From Italian-Asian to Locavore Canadian: Food Adventures in Vancouver

Early this fall, I visited mainly newer restaurants in the downtown area, where some interesting experimentation is going on. But don't let that deter you from popping into tiny spots like Damso on Denman Street where you might find, as I did, some of the best rice cakes in chile sauce you've ever tasted.

Photo A table at Kissa Tanto. Credit Martin Tessler for The New York Times Kissa Tanto

Stylish and sultry, with a jazzy soundtrack to match, Kissa Tanto, in a gritty section of Chinatown, feels like a secret. Except that it's not. Even before it opened in the spring, local epicures were wondering what the team behind Vancouver's celebrated Chinese brasserie, Bao Bei, had up its sleeve — and it wasn't more of that restaurant's addictive dumplings.

Instead, on the second floor of a small building with Chinese flourishes, Vancouver was about to welcome what would become one of the most talked about spots in town: a Japanese-Italian restaurant where ingredients like kombu, miso and katsuo flakes turn up in lasagna, frittelli di melanzane and other Italian dishes.

The location, said Kissa Tanto's chef and co-owner, Joel Watanabe, "hit all the right notes. Dark. Upstairs. We wanted it to be an adventure."

Photo Lasagna with basil cream sauce at Kissa Tanto. Credit Martin Tessler for The New York Times

And it can be an adventure just getting there, but more on that later. First the name. Kissa means cafe (with specific reference here to the traditional jazz cafes of Tokyo), and tanto means "a lot" in Italian; together they denote a "house of plenty," Mr. Watanabe said. With its curvy banquettes, blue-green walls, stacks of vinyl records, and midcentury-style lighting, the décor conjures up the voluptuous allure of those jazz cafes in their 1960s heyday.

The cuisine, however, is decidedly of this century. As my dining companion and I were seated, a server swept past with what looked like lasagna afloat in a neon green pool. And it was lasagna, but not any I had tasted before. Delicate sheaths of handmade pasta, pork, miso besciamella, mustard greens, chantal mushrooms and a parsley-bright ened basil cream sauce melded into something that, like all great creations, felt like a thing of destiny. The autumnal salad, in a yuzu-and-grape dressing, included concord and green grapes, robust greens, shaved melon, radishes and stracciatella cheese. For dessert, yuzu cream was essentially a bowl of thick, sweet, citrusy cream strewn with raspberries, pistachios and olive oil crumble.

Note: There's a wrong way and a right way to get to Kissa Tanto. We went the wrong way, walking down a dicey stretch of East Hastings Street, site of rampant drug activity. The right way, at least at night, is by taxi, car or bus.

Kissa Tanto, 263 East Pender Street, kissatanto.com. Dinner for two, about 100 Canadian dollars, or $75 U.S.

Photo A view of Royal Dinette. Credit Martin Tessler for The New York Times Royal Dinette

"It's like writer's block," the bartender said as she blasted a cinnamon marshmallow with a blowtorch. "You just want to do something that hasn't been done before." She positioned the toasted marshmallow atop a concoction of hickory-smoked rye, Amaro Montenegro and Spirit Fire cherry cedar bitters, and a waiter whisked the drink away.

As I sipped an Upside Down, another alcoholic feat by the bartender who I later learned was Kaitlyn Stewart, the award-winning bar manager at Royal Dinette, I couldn't imagine anyone wrestling with creativity here. The ever-changing menu, which I had been looking over while I waited for my table, was filled that night with odd and interesting combinations: spring salmon with caramelized whey, lovage and kohlrabi; squid ink bucatini with Ca labrian chile and sea urchin butter. The plush, retro décor, with flourishes like a spidery light fixture and tufted wall, was imaginative, too.

Photo Smoked spring salmon at Royal Dinette. Credit Martin Tessler for The New York Times

Royal Dinette opened last year to a wave of enthusiastic reviews. Like the offerings at Kissa Tanto, the food exhibits Asian and Italian influences — a recent menu item, for example, was eggplant tortolloni with miso, mushrooms, brown rice dashi and mustard greens. But the real focus, said Jack Chen, the executive chef, was bringing the "local, sustainable, no-waste" ethos of his former base, the well-regarded Farmer's Apprentice restaurant in Kitsilano, "right to the middle of the Financial District."

And, apparently, the Financial District is impressed; the place was packed on a Wednesday evening. Our table, near a wall lined with jars of pickled cherry blossoms, green apricots, ramps, radishes and other produce, was within earshot of the open kitchen's sizzling and chopping. We went from the orange and herbal flavors of smoked Castelvetrano olives to red wine rigatoni (made with reduced red wine, instead of water) with venison, celeriac, blistered grapes, juniper and a touch of coffee. Tender slices of aged duck, strewn with dandelion greens, arrived in a vivid red sauce of beetroots and strawberries, enhanced with Nootka rose honey. Vegetables here are not a dieter's refuge: Heirloom carrots, hidden beneath a mound of sprouted wheat, were prepared with duck fat and ramp vinegar and sat atop a voluptuous daub of crème fraîche.

Royal Dinette, 905 Dunsmuir Street, royaldinette.ca. Our meal, for two, was about 110 dollars, with drinks.

