Raincity Grill, Vancouver

[mb7o]

A few weeks ago a friend and I went up to Vancouver on the spur of the moment. We ended up dining at the Rain City Grill Raincity Grill near English Bay in the West End.

While nowhere near as depressing as Cabrales' experience at C, it wasn't surprising to me that the two restaurants are related.

The menu combinations sound fascinating, and so instead of picking a meal we went for the tasting menu with accompaning wine. The gimmick of the restaurant is that everything is from BC, and the theme for the season was game. In fact, the menu is up on the web site right now, I'll try to go through my memories here:

Amuse Gueule:

An oyster with something strange, something like a pickled radish relish. The accompanyment was total flavor overkill for the oyster.

Bread:

A flatbread of some form. Neither crisp nor puffy, I wished it was either one or the other.

Foie Gras & Goose Prosciutto Terrine

raisins, parsley puree

suggested wine- La Frenz Semillon

Interesting layered thing. Rich. How are you supposed to eat this? Is there a best order to eat this, from the goose proscuitto (huh) to the liver, or vice versa?

Rabbit Ravioli

chanterelle soup

suggested wine- Venturi-Schulze "Le Cigale", Madeline Sylvaner

I also would have prefered a bit of instruction with some of the courses--not the overkill of the herbfarm, but like the terrine, it wasn't clear if the sauce (which may have been something other than chanterelle soup, I remember it as an orangeish rich puree) was to be eaten on its own or not, given its consistency. I think this course also came with sharp knives, which were totally unnecessary and perhaps a mistake.

The ravioli, and I mean one ravioli, was good. But what sort of animal it was I couldn't say. I wish there was more.

Wine note: The wines were actually presented with more history than the food. This one is made on Vancouver Island by someone from Modena, and you can see why they make vinegar. It wasn't bad (sorry, I can't describe wines well), but rather quite strong.

Roasted Nicola Valley Venison

smoked salsify, pine mushroom broth

suggested wine- Sandhill "Small Lots", Barbera

This was an excellent piece of meat, in some sort of salty crust. Again, what sort of meat I couldn't tell you. I'm not sure if I've had venison before, but it had a sort of light red meat flavor, and the salty crust was my favorite part.

I'm not sure of the brouhaha over pine mushrooms is. A japanese restaurant here in Seattle served a pine mushroom broth in a miniature teapot, with the instructions to drink the tea then eat the food from the pot. I wish I'd tried it (my friend was sick at that meal and not sharing) to compare with this broth, the mushrooms didn't do anything for me.

Braised Bison Shortrib

hazelnut en croute

suggested wine-Mission Hill "Estate", Syrah

This was the strangest part of the meal. Reading it here you'll notice the 'en croute' part, which somehow came as a shock. A mini square pot pie.

Poplar Grove Tiger Blue Cheese

fig compote

suggested wine-Quails' Gate "Tawny"

I'm not a big fan of blue cheese, and thankfully this cheese wasn't very blue, but was rich. Again a weird combination, the compote + cheese + crackers didn't quite fit. My favorite was the toasted slice of bread, should have been two so the cheese and compote could have been separated.

Lavender Brulee

frozen grapes

Again, why the frozen grapes?

Overall, the food was good but overly 'dressed' up. I couldn't tell it was game. Perhaps the animals were farm raised, or the presentation was just too overwhelming. We also left slightly hungry, and I'm not a big eater.

Service was good. I would have prerred a little less time between courses (the whole meal took over 2 hours), and due to being seated in a weird location we would sometimes have people serving from multiple directions at once.

Random notes:

The restaurant was full. In fact, we tried calling a few places and they were full for dinnertime seating when we called around 5. Ouest was very friendly, I didn't mention egullet or anything to try to get a seat, but probably should have asked about eating at the bar.

A table near us insulted the restaurant when seated. They arrived as two separate couples. I don't remember what unusual thing the first couple did, but the second couple asked the waiter if the food was better than the last time he was there, which was a number of years ago. I don't know the purpose of this comment, but they had a short discussion on the changes in chefs over the past few years.

