GOODS: Hastings’ “Wildebeest” All Prepped For Special Sunday Family Supper Of Lamb

Wildebeest is located at 120 West Hastings Street in Vancouver, BC | 604-687-6880 | www.wildebeest.ca

The GOODS from Wildebeest

Vancouver, BC | This weekend’s special Mother’s Day edition of our Sunday dinner series has made Nick Miller cry tears of joy twice already. As always, these meals are curated and butchered from whole animals, lamb in this week’s case, and as such availability is very limited. Each dinner is $180 and is a complete meal for four guests, or an amazing anchor for larger groups. Dig into the menu after the jump. Read more

MOTHER’S DAY: 28 Things That You And Your Mom Might Want To Do This Weekend

Mother’s Day is right around the corner (this Sunday, May 12th) and every day this week (and last) we’ve received lots of awesome pampering ideas and details for special brunches and suppers from Scout Community members. Rather than put them up individually so that they flooded the front page, we decided to organise the mega post below instead. It features deals and meals from the good folks at Heartbreaker Salon, Campagnolo, Beta5, Road 13, La Pentola, Minami and more. Take the day to celebrate your Moms! Dig in after the jump… Read more

WELCOME: South Granville’s “Siena” Eatery Has Joined The Growing Scout Community

We’ve invited South Granville’s Siena restaurant to join our GOODS section as an excellent place to enjoy a well made supper. They are now proud members of Scout, and as such we will be posting their news in addition to hosting a page for them on our awesome, curated list of independent goodnesses. We’d like to take this chance to thank them for their support, and for making Vancouver a more delicious place to live.

ALL THE LOCAL “GOODS”

GOODS: Upstairs Campagnolo Supper Club To Present A Nose To Tail Feast On April 17

1020 Main St | 604-484-6018 | campagnolorestaurant.ca | 1944 West 4th | 604-288-7905 | refuelrestaurant.com

The GOODS from Campagnolo

Vancouver, BC | Campagnolo Supper Club presents Get Cracklin, a nose-to-tail feast of whole roasted suckling pig to be held on April 17. Chef Ted Anderson is preparing an array of seasonal sides to be served family style and shared at communal tables to complement the pig. There are only 30 seats available, so get cracklin! Details after the jump… Read more

SEEN IN VANCOUVER #432: Cactus Club To Open Its (Who’s Counting?) Location Today

At 5:00pm this afternoon (Wed), the Cactus Club will open its new 500 seat Coal Harbour monster, complete with 200 seat patio and 40 seat private room. Sadly, there is no truth to the rumour that this location (the 23rd) also includes a secret 55 seat pre-shift beauty/tanning salon underneath the dining room (built for the exclusive use of the staff). I know this because I invented that rumour. Just now. To celebrate the opening and Cactus Club’s 25th anniversary, the Olympic Cauldron will apparently be lit from 6pm to 10pm tonight. What the….why? Because stop asking questions and sing the anthem, traitor.

EVERYTHING SEEN IN VANCOUVER

DINER: “Tableau Bar Bistro” Crew To Open New Restaurant In Yaletown This Summer

by Andrew Morrison | Led by principal Lilliana L. De Cotiis, the team behind Coal Harbour’s Tableau Bar Bistro – executive chef Marc-Andre Choquette, chef Tret Jordan, lead bartender J.S. Dupuis and manager Steven Wright – are opening a second restaurant, this time in Yaletown in the ancient Homer Cafe classic diner location (just across the street from Subeez).

When I say “ancient”, I’m talking in Vancouver years. The Homer Building at Smithe & Homer celebrates its 100th birthday in 2013, which is to say that it’s old enough for a history that stretches back beyond the Homer Cafe, with its famous pair of eggs with sausages and toast for $3.95. Prior to the humble Homer, it was the Stratos Cafe, and before that it was Rose’s Coffee Shop. Before that it was Pauline’s Cafe, and before that it was the Smithe Coffee Bar. Peel the layers back past the 1950′s and you’ll find a Japanese candy store, a cleaners, a grocery, a barber shop, and so on. It was always a community hub of some sort. You can see it in its bones.

Fast forward to the Fall of 2008, when The Homer underwent the knife. The major facelift, retrofit and rebrand was completed in the Fall of 2011 (you might remember the aged facade braced in glossy developer wrap marketing the place as “Yaletown’s last opportunity”). It’s now called The Beasley after former city planner Larry Beasley, and exists as the heritage foot forward and namesake of a brand new neighbouring 33 storey condo tower. To my knowledge, the only facet of the new development that has yet to be completed is the restaurant space, which was leased this past Fall.

