AWESOME THING WE ATE #863: Half Of Chef Jason Leizert’s New Spring Menu At Boneta

We dropped in to Boneta to dine with friends the other night. The new spring menu is out, and it’s mighty good. Pictured above is just one of the dishes that made us happy: halibut (yay for the season) with baby artichokes, fava beans, and morel mushrooms (both buttered and aerated). Mmm, cake.

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SEEN IN VANCOUVER #349: How A Cook Sabers Champers “Kitchen-Style” At Boneta

Before the crew at Boneta went on to celebrate their staff party at The Waldorf last night, they gathered in the closed restaurant to mess around. When tasked with sabering a bottle of Champagne for the first time, one of the cooks (Mark) was asked to employ one of his everyday tools, a saucepan, for the job. Because of course.

EVERYTHING SEEN IN VANCOUVER

ON A MISSION: Looking For The City’s Best Gnocchi And Finding It In A French Bistro…

by Claire Lassam | I wish I could start this off by telling a sweet story about my Italian grandmother teaching me how to make potato pasta, or even of my non-Italian mother who embraced my father’s heritage with gusto by showing me how to push the yukon golds through a ricer and carefully fold in just the right amount of flour, but this is not the case. I do vaguely remember my Nona’s gnocchi, but in a far off, nostalgic way that makes me wonder if I’m not just exaggerating them with a trick of memory. Mostly, I remember reading and re-reading Thomas Kellers recipe, and all the worrying and fussing and time it took the first time I made his gnocchi. I could never forget the overwhelming relief that came when I took that first bite. It was not just relief, but also happiness, the slightly awestruck feeling that I had done it right (I think I was only 15, so there were more misses than hits at this point).

Anyway, it was in that instant that I first fell in love with proper gnocchi; little nuggets of potato that were soft and fluffy with just enough bite that they held together for a magic instant before melting away entirely. They required time, energy and a little finesse, but they were worth it. When bound – typically – in a little tomato sauce, they make the perfect comfort food.

The trouble, for me at least, is always the time and the lack of space. I find myself eating them out more often than making them in, and so my mission this week was to find Vancouver’s best gnocchi dish. I needed the soft, ethereal little dumplings to be served in a sauce with character; a real exemplar that would inspire me to return again and again. It wasn’t easy.

Most classic Italian restaurants get the texture right, so I began with Il Giardino and Cioppino’s. Both produced lovely versions (I have it on good authority that it’s the same recipe at both), but Cioppino’s won hands down in the tomato sauce department, what with their delicious addition of mozzarella di buffalo. Still, at $25 a bowl, I felt a little gouged, even with the wonderful cheese.

I went to Campagnolo for a different experience, and found a tantalizing, Roman-style gnocchi made with semolina flour (not potato). Sadly, the texture was disappointing (the dough was over-salted) and the sauce lacked punch. Boneta’s was a big improvement, and thus far my favourite. They were tiny and covered in a wild mushroom cream sauce with a wonderful lemon juice zing. It was so good, in fact, that I went twice. The gnocchi themselves could have been a little softer (they had a slightly gummy texture, probably from working the dough just the smallest amount too much), and on both occasions the sauce was split (the bottoms of the finished bowls were all oil with bits of white sauce trapped within). Imperfect, but still very good.

The best was found by accident. I didn’t expect to find any gnocchi on the menu at Tableau, the French bistro at the foot of Coal Harbour’s Loden Hotel, but when some friends and I popped in for a drink and I saw them on offer, I had to give them a try (I was feeling lucky, and lucky I was). These were flawless, placed as they were atop a pool of pesto cream sauce and dotted with wild mushrooms (not getting soggy underneath). Every time the dish would begin to seem too rich, I’d get a bite of a roasted tomato – still sharply acidic – and it would make me start craving the cream again. They were pan-fried to finish, and despite the resultant, crisped exteriors, they were still meltingly tender. They were thus endowed with more flavour, allowing them be the star of their own show. And in this girl’s opinion, that’s exactly what they should be.

