Foodville Part Three: Mapping Vancouver's Culinary Landscape

I walked across Spain this past summer. An old college friend of mine talked me into it. Over dinner, of course. That’s where these kinds of plans are inevitably hatched. He said to me: “I’m going to walk 800 kilometers on foot through Basque Country, Cantabria, Asturias and Galicia, and I’d like you to come.” Which was crazy, clearly. But we’d just had an amazing meal at Fergus Henderson’s restaurant St. John in London, where I was fortunate to have been sent on assignment. <?xml:namespace prefix = o />

It was a good thing he asked me at the particular moment. Had my friend asked at another time, I might have thought of an excuse not to do it. In St. John, with an earthy meal of roast bone-marrow salad and tripe fritters so recently inside me, the idea of living life in an ultra-simplified way for a while—being a dharma bum for a month, basically—well, all this made a certain kind of sense, in the moment.

Which is how I ended up hoofing it this past July from Irun, just west of the Pyrenees, all the way west along the famous old pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela.

Trips like these have many plot lines, of course. The physical challenge is one (blisters, pulled hamstrings, etc.). Coming to an understanding of why you’re doing it in the first place is another (pilgrims like to talk on this topic, I discovered). And food, happily, was another daily story. Every day, a set of questions had to be answered. Where to eat? Is this a tapas or a fabada town? Do you think that tortilla’s been sitting on the bar since this morning? And then, confessedly, this question from late in the trip: Do you we’ll be able to find any good Japanese food in Santiago?

Yes indeed. Four weeks on the road can do strange things to you, and I must admit that I did reach a point where I didn’t want to eat any more cured-pork products. (I’ve since recovered.) But before that, we had many fine Spanish meals, including one very humble meal (which cost about €8, as I recall) that stood out as something in the order of an epiphany.

Here’s how that one happened. We’d just arrived in Markina-Xemein, deep in the green hills of the Biscay Province of Basque Country, 30 kilometers east of Bilbao. We were hot, tired and starving. So, soon after arriving, we found ourselves at a corner table in the restaurant the lady at our pension had recommended. I have to say, I found this place interesting from the moment we walked in and sat down. It had once been quite grand, I could tell. The room was wide, with high ceilings. The chairs were formal high-backed jobs, set up around large square dining tables. Clearly, this room had once been a place where people came to step out, to be seen.

But something had changed, long ago. That too was obvious. The place was dusty, probably could have used a clean. The formal dining tables were now clothed in paper. And judging from the people there, the room had aged and mellowed from a fashionable scene into a something more like a community living room. There were city workers in orange neon vests eating grilled fish across the way. Guys in rumpled suits stretching out lunch over brandies over there. And at the next table, a couple of young women in colorful cycling gear tucking into a mid-ride snack of salad mixta (through the consumption of which Spain must surely consume more iceberg lettuce and canned tuna than any other nation on Earth).

When it came time to order, we chose from a typical daily menu: a few options each for a starter, a main, a dessert and either wine or beer. The woman working the front gave us our choices in Spanish, rightly assuming we wouldn’t understand a word of Basque. So we had to pick out the six or eight words of Spanish we recognized and order accordingly. My friend went for the macaroni. (“Con queso?” he asked. “Con tomate,” she answered. “Like Chef Boyardee,” I said to him in English.)

For me: patatas con chorizo. And I still remember distinctly what I thought I was going to get. I had a picture from Epicurious or maybe Saveur in my head: crisp, golden, pan-fried potatoes tossed with chunks of sautéed chorizo, a bit of parsley on top. Maybe a basket of bread on the side. But what arrived in fact (and in scant minutes), was a large tureen of boiled potatoes, cooked soft and served steaming in their cooking liquid. No evidence of chorizo but for the residual colour of the famous sausage, which stained the entire dish a brilliant, almost blinding, orange.