De Cotiis et al have yet to reveal the name of the restaurant, which is slated to open at some point this summer. The food concept is also being kept a secret. For now all I can say is that it won’t be another Tableau Bar Bistro, which is fine by me. However much I might love that restaurant (and boy, do I ever), it’s important to remember that Marc-Andre Choquette is one of the best chefs in western Canada (Rob Feenie’s right hand man at Lumiere during its prime), one whose range is hardly tested by the classic French bistro milieu of moules and steak frites. It would be awesome if he let loose on a different, more innovative tack. But beggars can’t be choosers. At this early stage only one thing is for certain: whatever Choquette cooks, I’ll want to try it.

ALL ANTICIPATED OPENINGS

DINER: Highly Respected DTES Restaurant “Fat Dragon” Set To Close On December 22

Andrew Morrison | I started writing my annual Top 10 Best New Restaurants column for the newspaper yesterday when I learned that the keeper of the #9 spot, Fat Dragon, was going to close for good next Saturday (December 22). It’s a bummer, for sure, that they couldn’t last nine months. My family loved the place; it was casual, affordable, and “Chinese BBQ meets Southern US spice” concepts don’t come along every day. The people, however, never fell for it the same way that the critics did (I wasn’t alone in my affections. My colleagues at the Globe & Mail, The Courier, and the Vancouver Sun also loved The Fat Dragon). I think that had lot of that had to do with the simple fact that few of them ever bothered to go, which was a bit of a shocker considering how the owners – the same people who brought us Refuel and the two Campagnolos – are highly respected for track record of uncompromising quality.

No, I suspect the real reason why it couldn’t make it was its address. Located just down the street from Oppenheimer Park, the 500 block of Powell St. hasn’t attracted much in the way of gastronomically adventurous foot traffic since the old days of Japantown. It’s unfortunate that a lot of Vancouver diners still dread the core of the Downtown Eastside as if it were an urban Hades, a place where their cars would be broken into by crack addicts and their persons robbed by HIV-infected needle-point, but I understand that nothing stifles an appetite quite like anxiety, however baseless and prejudicial the anxiety might be. What is true, however, is that many of my neighbours on the DTES didn’t give the Fat Dragon a warm reception. The owners were (sadly, predictably, falsely, laughably) decried as gentrifiers by a lot of them before the restaurant was even open, and I was disgusted and ashamed to hear – just a few weeks after opening – that someone felt it necessary to introduce a pile of feces to the handle of the front door. Read more

DINER: Bacon-Fetishist Food Cart Opening “Pig & Mortar” On West 6th Ave This Winter

by Andrew Morrison | I love Volkswagen Westfalias and pork, so when street food vendor Pig On The Street came along and combined the two, I was understandably pretty stoked.

I was most recently sold on their awesomeness (a BLT wrap) in August, back when they were one of the many food trucks ensconced in the parking lot behind The Waldorf on the weekends. In that glorious van of theirs (I’ve had two), they were hard to miss. It’s therefore my pleasure to share the news that they are opening a brick and mortar joint (a la Japadog, Tacofino) this winter called Pig & Mortar. Because of course.

Owners Krissy Seymour and Mark Cothey recently secured the Todd’s Cafe spot at 1529 West 6th between Fir and Granville. The couple from Cornwall see Pig & Mortar as a 30 seater that is casual, British-styled and “extremely porky”. “We aren’t top chefs,” admits Seymour. “We are pretty basic but we want to create an environment that people can feel at home and just enjoy some fantastic beers, some decent grub made from great local produce and meat and just stay true to our Cornish ways.” Before Christmas, we can expect greatest hits from the food truck, quality pub grub at both lunch and dinner, good beers, some wines on tap from Vancouver Urban Winery, and maybe even some big hog roasts on Sundays.

Looking ahead summertime bonus: 14 seat patio.

ALL ANTICIPATED OPENINGS

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Andrew Morrison lives and works in Vancouver as editor-in-chief of Scout, food columnist at the Westender, and National Referee & Judge at the Canadian Culinary Championships. He also contributes regularly to a wide range of publications, radio programs, and television shows on local food, culture and travel; collects inexpensive things; and enjoys rare birds, skateboards, cocktails, shoes, good pastas, many songs, and the smell of camp fires.