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Claire Lassam is a baker, blogger, and freelance writer based in East Van. She has been cooking and baking her way through the city for nearly five years, working in restaurants ranging from Cioppino’s to Meat & Bread. She currently toils at Beta 5 Chocolates and runs the baking blog Just Something Pretty.

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Seen In Vancouver #336: “Beggars Banquet” Comes Fleetingly To The Old Boneta Space

Gastown’s newest pop-up market, The Beggars Banquet, opened up tonight in the old Boneta space at 1 West Cordova. Check it out from 11am to 6pm tomorrow (Saturday). The Found and The Freed were well represented, as were Union Wood & Supply Co. and Cocolico (among several other locally spun bits of awesomeness). Score clothing, unique housewares, furniture, books, trinkets and all manner of curiosities.

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11- 6pm | Saturday, January 21 | Boneta 1 West Cordova | $2 Admission

EVERYTHING SEEN IN VANCOUVER

INGREDIENTIA: On Learning How To Make Brussel Sprouts Better Than Your Mom Can

by Claire Lassam | I’m going to go out on a limb and say that at least half of the people reading this ate brussel sprouts on Christmas dinner. I’m going to take that further and guess that 90% of those hapless cabbage eaters hated everything about them. The bitter flavour and the over-cooked texture, the sulphury smell…yuck. You probably made fun of your mom for it, but you probably ate them to be kind, thinking “at least there won’t be any more brussel sprouts for another year”, and then moved on with your life.

I didn’t. I ate brussel sprouts sauteed with pancetta and chestnuts and just the tiniest bit of apple cider vinaeger. I fell in love with brussel sprouts, the way I do every time whenever I eat them when they’re prepared with a little TLC.

You see, brussel sprouts can be fantastic if you just give them the chance, which is not all that surprising when you think about it. Most things that have stayed in near constant rotation for hundreds of years pretty much have to be good. They were first known to have been cultivated in the 13th century in Belgium (hence the name) and, because they grow in fairly cool temperatures, they became popular in many Nordic countries throughout the 1500′s as well. Brussel sprouts started being farmed in the Americas in the 18th century, but it wasn’t until the 1940′s when they came to California that the industry really took off. Currently, farmers in the USA alone profit over $27 million a year from Brussel Sprouts sales, producing nearly 32,000 tonnes of the little cabbages per annum. The Netherlands almost triples that with 86,000 tonnes. Interestingly, England grows nearly as much but doesn’t export almost any. I, for one, think that the English are they’re on to something.

But don’t just take my word for it. They’ve been popping up on menus all over town, like the warmed brussel sprout salad with squash that was recently served with scallops at Boneta in Gastown. At Edible at the Market on Granville Island, they were just panning them up with chorizo sausage and caramelized onions. But how to make them at home? This is my favourite way to do it… Read more

DINER: The Top 10 Best New Restaurants In The City (According To Me & A Lot Of You)…

After thousands of votes, the poll determining Scout reader picks for Vancouver’s best new restaurants of the year closed with the stroke of midnight. It turns out that your determinations weren’t all that far off from my own, which were laid out in my WE column last week.

There were 31 candidates that we considered worthy of your votes. We’ve cropped the results to show the Top 10 and the number of votes they received… Read more

SCOUT POLL: Your Picks For The Best New Restaurants To Open In Vancouver in 2011

It’s that time of year again. My personal list of the Top 10 Best New Restaurants Of The Year is due out in the Westender on Wednesday, December 21st. We’d love to hear which were your favourites, too, so we’ve set up the poll below. When voting, you’re welcome to choose more than one restaurant (you can select up to 10), so feel free to just cruise down the list, clicking as you go. Happy voting!

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We’ll keep this poll “live” on our front page throughout the holidays, retiring it at 12:01am, January 1st. At that point, we will know the order of Vancouver’s new and edible awesomeness, according to Scout’s spectacularly well educated and generally infallible readership.