I was disappointed, I’ll admit. In fact, I took a picture of the dish with my phone, thinking that I’d use it at some later point to remind myself ironically of what had come out of the kitchen to greet my uptown, auto-gastronomic expectations. But then, something unexpected: I tried some. And remarkably, given how it looked, it tasted fantastic. Rich with chorizo flavor, even if there was only a single nub of the stuff at the bottom of the tureen. Simple filling fare, well flavored. Exactly the kind of thing you wanted to eat after a day spent climbing the Basque hills.

And I felt great, all of a sudden. I’d ordered the best thing on the menu. More than that. I’d ordered the best thing on any menu anywhere. The perfect dish for the moment.

2.

I thought about this later. I was in a different restaurant, with a different friend. We were in Jules Bistro in Gastown. The long walk from Irun to Santiago had been part of our conversation. So it came up, that strangely particular meal in Markina-Xemein.

She said: “Particular how?” She was eating the lunch special: salmon frites. I was having a Niçoise salad.

I looked at the dark wood around me. The tile floors. What we were eating. And then it occurred to me. That place in Markina-Xemein had captured a very particular combination of qualities. The food was genuinely good. (We’d had slow-roasted lamb shoulder for our main course, intensely flavorful, fork-tender and, again, perfect for the moment.) But the whole menu shared a quality, a clear disinterest in innovation or improvement. The restaurant scene meanwhile, the conflagration of faded décor and un-self-conscious people, was similarly unconcerned, even unaware of itself, as something that might be within the governing ambit of fashion, high or low, in or out. Nobody would have cared, in other words, if you’d pointed out that the place had received a review, good or bad. Or that it had never been reviewed at all, for that matter. Popularity seemed entirely irrelevant in that room.

Being a survivor of an education in micro-economics and business, I retain an impulse to chart things. And so here came my delayed epiphany in the form of a chart drawn in Jules Bistro on the back of paper receipt taken from my wallet. The restaurant experience we were having—in fact, all restaurant experiences—could be thought of as situated on a grid of possible experiences, each defined by two attributes.

The first attribute is menu—that is, the food experience overall, encompassing menu language, presentation, as well, of course, as ingredients, preparations and flavor palette. In my analysis, menus position themselves on a spectrum from those rooted in established practices and preparations to those oriented to innovation, improvement and change. On the back of my receipt, I labeled the poles of the Menu axis: Trad and Mod.

(If you’re following the career of Chef Jeremy Papier, you might be hearing echoes of his Blood-Crip paradigm here: the culinary world in two opposing camps. The difference between that metric and the one I’m proposing here is that mine is a spectrum, meaning any number of positions are possible between the poles. To illustrate, a prawn cocktail is Blood. A prawn cocktail at Elixir, with mango, cucumber, avocado, pineapple and spiced tomato-lime dressing, is marginally Trad, but it’s not Blood. Likewise a Kobe-beef lasagna at Trattoria Italian Kitchen.)

The second attribute is scene—that is, the entire look and feel, the sensibility of the place, which is a product of what the restaurant owners and chefs might have had in mind, combined with the expectations of those diners who make the place their own.  And in my analysis, restaurant Scene positions itself along a spectrum, from rooms that are highly subject and responsive to public opinion to those that seem impervious to judgment (like that diner in Markina-Xemein)—restaurants which seem to carry on in a particular mode of being for other reasons entirely, be they conviction, tradition or habit. And so on my receipt, I labeled the poles of the Scene axis for those contrasting states: Fashion Dependency and Fashion Immunity.

And here is what the graph looked like, when I was through:

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3.

Gimme a break, I hear you saying. Isn’t this math?

Bear with me though. Here’s where I’m going with all of this:

Obviously there are more than two factors at play in determining what a restaurant is all about. (In Vancouver, for example, another interesting way of looking at the overall restaurant scene in the city might be to plot “publicity budget” against “average number of restaurant awards won annually.”) But if you chart a restaurant on this table—the net experience derived from the intersection of their Menu and their Scene—it gives you a glimpse into the character of that restaurant. (Fashion Dependent Trad or Fashion Immune Trad? Key distinction.) Likewise, if you load up the table with many examples from a single city, it should be possible to get a sense of the aggregate culinary character of a place.