SCOUT GUIDE: On Making The Most Out Of This Weekend’s “Eastside Culture Crawl”

by Andrew Morrison & Michelle Sproule | With the Eastside Culture Crawl (November 16, 17, 18) now upon us, so too is the bundling up and traipsing about the eastside from one artist’s studio to the next admiring their work, asking questions and generally absorbing something of their creative processes. The Crawl covers the area between Terminal Avenue to Burrard Inlet between Main Street and Victoria Drive (handy map). This year there will be over 400 artists participating and over 15,000 crawlers, so precisely the kind of event that calls for a game plan. Here’s ours… Read more

GOODS: Chinatown’s “East Of Main Cafe” Has Joined The Growing Scout Community

We’ve invited Chinatown’s recently launched East Of Main Cafe to join our GOODS section as a recommended local restaurant. They’re now proud members of Scout, and as such we will be posting their news in addition to hosting a page for them on our awesome, curated list of independent goodnesses. We’d like to take this chance to thank them for their support of Scout, and for making Vancouver a more delicious place to be. Take a look…

ALL THE LOCAL “GOODS”

DINER: At Long Last, Big Lou’s Will Tackle Toronto’s Famed Peameal Bacon Sandwich

by Andrew Morrison | After some cajoling, my local butcher shop, Big Lou’s, has decided to do a peameal bacon sandwich. What’s the big deal? Well, for starters, they’re fucking delicious, times a gabillion. We could leave it at that, but it should be remembered that the peameal bacon sandwich is also widely acknowledged to be Toronto’s signature dish. I ate my weight in them when I used to live back east, and I’ve repeatedly begged for them since coming home, most recently in a column detailing what I’d like to see from Vancouver’s next crop of street food vendors.

If you look closely, you’ll notice that there are literally thousands of former Torontonians roaming the streets of Vancouver every day in a vapid daze, pining for a taste of Hogtown (and a sip of Creemore beer). When word gets around that we’re actually going to have these gnarly beasts right here in town, the cloistered hearts of (closet) Leafs fans from Kits to Kamloops will glow like the lights of Honest Ed’s before melting like so much butter on a streetcar rail. They will freak.

But what are we talking about, really? In Toronto’s iconic St. Lawrence Market, at stalls with names like “The Sausage King” and “Carousel”, the thick cut, cornmeal-encrusted, flat top-sizzled slices of cured, salty pork loin come fast and furious. They’re piled high – 6 slices! – on soft buns and served with a variety of add-ons. Some folks dig ‘em plain, others stacked with bell peppers and fried eggs, but the gold standard – to me at least – has always been with mayo and iceberg lettuce, and maybe a slice of tomato. To my knowledge – and this has always struck me as totally bizarre – no Vancouver establishment has ever tried to replicate it.

Since I’ve been lobbying Big Lou’s chefs/butchers Karl Gregg and Allan Bosomworth to make and sell this sandwich since before they’d even opened shop, they contacted me last week to say they’d just cured their first loins. Despite having been to Toronto before, neither Karl nor Allan had ever tried the sandwich. Would I be so kind as to come down and help them make it? Hell yes I would! The experiments went down late yesterday afternoon, and I think we got it right (I had to walk my bike home – a good sign, to be sure).

I’ll be writing about the development of the sandwich (and the obstacles that Karl and Allan have faced in achieving a reasonable facsimile) in next week’s paper. Before I do that, however, I’ll say six things about the final product to whet your waggers.

1. the sandwich should be on sale for $7.95 probably before this week is over (unless they go back to the drawing board).

2. Leafs suck!

3. they’ve made a garlic mayo similar to the sauce at St. Lawrence Market’s Sausage King (FTW).

4. they’re employing pork fat from their porchetta to mimic the flat top grease you’d get in Toronto (FTW).

5. a spread of HP sauce is an option (FTW).

6. oh my holy god…peameal bacon sandwiches!

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Andrew Morrison lives and works in Vancouver as editor-in-chief of Scout, food columnist at the Westender, and National Referee & Judge at the Canadian Culinary Championships. He also contributes regularly to a wide range of publications, radio programs, and television shows on local food, culture and travel; collects inexpensive things; and enjoys rare birds, skateboards, cocktails, shoes, good pastas, many songs, and the smell of camp fires.