Word. Spread it.

A Tale Of Two Bonetas: News Of The Old & A Look Inside The New

by Andrew Morrison | I’m no sad sack but the truth of it is that this summer has sucked for me personally. It began with my hockey team losing (and my city subsequently being attacked by hordes of degenerate assholes), my leg getting broken in an office accident and then, most recently, my father – who I loved very much – went ahead and died without me knowing that he was the least bit ill. There have been some silver linings, but on the whole it has been what the Queen once succinctly called an “annus horribilis” (which I can assure you has nothing to do with Freddie Mercury or butt sex).

Beyond friends and family, I’ve only been able to count on a few things in the last couple of weeks (even the Westfalia’s brakes failed while going down a mountain the other day). One of them has been Gastown’s Boneta, which – since the day it opened in 2007 – I’ve counted as my “local”. As I assume most of our readers are well aware, it closed this past weekend and will re-open in its new location around the corner in the Water Street Garage in a little over a week or so (crossed fingers).

If we lived in an age bereft of cell phones, Boneta would likely be my wife’s first phone call were I to ever go AWOL (granted, were she to ever disappear, I’d call their first as well). Though I often take meetings in one of its corners, I’ve done my best to maintain it as a work-free environment. It’s where I go out first when I don’t have to review restaurants and the point from which I jump off when I do. To my shame I almost never order anything to eat (save for their outstanding poutine). It’s not that I don’t like the food, it’s just that I’ve always preferred to bend elbows there instead. Beer has always just sort of tasted better at its wood than anywhere else.

After receiving the news about my Dad and coming home from the Okanagan to get sauced with my brother last week, Boneta was the one place I could trust to sequester us somewhere quiet and then leave us alone (though recharging our glasses when needed). We flirted with the limits of Serving It Right by way of whiskey and lager, and it may have gotten messy. The last time I cried in a restaurant I was a busboy some 20 years ago, busily slicing open my finger instead of a loaf of bread. I would have been horrified to find myself blubbering at any other table, but at one of Boneta’s it seemed OK.

Luongo, my office equipment and my Dad might let me down, but the original Boneta never did. I’ve loved it dearly through its nearly messy divorce, its chef change and the recent, tragic passing of one of its staff members whose company and character I and many, many others thoroughly enjoyed. It was a place of tremendous comfort, playing host to some of my highest highs and lowest lows, seeing me laugh Sapporo out of my nose on one night and then blow involuntary snot bubbles of profound sadness the next.

Why the gravitational, near emotional attachment? I don’t know, really. Perhaps it’s because a part of me thinks it stands for something. When it opened at 1 West Cordova in 2007, it was the fourth restaurant at that address in as many years. It was a different landscape back then. Gastown was nowhere near as popular as it is today. If it weren’t for Boneta, I doubt very much that Emad Yacoub would be angling to expand his Glowbal empire nearby or that his nephew, Yaletown impresario Peter Girges (he of the terrifying “100 Days” in the Opus Hotel), would have just secured the lease next door in the old Pig & Whistle space. Boneta, to me at least, was always the little restaurant that could, not only begetting such gems as  The Diamond, Sea Monstr Sushi, and the restoration of Save On Meats, but also showing other first time restaurateurs that pretty much anything is possible if you kept your shit tight and your customers happy.

What could take its place? I’ve wondered that for quite a while. With the likes of Yacoub and Girges now testing the waters in these parts, it would be natural to fear that their assured successes would herald next the arrival of something truly hideous, a den of honest to goodness douchery selling sparkling as Champagne and American chuck as Kobe beef to corporate roid freaks high on expense accounts and speed-spiked Red Bull. I hope to hell not, but no matter. As a chef once told me when comparing the $8 million price tag of David Aisenstat’s Shore Club to the less than $100,000 spent to launch Boneta, “For eight million, I would have preferred 80 Bonetas.” True that. I suppose, among other things, I enjoyed the original because it had a surplus of soul and character, two things that take no notice of how deep anyone’s pockets are and can’t be sold or bought. Both – phew – can be transferred, as amply evidenced by the successful move of The Irish Heather across Carrall St. a few years ago.

