Max Curzon-Price and Andrew Kong have spent years working in the same orbit, most notably at Suyo, where their cocktail program earned Michelin’s Exceptional Cocktails Award. Now they’re stepping out on their own with Bar Supernova at 125 Keefer Street…

The Concept

Standing in an empty concrete box on Keefer Street, Max Curzon-Price starts by explaining what a supernova is. “A dying star,” he says. “At the end of its life, it collapses and then expands into something bigger than it ever was.” He gestures around the room, mapping out what isn’t there yet: the bar, the lab, the kitchen.

An empty room is just potential waiting for a plan. But it isn’t the space he’s describing. Curzon-Price and Kong would say the same about a prawn head, spent tea leaves, or a parmesan rind. The openness to see value where others assume there’s none runs through everything Supernova does. Things at the end of their useful life get pushed through a process that gives them another one. Not metaphorically. Literally.

“The idea is to develop a network and system that allows us to collect perceived food waste from bars, restaurants, coffee shops, wineries, and breweries and employ all manner of practices and techniques to turn them into distillates, ferments, or otherwise,” Curzon-Price says. “To showcase to our guests, and ourselves, just how much opportunity sits locked up in the things we consider spent.”

When asked when the idea actually began, Curzon-Price counts his fifteen years in the industry against Andrew’s eight and arrives at a cumulative “28 years ago.” In other words: “We’ve both always wanted to open our own spot, it just took this long to get there.” The project started taking real shape about eighteen months ago. “It’s been pretty unrelenting ever since.”

When I ask how the partnership formed, Curzon-Price describes hundreds of hours of working together and talking about what they actually cared about, discovering along the way that their values were more aligned than even they had expected. “When you know, you know,” he says. “It’s about finding people whose values are dedicated to the greater well-being of those around them.” The how took longer to figure out than the why. But once things started to click into place, the velocity picked up quickly, and that momentum led them to their third partner, Chef Shaun Couzelis.

Food

Couzelis arrives from Brae in Victoria, Australia. Brae holds three Chef Hats (Australia’s equivalent to Michelin stars). It is located on an organic farm and runs a tight, produce-led kitchen with a serious stance on waste.

With that background, the alignment with Supernova’s goals makes immediate sense. But Couzelis isn’t one to overcomplicate it. There may be innovative technique behind the way he operates, but ultimately, he “just wants to make the best snacks he can.”

Beyond snacks that use ingredients fully, with enough left for the bar to work with, the vision isn’t to compete with Vancouver’s restaurant scene. “We want to sate the early crowds looking for a pre-dinner bevo and keep the night rolling for the well-fed looking for their next stop,” Curzon-Price says.

The bar and kitchen will plan each six-week menu cycle together, ensuring neither side generates waste the other can’t use. Kong points out that this kind of collaboration is often talked about more than it’s actually practised. “A lot of places say the kitchen and bar work together, but usually one side builds first and the other responds. For us, it starts with the same ingredients, and we collaborate on what can be done from there.”

They are aiming for ten to twelve drinks alongside eight to ten dishes, turning at the same time. It’s a closed loop, and it’s also just good kitchen sense. “Everything at Supernova is born to die,” Max says. “But just because a favourite goes away doesn’t mean we won’t make a secret batch where we can, or bring it back in the future.”

I’ve seen a preliminary menu. We’re a long way from opening and things will shift, but it already signals the intent clearly. On the savoury side, expect things like an oyster with apple and nasturtium granita, stracciatella with fried sunchokes and pickled pear on housemade focaccia, or a kohlrabi and Dungeness crab salad with makrut lime emulsion. There’s a KFQ (Kentucky fried quail) with spiced collard purée, and a pork and fennel sausage tortellini. On the sweet side, a Supernova cruller with honey butter and a fig leaf ice cream sandwich. It’s the kind of menu that makes you want to order everything and pace yourself badly, which is why I also like the fact that they plan to offer guests two options: “Bring Us Some Snacks” or “Feed Us All The Snacks.” A handful of small, delicious bites or the full creative arsenal. They want guests to “taste more, eat less.”

DRINKS

The beverage program moves in lockstep with the kitchen, driven by the same priorities: flavour, experience, and pushing limits.  Curzon-Price walks me through a recent example of their approach: A friend’s post-passata garden haul yielded tomato pulp, skins, and leaves that were heading nowhere useful. The pulp and skins were fermented with champagne yeast into a warm, bready tomato wine. The leaves were distilled with pea shells into a vibrant green garden distillate. Burrata water, slightly sweetened and carbonated, tied it together into a highball that read somewhere between a caprese salad and something that made no sense existing in a glass. Everything built from what would have otherwise been discarded.

The preliminary cocktail list follows the same logic. Expect an oyster shell distillate with oxidised elderflower and white Burgundy, an aji amarillo brought together by way of chapulines (grasshoppers), sesame, coconut, and yuzu. A corn cocktail made with masa distillate and corn husks. A drink built around Parmesan rinds, a forgotten box of Sauternes, and some mezcal. These aren’t cocktails constructed around a spirit. They start with an ingredient, and the spirit is what it becomes.

The DESIGN

Supernova will be located next door to The Keefer Bar, one of the best bars in the country and an institution in Vancouver for over 16 years. When I ask if this is intimidating, the group admit that signing a lease for a space right beside The Keefer took some convincing at first.

“What initially felt a little too close to the competition later felt obvious and natural,” Curzon-Price says…”Chinatown is undeniably the central hub of cocktail culture in our city. Every killer cocktail scene in major cities seems to have a central few blocks that play host to all the nightlife’s mischief and pleasures, and for us, the nexus of that hub in Vancouver is at Keefer and Main.”

Kong sees it just as clearly from a different angle.

“With cocktail culture, you want to move through a few places in a night, so being in an area that allows that makes sense to us. We’ve looked up to The Keefer for years, so opening on the same block means a lot.”

The space comes in at around 2,150 square feet. Design is being handled by &Daughters, the Vancouver studio behind Ama and Selene, two rooms that couldn’t look more different and share the same quality of spatial intelligence. What I love most about the brief they were given for Supernova is that it included no visual references, no mood boards. Just a playlist and an open directive to design a space that captures how the music made them feel.

From there, the layout takes shape around a single priority: put people at the bar. Kong presents it in more structural terms: “We wanted to rethink how a bar actually works. Most places have a clear line between where the staff operates and where guests sit. We’re trying to break that down a bit and create something more free-flowing, more communal. The drink is part of it, but it’s really about the experience. The liquid in the glass just helps facilitate that.”

So far, as I understand it, there will be thirty-nine stools arranged in a loose horseshoe, around a central bar, plus eight additional seats and some standing room. There will be a cocktail lab at the back of the room, and a layout flexible enough to become a teaching space when the room calls for it.

The front-of-house team will be made up entirely of bartenders, eight to ten in total, rotating through roles that include service, prep, and guest engagement.

And the room is designed to start working the moment you walk in. When guests arrive, the first staff member calls out: “Friends at the door,” The whole room responds: “Hi friends.” When they leave: “Friends going home,” followed by a resounding “Goodbye friends.”

It’s a small thing. But small things, done consistently and with genuine intent, are what separate a good bar from one people actually love. Supernova seems to understand the difference.

Bar Supernova

Neighbourhood: Chinatown

125 Keefer Street

WEBSITE