DINER: “Wildebeest” Finally Finished, Set To Open To The Public This Tuesday Night

by Andrew Morrison | As we hinted last night on Scout’s new Tumblr, the long wait for Wildebeest at 120 West Hastings has ended. The highly anticipated restaurant from Josh Pape and James Iranzad (with former West chef David Gunawan at the kitchen helm) will open for its first official service this Tuesday evening. They did their soft run yesterday with friends, family, and a few large, a la carte bookings (40, 12, oh my!), and it appeared to all go off without a hitch. We left thinking – and we suspected this when we first got wind of the project last year – that Vancouver had a new glory on its hands.

The large, high-ceilinged room sports a homey, coastal industrial feel with plenty of wood and iron (courtesy of Union Wood Co.), and though I wouldn’t compare it to any single aesthetic, in a squint it might come across like an amalgam of homage – reminiscent of Revolver, Chambar, L’Abattoir, and The Diamond. Not a bad mix. It’s a look that gels especially well when writ so large (110+ seats), and while it’s broken up into tidy sections – lounge, waist and rear – it all comes together like a riparian package that flows comfortably (the trick is helped along by a good soundtrack and tolerable acoustics). The downstairs wine bar is not yet finished, and it’s doubtful for Tuesday, when the main floor restaurant and bar will almost certainly be bum-rushed like a Bellingham Costco. It will start as dinner only, with brunch service coming soon.

Whatever you do, don’t let the meaty name fool you. Wildebeest’s menu is appealing on many fronts. Adventurous carnivores who are red in both tooth and claw will certainly be satisfied (behold the chicken butter, the cotechino sausage, the sweetbreads, etc), but those keen on lighter and more vegetal fare are in for treats, too, like an heirloom radish salad with malt crumble and beet sorbet, or a sorrel gazpacho with lemon-infused yellow cukes. It’s a chef’s restaurant to the core, and I’m not just saying that because customers are invited to buy six packs of beer for the kitchen (for real: the $9 option is just below the 15oz dry aged ribeye). You’ll find no kids meals or defeatist genuflections to convention, only exacting exercises in originality, with some more daring than others. The plates don’t really reach for any particular cuisine type, standing instead like the inventions of well seasoned, Michelin-trained cooks envisioning sugarplums just after smoking fat joints of imagination. In a pinch I’d pin it to a blend of French and West Coast, but what does it matter? Nothing disappointed, and with prices for most dishes in the $5-$15 range, it all translates to the customer as tremendous value.

I’ll save further comments for when it’s properly open and I’ve paid a few bills, except to say that Wildebeest is very probably going to rock the bells. It has all the requisite ingredients for an instant hit (including lots of familiar faces on the service team), so I’m predicting a full, happy house out of the gate. While you await the dawning of D-Day, take a look at what we ate, drank, and saw before spreading the good word…

ALL ANTICIPATED RESTAURANTS

Andrew Morrison lives and works in Vancouver as editor-in-chief of Scout, food columnist at the Westender, and National Referee & Judge at the Canadian Culinary Championships. He also contributes regularly to a wide range of publications, radio programs, and television shows on local food, culture and travel; collects inexpensive things; and enjoys rare birds, skateboards, cocktails, shoes, good pastas, many songs, and the smell of camp fires.

GOODS: “Red Card” In The Moda Hotel All Set For Euro Cup Action From June 8th On

Red Card is located at 900 Seymour Street (at Smithe) | Vancouver | 604-689-4460 | www.redcardsportsbar.ca

The GOODS from Red Card

Vancouver, BC | In response to an overwhelming demand, Red Card is pleased to announce they will open at 8am starting Friday, June 8th for all preliminary morning rounds of the Euro Cup. Catch all the action on our 18 hi-def tvs and two giant projector screens while enjoying a specially prepared breakfast menu that will feature all your favourites. Plus with our special Euro Cup liquor license you can enjoy an eye opening, world class beer, Red Card’s signature European Caesar or whatever your favorite standard sports beverage may be. General Manager Curtis Budnarchuk says “excitement for the Euro Cup is growing already – we have a strong audience for most soccer games so I can see the Euro Cup being even crazier – it’s a fantastic atmosphere and fans really get into it. We’re ecstatic that our customers receive full dining and beverage service while watching the early games – it really makes it feel like we’re in Europe.” Read more

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