Or at least that was the idea behind the experiment. Of course, to be absolutely scientific about it, I developed a scoring system. On the Scene scale, a score of +5 would indicate restaurants of peak Fashion Dependency and a score of -5 would indicate those that seem entirely Fashion Immune. This numeric score wasn’t just picked out of the air, naturally, but derived mathematically from a range of objectively measured input variables, including restaurant publicity budget, number of Google hits on the chef’s name, length of time (in days) since last mention of the restaurant in a Malcolm Parry column, the price of the restaurant’s chairs, and finally, the restaurant’s use of the term “mixologist” versus “bartender.” Bonus points would be given for various leading indicators of fashion sensitivity, both positive and negative. These included the presence of vintage Tiffany light fixtures (-1), hanging crab nets or old trumpets on the wall (-2 each), or a location in Ladner (-3). And on the other side: the use of the phrase “100 Mile” on the restaurant website (+1), or the restaurant name having three letters or fewer (+2).

For Menu, similarly, a score of +5 would be reserved for only the pinnacle examples of Mod cuisine, while a score of -5 would apply only to the most seriously old-school places. (Please note that there is no value judgment implied by the positive and negative scores. These are mapping tools. You may find that your tastes tend to the Habitual Mods, for example, whose scores all read (+x, -y), or to the Fashion Conscious Trads, whose stacked ranks all score (-x, +y).)

And again, as for Scene, the complicated calculations required to plot a restaurant’s Menu involved a range of scientifically measured variables, including the number of ingredient source names used on the menu, the number of national cuisines represented and combined, and whether the restaurant employed a “food concept architect.” Key indicator ingredients and preparations would be awarded bonus points as follows: Kobe (+1), sliders (+1), trio or duo preparations (+2), onglet (+2), the use of seaweed in a non-Japanese application (+2), and the serving of either pulled duck or duck jerky (+3 for each). On the Trad side, meanwhile, scores would be adjusted for the use of gorgonzola (-1), garlic bread (-1), rabbit (-1), Alfredo anything (-2), “center-cut iceberg lettuce” (-3), and “tossed green salad” (-4). There would also be a one-time bonus of -5 points awarded to menus containing the phrase “famous meat sauce.”

In the end, I plotted 66 Vancouver restaurants, all chosen for having been honored recently with awards, or simply for being one of my long-time favorites, or a name that came out of the blue. You can check out the chart to see where some of them ended up charting.

And there were some broad conclusions that could be drawn from this data, I believe.

First, how interesting to look at the numbers and learn that we’re a Trad city, folks. I hate to break this to those of you who thought most of our restaurants lived on the cutting edge. But it seems that we prefer our pork belly to our vinaigrette jelly; our all-beef burgers over anything steamed in coconut milk; rabbit terrine and moules frites by many orders of magnitude over “salmon rice bridges” or burnt-orange chipotle. To put this broad preference in perspective, consider that for the 20 different takes on braised cheeks and the 40 restaurants sticking with calamari as an appetizer, only one menu in the city features smoked sablefish collar with pickled apricots and walnut pollen—which I recognize will come as a shock to a lot of people.

Second, and perhaps equally surprising, is how our chain restaurants score as innovators. Admittedly, this may reflect a bias in the scoring, with innovation points given for cross-national flavor combinations and menus that list Indian and Italian preparations side by side. But if you do actually read the fine print, the combinations of ingredients and cuisines, Joey’s (+3, +4) and the Cactus Club (+4, +4) read as more experimental than many other places. Joey’s manages to make their tacos sound Japanese, for example, and they put lobster in their grilled-cheese sandwich. (Hey, it’s an innovation. It ain’t Trad.) Those examples may not match in refinement the truffle beurre blanc or crispy sage used at the Cactus Club, but both menus indicate a willingness to make things up.

