watering holes, Vancouver-style: Drinks evoke the past, celebrate the present
VANCOUVER - Some people drink to forget. In Vancouver, though, some of our best bartenders want us to drink to remember.
“Vancouver, this city just loves to forget its past,” says Mark Brand, co-owner of Boneta and now The Diamond, which opened two weeks ago in Gastown.
“I’m not from here and I love its past. It was a dirty, double-dealing, bootlegging and violent city,” he says. “What better way to remember that than to sit, eat and drink and talk about Vancouver’s history?”
Brand, along with his partners Josh Pape and Sophie Taverner, is among a wave of bartenders opening bars that evoke the essence of the city through character-filled locations and carefully edited menus and cocktail lists. It is, perhaps, fitting that our bartenders are leading the way: after all, this is a city that was begun by a saloonkeeper, the notorious Gassy Jack Deighton.
Still, it’s a real shift in attitude from only a few years ago, when it seemed that just about every new lounge in the city looked like every other lounge and could be located anywhere in the world, Singapore, say, or Toronto, or Minneapolis, but not necessarily Vancouver.
As Vancouver evolved from a city of quaint low-rises to a canyon of cool glass towers, our new watering holes adopted a similarly sleek modern style, each featuring the same décor, the same drinks, the same menus, even the same wait staff of chic young women in form-fitting black.
But over the past few months, a handful of new joints has opened up, all of them trying to shed the impersonal international style and capture the unique essence of Vancouver.
And there are more to come: By the end of summer, Jay Jones plans to open the vintage-inspired Pourhouse in Gastown, and later this month, Steve Da Cruz and his partners Andre McGillivray and Anthony Sedlak will open The Corner Suite Bistro Deluxe in the old Piccolo Mondo location on Thurlow Street.
At The Corner Suite, Da Cruz’s cocktail list — one of the largest in the city — will comprise mainly classics based on “The Genuine Article”, a compendium of cocktail standards that he’s created and posted online. It was important to do, he says, because of how quickly Vancouver’s cocktail scene has changed.
“Things have happened so fast in the past six years,” he explains. “Things have gone at lightning speed.”
Also dishing up the classics is Kim Cole, who has revived the much-loved Crime Lab (the original was demolished to make way for a condo project) and moved it to a scenic location on the Coal Harbour waterfront, where she’s serving both creative martinis and handcrafted classics like the Sidecar and Sazerac.
Why classics? “Grandma and grandpa weren’t stupid,” she explains.
Yet other bartenders are evoking the city in terms of ingredients — Ben deChamplain’s Asian flavours at Maenam in Kitsilano, for instance, or Brad Stanton’s seasonal, local flavours at Revel Room in Gastown, or the handcrafted bar mixers Cameron Bogue is making at DB Bistro Moderne and Lumiere.
Just as our great chefs have been doing for years, Bogue is capturing the essence of the city by making everything he can from scratch, using local, seasonal ingredients when possible.
“We do make everything from our limoncello to even our cranberry juice,” he says.
At The Refinery, general manager Lauren Mote is also making her own bitters and bar supplies from local ingredients. She’s also capturing Vancouver’s obsession with fitness in her list of “healthy” and “completely contemporary” drinks.
“I want to raise the bar,” she says. “I want to create a new level of cocktail consumption in this city.”
Like The Diamond, The Refinery is a beautiful update of once-forgotten slice of Vancouver life, in this case an old chess club and student hangout on Granville Street.
The Diamond, however, boasts a much more disreputable past than that. Only a few years ago, it was one of the city’s most notorious nightclubs; before that, it was a speakeasy and even earlier, it was the city's first brothel, one of the few buildings to survive the great fire of 1886.
“And when City Hall burned down, for a short time City Hall convened in that place,” Brand says.
But buildings, recipes and ingredients tell only part of the story of the cultural shift that is taking place across Vancouver, especially with a difficult economy that’s taking its toll on the hospitality industry.
In tough times, people still want to go out and have fun, but they are also looking for value, which is why none of the new lounges has drinks over $15 (and most are under $10.) Also, Brand says, people are no longer as keen to spend money on the “the hot new thing,” especially if it’s some impersonal corporate construct.
“People are supporting local, they’re supporting independent,” Bogue agrees.
And most importantly, they’re supporting the people they know.
“It’s getting back to those unique personal experiences,” says da Cruz. “You have that concept of going to someone’s place, not to some place.”
Or as Brand says, “It’s not just about food and wine. It’s about identifying with something.”
And these days, that “something” is the maddening, beautiful, sometimes disreputable and always delicious city of Vancouver.
Some satisfying watering holes:
The Pourhouse
162 Water St.
www.pourhouse.com
Behind the wood: Jay Jones
Sometimes it seems that Jones has had his hand in almost every cool new drinks-and-dining project in Vancouver, from charcuterie (Salt) to Asian (Flying Tiger) to nightclubs (Bar None) to, most recently, hotels (Voya at the Loden). Now at last he’s getting his own place, The Pourhouse, which is expected to open late summer or early fall. Like The Diamond, this will evoke the sense of old Vancouver: historic Gastown building, updated classic cocktails, loads of vintage details, with a certain West Coast speakeasy esthetic. We look forward to hearing more details soon . . .
The Refinery
1115 Granville St.
604-687-8001
www.therefineryvancouver.com
Behind the wood: Lauren Mote
Above Sip Resto Lounge and owned by the same people, The Refinery brings the market dining — and drinking — concept to downtown. The focus is on local ingredients (mostly cured meats, cheeses and sharing platters) and sustainability in everything from the reclaimed wood used in the design to the energy-efficient lighting. General manager Mote, who leads the bar program, makes her own bitters, syrups and other bar products, and has created a cocktail list that is determinedly contemporary, but based on the classics. Looking for a healthy cocktail? This is the place for you.
Market by Jean-Georges
Shangri-la Hotel, 1128 West Georgia St.,
604-695-1115
www.shangri-la.com
Behind the wood: Justin Tisdall
JT, as he’s known to pretty much everyone from his time behind the bar at places such as Boneta and Gastropod, leads one of the most stylish bars in the city, which, not surprisingly, is frequented by some of the most stylish people, too. Located in the posh new Shangri-La Hotel, which opened in January, the bar at Market is all sleek and gleaming, black, white and silver with bright accents. The drinks, such as the Ginger Margarita and Passionfruit Bellini, pair beautifully with the Asian-fusion concept pioneered by superstar international chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.
Maenam
1938 W. 4th Ave.
604-730-5579
www.maenam.ca
Behind the wood: Ben deChamplain
At last, the city’s Asian restaurants are starting to improve their drinks programs, starting with chef Angus An’s new gourmet Thai eatery, Maenam, which opened at the end of May. (Miku and Flying Tiger are two others to watch.) In this tiny but chic room, bar manager (and former chef) Ben deChamplain use Thai ingredients like basil, lemongrass and chilies to complement An’s spicy-hot-sour-and-sweet cuisine. Fresh, fragrant and flavourful, these drinks are unforgettable.
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Source:
http://www.vancouversun.com/Life/Wat...971/story.html
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