Saying Goodbye To The Kitchen Pass At Gastown’s “L’Abattoir”

by Andrew Morrison | Tonight’s my last shift working the pass at Gastown’s L’Abattoir. A big thank you to all the staff for tolerating my presence in their midst, and to owners Nin Ari, Paul Grunberg, and Lee Cooper for allowing me the opportunity to play witness to the opening of their superlative restaurant. I’ll miss my brothers in arms, Dylan and Joe (and all the bacon brioche that we sneak at the end of the night), and the excitement that comes when the room is packed and the pass is full of dupes. I might even miss polishing 1000 pieces of cutlery a night (probably not). For certain, pulling 150+ covers in a 70 seat room made for a fun, hectic ride. I’d never before worked with so solid a crew, both front and back. From orientation and training to opening night and every shift since, it was a pleasure and a privilege that I won’t soon forget. Thank you.

Some of the insights gleaned during my stint will be in Vancouver magazine’s November issue (in a wide-ranging story on the exploding dining scenes of Gastown and the DTES), but you’ll be able to read more about my L’Abattoir days in a story on the current state of restaurant service in our city that is coming out in the March 2011 issue (I think) of the same magazine. I’ll be working at West next (shadowing the legendary Brian Hopkins), and maybe on the floor at one other restaurant (not sure which just yet). But that’s all beside the point. I clock in for my final shift in two hours. Come in, say hello, and try the beet soup with meatballs, dill, and horseradish creme fraiche. It’ll blow your freakin’ head off.

Here are just a few of the tasty memories I’ll be taking with me… Read more

Sign Up For PICA’s New Food Writing Class (Starts Monday)

There are only a few spots left for the Food Writing In The Modern Media Landscape course that starts this Monday night at the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts next to Granville Island. I’m stoked for it. We’ll be exploring the nature and mechanics of food writing in print and online; the development of a personal style; blog building; the application of social media tools; and much more. For details on how to sign up, plus dates, times, and cost, check after the jump… Read more

Ah, So This Is What It Feels Like To Be Scared Of Alexandra Gill

I was on the Urban Rush television show again today and hosts Michael Eckford and Fiona Forbes were ribbing me about working two nights a week as an expediter at Gastown’s L’Abattoir (if you didn’t already know, I’m there researching for a Vancouver magazine story on restaurant service that is due this Spring – please be sure to say ‘hi’ if you come in). Anyway, I didn’t take offense. They were just kidding around.

Still, having invested a bucket of my own sweat in the place since opening night nearly two months ago, I’ve grown quite proud of the restaurant, especially the people who work there. So when I heard that both my colleagues at the Globe & Mail and the Vancouver Sun had come in for reviews while I was off traveling, indulging in my real job (the same as theirs), I couldn’t help but feel nervous. What if it’s bad? What if it’s fucking terrible? Oh my God, I thought. We’re going to get anally raped and crucified.

Since many of you aren’t restaurant wonks (please don’t change), let me tell you about Alexandra Gill, Vancouver’s food critic for the Globe & Mail. Of the five or six paid restaurant reviewers in town, she is by far the most feared. I’d put the number of people in the local trade who like her column at about 17 out of 40,000, and I’d wager that 10 of those are either drug addicts, liars or probably both. But they all read her.

She might pen a dud every few months (most weekly critics do), but damn it if there isn’t always an entertaining flick of the knife, a slash that leaves a mark. When she really sinks her teeth into a restaurant’s jugular, it’s the ultimate schadenfreude sundae. Even when I love the restaurant that is being torched, it’s as mesmerising as watching a cheetah take down a Thompson gazelle in slow motion. First comes the run and then the turn. Once you see the claw hitting the ankle and restaurant’s center of gravity falter, it’s all blood and dust from there. I imagine she’s exhausted after writing her best. Panting. Too spent to eat. And at the end of every read I don’t know whether to burn the paper or keep it in order to study how she does it.

While she doesn’t have the power to break a restaurant, she sure can make the people who work in them angry. She’s even made me angry at times, but only when I think she’s gone too far. For a few years – when I had a hotter head – I wasn’t all that kind to her. Why? Because – gasp – she spoke her mind, kept her own counsel and could give a damn about what anyone thought of her. I’ve written wholly reactionary words about her over the last five years, none of them nice. To be honest, I’m quite sure that some of them were downright awful.

