Don Genova's Blog

Food For Thought - Chef Expands Casual Empire

This week on Food For Thought, a brief profile of Wayne Martin, former executive chef at the Four Seasons Hotel in Vancouver.  He left that lofty position to open Crave, a casual restaurant on Vancouver's East Side.  It was a great success, and now he has a new venture called Fraiche, in the lofty heights of West Vancouver's British Properties neighbourhood.

Here is the audio file for your listening pleasure.

 

Photos reproduced here taken by Dean Sanderson.

 

Fraîche

2240 Chippendale Road

West Vancouver, BC

T: 604.925.7595

Directions:  Going north, take the West Vancouver exit off the Lion’s Gate Bridge and turn right onto Taylor Way up the hill to the Upper Levels Highway. Turn left at the highway going West and take the 21^st Street exit. Turn right onto 21^st Street (which is actually Westhill) and follow up Westhill through the residential area till Chippendale Road at the top. Turn left and drive approximately 4 to 5 blocks. 

Free underground parking below the restaurant or street parking

 

Parma Palate - Hitting the Road

Last weekend a few of my classmates and I rented a car to tear over hell's half acre. We started on Saturday with a drive into Liguria up and down mountain roads, to the seaside, and an interior 'island' for eel and trout...this is one of the restaurants I went to in Liguria, called La Brinca.  You think that means 'on the brink'? It was nicely perched on a cliff overlooking a terraced green valley.  And the food was pretty good, too!  Here's a photo album of the trip, complete with captions at the bottom of each photo.

After the restaurant there were more winding roads to negotiate until we got to the autostrada.  This was the first time I drove a car in 4 months, and I thoroughly enjoyed being behind the wheel, both in the mountains, on the highway and right in the city.  The city was Genova, where we made a whirlwind visit.  Let me tell you, it's kind of weird to see your last name plastered all over the place!

There was a very impressive duomo in Genova, but of course as foodies we were even more excited to find an artisanal food market just around the corner.  It was loaded with little stalls selling cheese, cured meats and sausages, olives, honey, olive oil and on and on.  I picked up a great selection of olives, including some pickled garlic that was the most mild I have ever tasted...don't know how they do it!  The other great find was a pork sausage laced with truffle.  Should have bought two of them!  Some of the cheeses looked pretty sketchy, actually.  There were so old they didn't even look edible, but obviously these cheeses had certain qualities appreciated by certain cheese lovers.  Because we became just a little hungry after our explorations we stopped at a very typical restaurant and enjoyed dishes of marinated mussels, calamari and fritto misto, a mixed 'fry-up' of battered shrimp, squid and small fish.  Wasn't that great but hit the spot.  We drove all the way back to Parma and Colorno.

On Sunday we went to a little town called Isola Dovarese, not far from Colorno, about halfway in between Cremona and Mantova.  The restaurant was called La Crepa. It's called Isola, or island, because of the river that surrounds it on three sides.  We were surprised to find  fish on the menu, so we had the fish antipasti, which consisted of  marinated eel, as well as warm trout with polenta.  I also enjoyed a rabbit ragu on top of thick but tender squares of pasta.

Then we went on to Mantova, one of the most significant religious towns in this region. Why? Because St. Andrew's Basilica was built to house relics, vials containing earth soaked with the blood of Christ that were reportedly brought to Mantova by the soldier who pierced the side of Christ on the cross.

On the food side we tried some tangy yet sweet mostarda made of clementine oranges so I bought some to serve with cheese and other goodies, I'll have a photo of that later, but here are more pictures of  La Crepa and Mantova in the photo album.

Crave - Great Addition to Main Street

A couple of weeks ago I had my first taste of what's on the menu at Crave, a relatively new restaurant on a section of Vancouver's rapidly-gentrifying Main Street.

Chef/owner Wayne Martin used to be the executive chef at Vancouver's Four Seasons Hotel, but this is not a hoity-toity place by any stretch of the imagination, also the food definitely qualifies as high quality.

*disclosure:  I was part of a media dinner held on the back patio, so I did not pay for this meal and the rest of the restaurant was closed, so of course all service was focused on this dinner party.

Wayne told us that the next step in his career would have been some other corporate position with the Four Seasons chain, or he could strike out on his own and do whatever he wanted in his new place.  Great decision!

Crave is a real comfort food kind of place, but there are still a few items on the menu that harken back to Wayne's roots at the Four Seasons, like his ahi tuna tempura roll and Dungeness crab cakes. 

Where the dishes shine include Wayne's take on some classics such as the Cobb Salad, which in this case was composed in colourful rows of the salad ingredients topped with his buttermilk batter-fried chicken.  I also enjoyed some excellent barbecued pork ribs along with a pulled pork sandwich.  If it's a nice evening make sure you ask for a table out back on the patio, which has been nicely landscaped and is a real unexpected oasis on that stretch of Main Street just north of King Edward. 

That Main and King Ed neighbourhood was part of my old stomping grounds when I lived on the East Side, and I kind of miss not only the old stalwarts there, such as The Reef, Windsor Meats and Jasmine Halal Meats and Deli, but new entries such as Crave.  Take a stroll in that area and you'll see what I mean.  It's no longer fair to call it Vancouver's Antique Alley, as the modern bistros and shops are starting to eclipsing the old second hand stores and antique shops.

Wild Rice - the Barbecue Menu

Funny, after not eating out that much over the past few months in Vancouver and at my other place in the Cowichan Valley, there has been a sudden 'yeah, let's go!'  This is the first post of a few about some great summertime eating I've had over the past couple of weeks.  First up, a quick whizz through the summer 'barbecue' menu at Wild Rice in downtown Vancouver.

Chef Stuart Irving has come up with twists on summer classics with his usual magic touch that never results in con-fusion.  The picture above shows his cucumber dong gua salad with warmed chili oil, pea shoots and crystallized ginger.  The cucumber and dong gua(winter melon) provide fresh crunch and the crystallized ginger is a sharp, sweet surprise.

I love chips that are other than the standard potato chips...and this mass of yam, lotus and taro root chips pleases, especially with the addition of a roasted garlic and ginseng aioli.

The centrepiece of the barbecue menu (shown here in taster portions, are the wild boar bratwurst hot dog and the barbecue duck burger on a steamed bun which makes you forget about any previous gooey steamed buns you may have had in Chinese restaurants.

Other hits included Stu's forbidden city nugget potato salad with baby corn, chayote squash, daikon radish, quail eggs, and double smoked bacon, and a 'coleslaw' of jicama and sui choy with an avocado vinaigrette.  Prices are very reasonable, so make sure you check it out.   The restaurant is kitty-corner to Tinseltown, so it's a great opportunity to check out a movie before or after a visit to Wild Rice.                                                                     
                              

Bad News About Sapphire

Sapphire, the Sri Lankan restaurant I featured on Pacific Palate last week, is being forced to close its doors tomorrow, March 1st.

According to co-owner Chris DeVaz, the building housing the restaurant in Gastown has been sold and the new owner wants to run the restaurant space, now.  She says they've been forced to leave before their lease runs out, with the landlord daring them to go to court to get compensation.  Not a happy story, and the Vancouver dining public loses a unique restaurant.

However, Chris says the family is searching for a new downtown location, and they'll let me know as soon as they're up and running again.  If you know of such a location, send me an email at pacificpalate at telus dot net.