Photo Miku has an elaborate Japanese menu, with the occasional Italian, French and Latin twist. Credit Martin Tessler for The New York Times Miku

Big, modern, cacophonous and extremely, if not annoyingly, popular, Miku is in the heart of the gleaming, glassy waterfront area, overlooking Burrard Inlet, the mountains beyond, and, if you get the right table, the graceful sails of Vancouver's architectural showpiece, Canada Place.

Miku's surroundings aren't, however, why I came here. I was drawn by the restaurant's elaborate Japanese menu, with the occasional French or Latin twist. The flame-seared aburi oshi sushi was especially intriguing.

When we arrived, the waiting area was filled. We killed time by peering into the busy kitchen where I watched a baker pouring green batter into a shallow pan. What is that? I asked one of the many employees gathered around the reception desk, all trying to project good humor among the throngs of impatient diners. "That? Oh, that is the opera cake!" A green opera cake?

Finally, a half-hour past our reservation, we were seated. The servers and the bartender at the ovoid bar yelled out a Japanese welcome. Beyond the glass doors, the lights of North Vancouver twinkled.

Photo Miku's green opera cake. Credit Martin Tessler for The New York Times

And so our meal began: sweet, crunchy pickled squash, zucchini and cauliflower, followed by calamari in a feathery batter. Soba peperoncino, with shrimp, squid and ribbons of sweet pepper and jalapeño in a chile-garlic sauce, had a real bite to it. Salmon oshi sushi lived up to expectations. A thin layer of pressed local wild salmon atop rectangles of rice had been torched just enough to coax a caramelized flavor from a sweet sauce (I asked a waitress what was in it; "It's a secret," she said, sotto voce) that augmented but didn't overwhelm the pure flavor of the salmon. Wasabi and soy sauce were nowhere in sight.

And finally, the green tea opera cake — an elaborate Japanese take on the French version — appeared. "It takes three days to make," our server said effusively.

We beheld the wonder of geometry and color. As the server pointed out the ingredients, her voice grew more animated: green-tea génoise, chocolate ganache, matcha cream, azuki cream, hazelnut wafer, gooseberry…

"I get so sad when people refuse dessert," she said, after her presentation. "I just think, oh, you don't know what you're missing." And she was right: They don't.

Miku, 70-200 Granville Street, mikurestaurant.com. Our meal for two, with appetizers, dessert and drinks, was 144 dollars.

Photo Nightingale focuses on homegrown Canadian cuisine with an emphasis on Italian. Credit Martin Tessler for The New York Times Nightingale

At 7 o'clock on a Friday evening, an immaculate stretch of West Hastings Street in Coal Harbor was subdued. People in business attire climbed into taxis. Buses roared by. Everyone seemed to be going somewhere else. Nightingale's handsome facade — an early-twentieth-century anachronism in the sea of modernity that characterizes much of the area — seemed a bit formidable.

But inside, a party was raging: A garrulous, fashion-forward crowd filled the soaring, two-level space. Some were lounging near a fireplace flickering with candles; others were gathered around tables laden with glasses and small plates. The 7,400-square-foot restaurant, with its arched windows and tiled columns, felt liberating — attributable not only to the mildly inebriated people, but also to the origami-esq ue nightingales ascending toward the ceiling.

Nightingale, which opened earlier this year, is the latest venture of David Hawksworth, among the most established chefs in the city. In contrast to his new rollicking restaurant ("where modern Canadian cuisine gets social," according to the website) his flagship restaurant, Hawksworth, is quite serious; on our lunchtime visit a button-downed crowd was paying close attention, as we had been, to the exquisite Asian-inspired Pacific Northwest cuisine.

Photo Strawberry lime vanilla pavlova at Nightingale. Credit Martin Tessler for The New York Times

At Nightingale the inspiration is homegrown Canadian with an added emphasis on Italian. Attended to by a young woman who served as a sort of grand dispenser of knowledge ("No need to Google Yelp on your phone," she said, as my dining companion, in search of recommendations, was in the midst of doing. "I'll be your Google.") We followed her suggestion and ordered a very good Okanagan white wine.

Dishes were served as they were prepared, resulting in a traffic jam on our small table. Sockeye salmon ceviche with avocado, watermelon radish and flash-fried quinoa was a pretty, pastel dish, citrusy clean and light. The small pizza, its thin crust appetizingly blistered and charred in the beautiful tile oven we had walked by, offered flashes of decadent saltiness from the slivers of guanciale and green olives. There are some ambitious mains, but we stuck with small dishes: fried chicken served without fanfare alongside a preserved lemon yogurt sauce, and exotically spiced roasted cauliflower beneath sunflower seeds and a bold harissa sauce.

For the real Hawksworth artistry, go to the chef's namesake restaurant, but if you want a glamorous night on the town, with fine cocktails, satisfying "social" food and a cavernous space filled with carefree people, come here.

Nightingale, 1017 West Hastings Street, hawknightingale.com. Our meal for two was about 110 dollars, with wine.

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Source: From Italian-Asian to Locavore Canadian: Food Adventures in Vancouver