So when Paul Grunberg, L’Abattoir’s owner, told me that she was writing the review, my sphincter involuntarily tightened. I felt the fear, the very same that most chefs and restaurateurs might feel whenever she calls to “follow up with a few questions”, only it was amplified, like ten-fold. I very quickly convinced myself that, despite the obvious merits of the restaurant (which she would ignore), she was going to take every backhanded thing I’d ever written about her and use this golden, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to slam it all back in my dumb, smug face. Yes, and with a big fuck you and a steaming turd on top. I was a liability to the restaurant, a walking time bomb. And she was holding the detonator. How could I have ever been so plum stupid to have set the hard-working people of L’Abattoir up for this? What a total asshole.

But she’s the pro and I’m the child, given to wild delusions fed by my sometimes Herculean sense of self-importance. Of course she loved it. She wrote almost the exact same review I would have done if I wasn’t polishing the restaurant’s glassware and trying not to get in anyone’s way. She probably had no idea I was working there. She could probably give a fuck, really.

Phew.

Mia Stainsby’s review comes out late tonight in Sun. Naturally, I’m convinced that it will be hand delivered by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, that it will be terrible, and that it’s somehow all my fault.

Scout Editor To Teach Food Writing In Modern Media At PICA

PICA is located at 1505 West Second Avenue at the entrance to Granville Island | 604-734-4488 | picachef.com

News from Scout supporter PICA

Vancouver, BC | Local food writer, editor and restaurant critic Andrew Morrison (Scout, The Westender, Vancouver Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, Harry) presents Food Writing In The Modern Media Landscape: a hands-on class that details how one can turn a passion for food, wine and restaurants into a fulfilling hobby or a viable profession. Students will be taught the tricks, tools and realities of the trade (cameras, smart phones, web); explore new platforms like blogs and Twitter; learn how to carve out a niche in the food blogosphere; and be shown how to approach print outlets as a freelancer.

CLICK TO REGISTER

Dates (Mondays): September 27, October 4, 15, 25, November 1 (15 Hours)
Bring to class: Paper & Pen or Laptop (recommended)
Time: 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Location: Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts
Tuition Fee: $375.00

Read more

Help Wanted: “L’Abattoir” Seeks Experienced Chef De Partie

Scout supporter L’Abattoir Restaurant in Gastown is seeking a reliable, motivated chef de partie immediately. Please reply by email in confidence to info@labattoir.ca with a resume detailing no less than 2-3 years experience. We look forward to hearing from you.

Thoughts And Photos From The First Few Days At “L’Abattoir”

Those were a fun first few days at L’Abattoir in Gastown. With the kitchen in calibration mode to perfect their timing, the pace was calculated so as to guarantee necks above water until close. The door was managed really well, and the action was all very smooth from my vantage point on the pass (the busy communications and exchange station in the kitchen where the plates are finished by the chef and then distributed to the staff). Almost as many customers were turned away as were seated on opening night, which is, I think, a jolly good harbinger of things to come.

From valet parking needs to service protocols, some interesting dynamics are already emerging, the most fascinating of them being those generated by the neighbourhood itself. As I’m sure most of you are aware, Gastown enjoys a late crowd these days, especially on weekends, and since the kitchen only stays open until 10:30pm, it’s Shaun and David at the bar who are receiving the wave of latecomers. As we are busily shutting down (polishing silver and stemware), they get pretty well slammed with folks keen to take a peek, wish them well and get their drink on. They’re both solid pros, however, dudes long accustomed to high volume. Most of my experience has been at slightly more formal restaurants that don’t attract a crowd seeking Negronis and Manhattans, so it’s weird to be finished with food service and then confronted with a crush of bodies at the bar. It’s pretty awesome. Read more

Training Days Inside Gastown’s Highly Anticipated “L’Abattoir”

As regular readers might remember, I’m writing a feature for Vancouver Magazine on table service in the city and how it’s been evolving with our restaurant scene. To gain some insight, I’m putting the old apron back on (God help you all) and getting back to work. I’ll be at South Granville’s storied West Restaurant for a night later this summer, but right now I’m concentrating on the opening of L’Abattoir in Gastown (I’ve been invited to clock in at Deacon’s Corner, too, and I hope to be able to make that happen, too).

