Dining - A City To Dine For

Over the past decade there has been a monumental change, both in restaurants and at home, in how Vancouverites approach the table: changes in liquor legislation; small plates dining; rapid-fire roll-outs of izakaya, Korean and other Asian cuisines and formats (there are more than 400 Japanese restaurants in Vancouver proper now); the extraordinary development of restaurants in Yaletown. Behind the swinging doors there has also been massive change: the collaboration of chef, farmer and fisherman has seen a heady reinvestment in local, sustainable ingredients, many now easily available in local markets and shops. Our wine industry, especially in the Okanagan Valley, has gained real structure, too — and the international awards that go with it.

Vancouver has emerged as one of the leading culinary laboratories on earth. Some of the customs, as well as some of the innovations that have besieged North American dining over the past decade, have been developed right here. Several of them illustrate how much our dining culture has changed in the past decade.

They also reflect the change in our culture as a whole. Vancouver enjoys a distinctive regional cuisine that announces you are eating on the edge of the mighty Pacific. Our gastronomic incubator is born from many places. It’s the strands of this culinary DNA that bind us — and now, increasingly merged, that define us. By the second generation, when an imported culinary culture begins to merge with the whole, much of what we eat, while still referencing its offshore beginnings, starts to speak Canadian without an accent.

As a white guy with a Chinese name I was particularly sensitive to the first emergent trend of the past decade: the explosion of inexpensive Asian restaurants across Vancouver. And what followed. As James Chatto, the food and restaurant columnist for Toronto Life magazine recently remarked in an article about Vancouver’s dining scene, “so many people have come here from Asia, bringing their traditions of dining out almost daily. Indeed the Asian presence is everywhere, from the multiplicity of ethnic restaurants to the flavours that find their way onto all but the most staunchly Western menus.”

Look no further than your local supermarket to amplify Chatto’s observation. Over the past decade sushi has become a generic foodstuff, widely available as takeout in grocery store deli cases, but in Vancouver — subbing for those nasty triangles of egg salad on white — even at gas stations. Many other Asian foods have also become ubiquitous to the point of cliché. Salted edamame show up as pub snack. Won tons (a.k.a. pot stickers) are staples on starter lists in casual, white-guy dining rooms. Dim sum vies with eggs Benny as Vancouver’s brunch icon. Chains such as Earls, Cactus Club and Joey’s Global do a credible job with hijacked Asian noodle dishes — sometimes punchier, in fact, than Asian restaurants at the same price point.

So many Asian ingredients and preparations (such as black bean, soy and oyster sauces, ponzu, wasabi, bulgogi, kuljon and lo mein) have crossed the divide that it is now the norm to see Asian references on most Western-based Vancouver menus.

A second benchmark illustrative of the rapid-fire changes in our culinary culture is the swiftly emerging collaboration between farmer, fisherman and chef. That collaboration defines locality and is another bellwether for a maturing cuisine eager to demonstrate its terroir. While that trend has been North America-wide, it has been further defined in B.C. by collectives of chefs who collaborate amongst themselves.

But if I were to pick one apocalyptic phenomenon, one thing unique to Vancouver that both defines us and that began right here, it would be the rise of small plates dining.

Some seven years ago, in Vancouver magazine’s October 1999 edition, we saluted that rise in a cover feature called “Tapas Takes Over: Why the hottest new restaurants serve lots of little plates.” Signalling the advent of restaurants such as Bin 941/942, Tapastree and many others, our editors drilled down to uncover the cause.

Or causes. Because our research at the time demonstrated several stimuli at work: Asian dining is founded in “sharing” platters; Vancouver diners are notoriously spontaneous (read: last minute) and casual, and, perhaps definitively, a good deal of the invention and flavour impact was occurring on the appetizer side of the menu.

The stimulus of small plates dining means that now we can eat very well, and spontaneously, without the fuss and bother of the hidebound or the intimidating. It’s refreshing to know the same holds true of other North American cities, finally — small plates dining is popular almost everywhere. Even once-haughty Parisienne restaurants have changed their tune, with famous chefs going out of their way to drop a Michelin macaron or two and cook a freestyle, flavour-driven cuisine without pretense.

When I first began writing professionally about food, some 15 years ago, the Internet was still being invented by Al Gore, cellphones were the size of Second World War walkie-talkies and people still taped TV shows like Roseanne.

A lot has changed in the intervening years, but my appetites remain lusty, especially when the prospect of my next meal rears up. Then I will sit down with you again.