hired belly’s best restaurants and dining
Forage Chef Chris Whittaker. Vancouver's greenest chef? Reinventing a legendary room is never easy but when the Listel Hotel decided to close long running O'Doul's, the move afforded no shortage of opportunities. In 10 days or so they'll pull the wraps off forage (1300 Robson St, 604-684-8461), a smaller and considerably more casual [...]
Mmmm! Smoked chicken liver and foie gras parfait. Just mildly addictive. TP photo CLOSED Updated Oct 23, 2012. It’s not unusual for new restos to tweak things as they go along but we’re more than intrigued by Le Parisien’s just launched “petits plats”—a definite nod to Spanish tapas, with some excellent [...]
Good pints and more ... We’ve waxed poetic (and otherwise) over the years about what used to pass for a pub in Vancouver. Having been eclipsed for so long by Victoria (which benefitted maybe just a tad from being the seat of political and bureaucratic power), Vancouver is finally coming into its own. [...]
Minestrone: a steaming bowl of seasonally appropriate goodness, TP photo CLOSED We’re always intrigued when a leading hotel decides to work with a celebrated restaurant–as opposed to running its own in-house operation. We watched with interest over the last couple of years the machinations surrounding the pop-ups at Opus Hotel, which [...]
A warm and welcoming interior .... Updated, March 31, 2014. I committed The inexcusable sin the other night, by arriving late for a reservation which in itself allowed too little time to dine properly before heading off to the York Theatre. In my mind I had thought it would be easy to order [...]
Fable Kitchen canned tuna—it's a showstopper, TP photo For some reason I missed posting about Fable Kitchen (1944 West Fourth Ave., 604-732-1722), which I covered in my Vancouver Courier column some weeks ago. What was interesting about this review is that we went on a crazy, busy evening and, as a result, had to [...]
Neil Taylor (l) and Ed Perrow pull the wraps off what promises to be a West End hotspot, TP photo What's the first thing you do (besides laundry) when you get back home after 24-hours of flying? Go out to dinner, of course! We had just a one night “stopover" in Vancouver between [...]
Louise Wilson's cool idea to colour your approach to wine When time (between wine) permits, The Hired Belly does like to dabble in the odd book review. But it’s been at least a couple of years since he pulled out his crayons for a colouring book. What have crayons and Cabernet in common—Aside [...]
Wildebeest owners James Iranzad (l) and Josh Pape: serious, house butchered meats on the menu—and good wines too, TP photo As a young teenager, I was lucky enough to visit France a few times, thanks in great part to a determined French teacher, who strongly suggested I should get a pen-pal. After several [...]
FarmFolk CityFolk is one of BC's longest established proponents of locally grown food Food and wine celebrations come and go but one of the longest running—unquestionably because its very telling relevance continues to resonate—is Feast of Fields, the notable outdoor graze that now unfolds in three incarnations: Metro Vancouver, Vancouver Island and [...]