This isn't usually something I'd notice, but both my friend and I thought the crowd was older and whiter than typical for Seattle; I can't compare to typical Vancouver fine dining crowds.

Thread drift:

Also sampled both Solly's and Siegel's bagels on the same trip, and I give the nod to Siegel's.

[Junior]

Raincity was at it's best when Scott Kidd was there. That was a few years ago, you can find him up in Whistler at Araxi, a sister restaurant to Ouest. Raincity has certainly seen it's share of chefs, I think it's been about 4 since Kidd left. The majority of them disappeared after 6 months. I can't understand why Harry Kambolis has not found a good chef to make it what it used to be. It's a shame as Raincity was one of the first places to feature Pacific Northwest/BC cuisine in Vancouver. It also has one of the most stunning views in the city.

As for the vinegar, Venturi-Schultz, the husband and wife team that makes the stuff are the only people in Canada who make balsamic vinegar. They live on one fo the islands on the coast. They trained in Italy and brought over all the authentic stuff to make it. You can find it being used by many of the higher end pastry guys in the city. I had some (acutally a tablespoon's worth) with fresh figs as a part of a dessert at the Bearfoot Bistro in Whistler and it was fantastic. I think there is a website where you can buy the vinegar.

What other places did you try to get into and were not able to ?

You took Siegal's over Solly's, Whoa, then again I am so biased, I lived around the corner from Solly's on Broadway, so I was in there enough buying bagels, pastrami/rye sandwichs, and the very best cinnamon buns in all of Vancouver and I would dare say the world. Then again I am biased. What I would do for some buns and a pastrami/rye wich right about now

[plunk]

Venturi-Schulze's website is http://venturischulze.com/ but it seems to be down at the moment. You can buy the vinegar from other places (such as Sen5es Bakery, http://www.senses.ca/products.asp) but the price is much more than it would be direct from V-S.

They are located on Vancouver Island (ferry from Vancouver to Nanaimo, drive another half hour or so) but sadly their vineyard is not open to the public.

[nightscotsman]

Venturi-Schulze's website is http://venturischulze.com/ but it seems to be down at the moment.  You can buy the vinegar from other places (such as Sen5es Bakery, http://www.senses.ca/products.asp) but the price is much more than it would be direct from V-S.

They are located on Vancouver Island (ferry from Vancouver to Nanaimo, drive another half hour or so) but sadly their vineyard is not open to the public.

Excellent! Thanks for the link .

[mb7o]

The Venturi-Schulz website is up, and way cheaper than Senses for vinegar. Odd the world map they use has the USA highlighted.

I don't remember what other places we tried, probably just one or two. If I had planned I would have brought a list from here or even called before leaving, that may have been enough notice. The hotel had some tourist promo book with a good list of good restaurants, we would have gone off of it next. Oddly the tourist booklet listed Raincity as 'west coast', not the 'northwest' (or whatever closer term) I would have expected, but then again maybe they meant west coast Canada as opposed to the Yukon.

Go talk about bagels here: round and around

[plunk]

I never really thought about it until you bought it up mb7o, but in Canada the term 'west coast' usually means BC. We don't really refer to a region of as 'northwest' (except for the Northwest Territories I guess) but when I hear the term 'pacific northwest' used on the US tv broadcasts I automatically translate that to Oregon and Washington.

[mb7o]

The reason I was confused by the 'west coast' was because there was in fact a 'pacific northwest' section of this guide booklet, and the restaurant themself says ... "helped define Pacific Northwest cuisine". Maybe they should both go under the 'cascadia' term? Or maybe they're just confused if they want to attract Americans or Canadians.

Geographical terms in the US are somewhat weird, since the South is really the southeast, and the Northwest is sometimes still Chicago and environs, leading to Southwest and Pacific Northwest.

[plunk]

Hmm, that is confusing, I guess it all depends on context and marketing.

Now this makes me wonder if cuisine in BC is similar to that of Washington/Oregon, thus falling under a "Pacific Northwest" catchall umbrella. That might be overgeneralizing it since there seems to be a lot of variation in BC alone.

Edited November 19, 2002 by plunk (log)