Vancouver Eating Part 3

Fun dish of pork rinds from a maple syrup can!

One of the last restaurants I ate at in Vancouver was St Lawrence. I had wanted to visit this restaurant the year before, but heard it was impossible to get a table. It's not in the best location in the city, on the corner of Gore and Powell, but that means parking isn't too difficult to find.

The cozy interior of St Lawrence is like dining at home

This time my friends and I looked it up online and booked a table at the restaurant that serves Quebecois cuisine -- but that meant immediately putting down a credit card number. If one person was to drop out before 24 hours then there would be no penalty, but less than 24 hours then credit card would be charged CAD$25.

As a result it was a major commitment and we made sure we made it there on time -- 5.45pm.

The restaurant used to be a butcher shop, but walk inside and it feels like walking into an aunt's living room to have dinner. It's very cozy, with antique light fixtures that don't match, copper pans and plates hanging on the walls, mini curtains hanging from the open kitchen.

There's also a small bar area for customers to wait to be seated.

Paris-Brest using duck liver and foie gras in the filling

The menu is small, but a good selection. With four of us we ordered all six appetizers. The fried pork rinds with maple syrup and spice (CAD$12) are presented in an empty maple syrup can. The pork rinds were freshly deep fried and so good -- they would make excellent bar snacks.

Meanwhile the house-made terrine (CAD$18) combined with apricots was delicious and came with some mustards. Paris-Brest (CAD$22) is typically a dessert -- a round pastry with a praline mousse piped inside. But here it's a savoury dish, with the filling being duck liver and foie gras mousse. Very clever though hard to cut into four pieces. I don't usually like to eat foie gras, but this I had to try.

Refined cod cake quenelle with mussels

The escargots (CAD$18) were presented in small puff pastry cups with a generous serving of garlic sauce on top. Another highlight was the steak tartare (CAD$19) that had a lot of seasoning from the capers and onions, along with chevre noire cheese, and presented with waffle potato chips.

Finally the cod cake quenelle (CAD$22) was very smooth and came with mussels and Normandy sauce.

We also balanced our diet with two vegetable dishes. The ratatouille (CAD$17) was alright, but we preferred the Avonlea cheddar custard in the middle of the plate, while the baked potato (CAD$15) with Sauvagine cheese and poutine sauce was the disappointing dish that evening; it was recommended to us, but wasn't particularly interesting.

The very hearty pork chop with Robuchon potato puree

At this point we somehow managed to have room for a main course and we chose the pork chop (CAD$38) that came recommended to us. We were not disappointed. It was a giant pork chop on a bed of Robuchon potato puree (which means it had lots of butter in it), with Oka cheese.

The pork chop was amazing -- it must have been brined before because the meat was so tender and so juicy. I usually avoid ordering pork chops because they usually turn out dry, but here it was absolutely divine.

As if that wasn't enough food, we somehow talked ourselves into having three of the four desserts. One of them, sugar pie (CAD$11) is not regularly found on menus in Vancouver and it's a pretty dense pie that's filling and sweet.

Rice pudding with cinnamon buns, pecans and caramel sauce

We got a small portion of the rice pudding (CAD$20 for the whole table; so ours was less) and it's so cute: it comes with four mini cinnamon buns, caramel sauce, and toasted pecans. What a delicious combination and the rice pudding wasn't too sweet.

Many other tables ordered the lemon tart flambee (CAD$16) that the servers don't really like to send to the table because everyone wants to whip out their phones to video the tart being set on fire. So have your phone ready, because the server won't wait for you, and it doesn't set on fire for long, making it a bit disappointing visually.

However, the lemon tart is very good -- again not too sweet, and comes with an burnt soft meringue. Oh so good, tart custard, crunchy pastry shell and soft meringue. What a finish.

The lemon tart flambee was quick dramatic finish

St Lawrence
269 Powell Street
Vancouver, BC
(604) 620 3800