UPDATE Sapphire is closing its doors as of March 1st due to trouble with its lease. Watch this blog for news of a new location.
Today on Pacific Palate I traveled to Sri Lanka, the island nation off the southeast coast of India, courtesy of Sapphire restaurant in Vancouver’s Gastown. Sri Lankan cuisine has lots of different influences, including Malay, Portuguese, Dutch Indonesia, and the Moors. It all turns up in delicious dishes at Sapphire, which is at 216 Abbott Street in Vancouver.
The restaurant is a family-run operation with Joseph DeVaz at the helm. The DeVaz’s came to Canada 21 years ago, but this is their first go at their own restaurant. The dishes can be made Asian stir-fry style, like this ‘devilled beef’, or be influenced by Pakistani dishes like this rice biryani. 
They also offer Sri Lankan curries, and South Asian fusion dishes of rice and noodle bowls.
A dish you won’t find anywhere else than at Sapphire is the hopper, a thin crepe made in a special pan that sometimes has an egg soft-cooked into the base, and then is served with various sambals, chutneys and curries. Yum! Give the restaurant a try, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
Is this restaurant – Sapphire still in business? I dialled the number and it(recording) says the number does not exist anymore!
I have a friend who is a fabulous Sri Lankan cook at home and a fabulous sous chef in one of our better west coast seafood restaurants at work. I have wanted him to open a restaurant for years, but he says Sri Lankan food is so labour intensive it is hard to make a profit. (This is the reason so many restaurants rely on pasta and the high booze mark-up as their core economic strategy).