I was back up in the Okanagan staying in Naramata with my friends Michael and Heidi this past weekend when the restaurant held its last service. I knew full well that I was going to miss it. Michael was going down for it so I give him a lift to Penticton’s little airport. After parking the car, he surprised me with a plane ticket. “It’s yours if you want to join me,” he said. I couldn’t do it and said so in what must have been the most pathetic mumble I’ve ever conjured, and being a good friend he totally understood (pretty much the most generous guy ever). It took me all of five minutes for me to regret turning down his kind offer. I later heard that it was a fantastic time.

But enough sturm und drang, I have some good news and then some gooder news.

Yesterday, Mark Brand informed me that he had just signed a two year extension of the lease at 1 West Cordova, meaning that instead of being turned into an Earl’s vodka bar offering breast implants for appetisers, it will become a private function space for all of Brand’s restaurants, including the new Boneta. That’s the good news. The gooder news is that I was just given a tour of the new space and it looks pretty fucking awesome. Before we get to the photos, here’s a refresher course on the move from back when Scout broke the news some thirteen months ago:

…next year, Boneta will close and reopen in a new location just a lob wedge away in a new Gastown development known as The Garage. You know that mysterious courtyard spot (prone to a dozen rumours since it was completed last year) behind L’Abattoir and the original Shebeen, the one that’s all glassed in and brand spanking new? That’s it: 2,222 sqft of prime virgin space with entrances through Gaoler’s Mews, Water St., and Blood Alley.

I checked it out as a temporary “pop-up” gallery in the Spring and hoped against hope that it would be turned into a restaurant once it was finished. It’s one of those unique, totally killer spots that is set back from the street, away from the drifting weekend yahoos and Old Spaghetti Factory tourists. If anyone could make it work, it’s these guys (kudos to Robert Fung of The Salient Group for getting that).

What does it give Boneta that it didn’t have before? An 800 sqft solarium equipped with five sliding doors; floor to ceiling glass and a roof that’s over 30% glass; a U-shaped bar with 12 seats; a year round heated and covered courtyard patio for 12 (think Brix); and brand new everything from electric to A/C.

They’re downsizing the seating capacity a little, from 100+ to 65-75, but I’ll be the last to complain about that as I think intimate is better for the concept than spread out. The artwork – something Boneta is known for – will be making the move, too, as will much of the original room’s motifs (they’re hoping to recycle/reclaim plenty).

From what I understand and saw with my own eyes, not much has changed as far as the vision or layout is concerned. Take a look at both the old and new below, and join me in the short but interminably long wait for the first drinks poured…

ALL ANTICIPATED OPENINGS

Rest In Peace, Jess Nichol

Vancouver is mourning the loss of one of its top bartenders, Jess Nichol of Boneta. Plans are in the works for a celebration of his life to be held at the restaurant within the next week, the details of which will be posted here as soon as they are finalised. Our hearts go out to his family and all his friends.

UPDATE: Boneta will be having a wake in his honour on Monday, August 1st starting at 6pm. A memorial page has been set up on Facebook here.

GOODS: Walk Away With Boneta’s New Big Screen TV Following Canucks’ Playoff Run

Boneta Restaurant is located in the heart of Gastown at 1 West Cordova St. | 604-684-1844 | www.boneta.ca

The GOODS from Boneta

Vancouver, BC | The playoffs are upon us and after lengthy debates about Canuck pride we have cracked to pressure. During the rest of our Stanley Cup run we’ll be showing the games in our lounge in glorious HD, but there’s a catch. We really dislike TV’s in restaurants, especially ours, so the night after we parade the cup through the city, the TV will be yours. One of yours that is, that’s right we can’t wait to take this 50 inch plasma, 1080 p, ultra thin down from atop our bar and give it away. Read more

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