So far it’s been a lot of fun. We did cocktail and wine training yesterday and talked a little about service philosophy and the different protocols associated with each (table settings, approach, et cetera). It’s been fascinating to watch them try and create their own style to suit their vision for the restaurant. I’m really very psyched about the whole “embedded” experience, though not a little freaked that I might drop something. In a few hours we start the final menu tasting, followed by a proper dry run of friends and family. The opening to the public, if all goes well, should be a ‘go’ for Friday (knock on wood). Lots of photos of the room and our training sessions after the jump. Read more

On Staff Orientation & Service Stories @ Gastown’s L’Abattoir

I’ve started researching for a couple of features for Vancouver magazine this week. One of them is on restaurant service across the city, which as I’m sure you’re aware can range from the outright deplorable to the superbly air tight. I’m taking it as an opportunity to work shifts at three different establishments that will hopefully reveal to readers some of the different kinds of styles and philosophies represented in the more fascinating coves of our restaurant scene. One of these will be the soon-to-open L’Abattoir in Gastown.

It’s my hope that participating in service through the prism of a hotly anticipated restaurant opening will prove of interest on several levels, not least because the exhilarating systems check that is opening night is something that only happens once in a restaurant’s lifetime. It’s then that you discover what works and what doesn’t, and when experience steps in to calibrate.

Staff orientation began yesterday, with the fourteen member front of house crew (several familiar faces) in their civvies listening to co-owner/chef Lee Cooper going over the menu, wine guy Jake Skakun explaining the list, and bar manager Shaun Layton (interview) presenting his cocktail list in a room that was still very much under construction (see pics below).

Though I wasn’t umbilically attached like the other staff, I was still a little nervous. It had been about 10 years since I’d done any sort of orientation in a restaurant, and nearly four since I hung up my apron and started writing full time. I’d like to think floor work is “old hat” or like shoes I can just slip back on whenever the fancy strikes, but the butterflies suggested very much otherwise. Good times… Read more

Van Mag Editor Gary Stephen Ross Pens A Gooder For Walrus

This outstanding feature article in the Walrus (March issue) by my sometimes editor Gary Stephen Ross over at Vancouver magazine was recommended to me by a colleague recently. I’ve only read it just now, and it will likely reverberate throughout the day. Of note to me were words on restaurant reviewing, which – among a great many other things about Vancouver – he hit with a resounding bang on the head:

Restaurant criticism here, as in many a burgeoning city, sometimes resembles professional cheerleading (in which, as editor-in-chief of Vancouver magazine, I can fairly be accused of participating) or, on the web, endless amateur nitpicking. So many people spend so much time deconstructing and photographing and blogging about what they put in their mouths that you’d think they were preparing for an exam. Dining has as much to do with fashion as food, of course, each place outdoing the last in lavishness (the plushly expensive Coast) or thrift (the minimum-security Campagnolo), the daily ebb and flow recorded and amplified for distribution by a small army of “experts” — bloggers, reviewers, oenophiles, free-ride artists, all of them one click away from the next BC wine tasting, small plates sampler, or media preview.

But that’s a mere molecule in the whole of how he nails the city zeitgeist. Typically, essays on Vancouver are self-satisfied bouts of personal anecdote-riddled navel-gazing a la Douglas Coupland. This one’s a must read, as fine a treatment of our town as I’ve ever read.

Random Photo #605: Mark Brand Strikes An Extra Wicked Pose…

I’m on household recycling duty today and so I’ve been flipping through piles of old work and clipping out stories for the scrapbook (that I’ve never kept). I found this four year old Lisa Kaulback shot of Mark Brand – then the bar manager at Chambar, now co-owner of Boneta, The Diamond – and had a chuckle, if only because it’s so spectacularly cougarific. It rolled with the first ever Bartender of the Year award feature as part of the 17th annual Vancouver magazine restaurant awards issue (May 2006), which – on the strength of the pose struck above – you can bet your ass I won’t be recycling any time soon. Freakin’ meow.

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