Savoury Coast

Taking a break between inspiring talks at the Entheogenesis Conference on Hastings, I walked a mile or so over to Savoury Coast on Robson. It had been lovingly reviewed in the previous week's Georgia Straight, an entertainment weekly that used to be the fountain of counterculture in Vancouver. Would it be worth the rain-soaked walk? I climbed the stairs to find out.
I expected the place to be packed- 7:00 on a Saturday night in the trendiest part of town, but it was oddly empty. Well, more service for me. The Straight review had revelled in the potato and octopus appetizer so that was the first thing I ordered.
I'm learning things about potatoes I never knew. Soy beans slither curiously around my mouth like just evolved fish species. It tastes like octopus. It looks like octopus, but I'd never have guessed it was octopus. And the olives, like Lafayette joining George Washington to liberate the taste buds.
However, along with the bread (so cake-like, I longed for the years in the far distant past when I enjoyed sweets), the potatoes were just too filling, so I finished them not. The recommended wine, a Marcello Canyon Cuvee 03 which intertwines nicely with the octopus but runs into resistance with the olive oil.
I inquire about the Dungeness but cracking your own crab is hardly the reason to go to a restaurant. The crab risotto? Just what I don't need- more starch. Surely the tuna. It says rare but I tell the waiter I only eat fish that have been incinerated enough to appear on 6 Feet Under. I am promised a suitably seared tuna. Some sort of lentil thing comes with it. I await filled with anticipation, and the glass of Cuvee that was really too much for a tidbit of crab and a lot of swimming other things (the basil adds a nice faux seaweed touch) and the Blasted Church Rose, the somellier recommends for the Tuna, arrives far too soon. It and the Cuvee trade nasty glances. A cold wine does wonders for a hot piece of sea food. A room temperature whatever rockets away from its flavour potential, and you're left with dashed posibilities, and for an instant, an impoverished life. Yet they are attentive here. The chef checks in regularly to make sure each bite is to my liking. The waiter, and some other guy who flits in and out of the kitchen, are constantly seeking my approval. I await the tuna. It arrives.
Remember the old (?) Charlie the Tuna ads? Not a tuna with good taste, a tuna that tastes good? This is good tuna. It rolicks in my mouth like a small child in a large fair. Not a hint of sashimi. The truly dead salutes me. The lentils however, seem to have acquired a tank. They invade my tuna-trance like Patton invading the German fashion district. No pattern is spared. After the bread-cake flash to french toast last enjoyed when I was 12, to the potatoes smothered in oil of pressed mystery to the tuna of uncharted realms of goodness, although they mean well with their carefully chosen spices and ingredients and all, the lentils thrash about my tuna appreciation like a jilted Gulliver at a Liliputian wedding. The tuna is topped with 3 shiso leaves, one of my favourite Japanese edibilities. I tell the chef 6 would be better. Particularly with the highly flavoured tuna, not to mention its muscular lentil neighbour, something light, to extend the top note of the fish would be a good direction to consider going. The Blasted Church, which had a strong aftertaste of cognac, and thus a valiant fighter for priority in possibility with the tuna-lentil onslaught, was a worthy suggestion and the somelier is be congradulated, if I didnt do so already. I discussed my displeasure with the lentils amongst the chef and chief server and was told that the taste mix was for the rare tuna, not the severely seared sea creature I requested. The server assures me the tuna is of the highest quality, "used in sashimi" as if this were a category unfamiliar to me. For desert, I have a glass of sangria, which is essentially a glass of pineapple juice, with red wine implied. A sad concoction, but it reminds me of how I cook ahi. A combination of a Kettle of Fish (very good Vancouver fish restaurant) recipe, the Joy of Cooking and Fumiyo's old bbq pit we used to enchant our neighbours with in our home in rural Tokyo. Marinate Ahi in pineapple juice, soy sauce and oil in the fridge for 2 days. Grill. We've been doing that for 30 years. Ahi is not a stranger. It hangs with Don Ho.
I stroll the 2 km back to the conference leisurely and pleasureably sated.
There are more restaurants in Vancouver than anyone could possibly review but this is a start.