Third, still on the Mod side, the split between Fashion Dependent Mods and Fashion Immune Mods is telling. Yes, this is subjective, but in our accounting there simply didn’t seem to be many of the latter. Sushi 01 (+1, -3) sneaks in there because, while they’re not exactly a fashion-sensitive place (it’s a lunch counter), they did revolutionize the spicy roll in Vancouver (check for yourself if you don’t believe me). Virtually everything made at En (+3, -1), meanwhile—things wrapped in sesame leaves or fried golden brown and dipped in lemon ponzu sauce—is a spin on tradition, everything taken somewhere slightly beyond. But the room itself is about as steady-on as they come, a place in a not-very-fashionable location that gives off the vibe of having been there, unchanged, for decades. I think that last observation applies to Bishop’s (+2, -2) as well. Although Fourth Avenue is the heart of Food Fashion-land these days, it is a restaurant that has been innovative for so long that it makes its own scene. Or at least it seems that the innovative character at Bishop’s does not depend on innovation being the fashionable order of the day.

Fourthly, among the Trads, the distribution along the Fashion Sensitivity scale is more even. But it’s interesting to note that the single biggest clustering of restaurants on the chart is among the Fashion Dependent Trads. And this is also where a good number of our newest restaurants can be found. Here you have evidence of the recent Trattoria Tornado that hit Vancouver over the past couple years. Likewise the Authentic Bistro Boom (long may this one thrive, touch wood).  And if you don’t think that this is a broad trend in the city—a move away from overtly innovative menus towards traditional ones—consider that the crack Gastropod crew (+5, +5) has been repurposed from making duck-fat powder and squid noodles with preserved lemon mayo to making pad Thai at Maenam (-1, +5). But of all the Fashion Sensitive Trads, I think the best example of this group’s dynamic are the steak houses. One fashion generation from now, when retro-carnivorous gorging has again fallen from favor, when it is associated by a younger foodie set with a tacky generation of has-beens (of which, make no mistake, I will be considered a part), then all the new-swankery, all the dirty martinis and bone-in strip loins, will disappear at once. And then you’ll be doing Power Hour down at the lentil bar for a while, mark my words. Everywhere but at Hy’s (-5, -3), that is.

Which brings me to the final clustering on this chart: those Fashion Immune Trads. There are actually many more of these in Vancouver than I could possibly plot. In fact, most people I know have one or two of these in their portfolio of favorites. We love these places because they simply do what they do and serve what they serve, seemingly impervious to whatever the reviewers or popularity polls might say. It doesn’t mean that these places are necessarily rude or unfriendly—although in more than a couple of cases, they’re known for it. It means instead that they’re involved in something that has its own internal rhythm, that lives in its own grooves. Pollo alla primavera at Osteria Napoli (-4, -3), blinis with salmon caviar and dill crème fraîche at Le Gavroche (-3, -4), a bowl of Tom Kha Gai at Montri’s (-4, -2), or sticky rice and shrimp dumplings at Sun Sui Wah (-5, -4). These are dishes we seek out with friends when we are just hungry and feel like good food, but nobody really feels like being on the scene.

And I’m certainly prone to this mood myself. Most of the time, in fact. So it’s probably no surprise that on my return from Spain, one of the first places the whole family went for dinner together was Olympia Pizza (-5, -5). There we sat and ate exactly what we’d eaten the last time we were there: calamari, tarama, pizza for my five-year-old son, and those incredible, cinnamon-scented meatballs that I’ve been eating at the Olympia for years, and for which I will one day convince a waitress to convince the owner to give me the recipe. Although not yet, apparently. In the meantime, we paged through pictures on my phone together. And when we came to Markina-Xemein and that tureen of orange potatoes, neither my son or my wife were the slightest bit alarmed by it, as I had been on that first encounter those many weeks before.

My son only squinted and said: “Um… what is it?”

So I was able to explain it to them. That, I said, that was perfection.