Welcome to Vancouver. The city of the ripoff restaurant. This blog is dedicated to exploring the burgeoning industry of ripoff restaurants in my home city, Vancouver, where it's easier to spend $120 on a meal for two than it is to find a parking spot. A new restaurant with $20 mains turns up every week, it seems, eagerly catering to the whims of a booming Vancouver bourgeoisie frantic to spend their money as conspicuously and wastefully as possible, regardless of the quality of the food. In its eagerness to become world class, Vancouver seems to have forgotten that a price tag has to be earned. In the last few years, I've been disappointed - nay - revolted and livid more times than I can recall having been pleased by a premium dining experience. Fraiche is about the only place that I have been that is worth every penny. This is my place to vent about having been ripped off by all the fetid high-brow gastronomic cess pools that litter this city. You stole an hour of my life and raped my eyes with your hipster decor - for what? For a pretentious $10 cracker and $8 cocktail that tastes like Sunny Delight? This place is dedicated to you, Bao Bei, and to all of your ilk.
Enter refuel (http://www.refuelrestaurant.com/), a promising sounding little spot on 4th Avenue next door to Maenam's, a fusion Thai place whose mediocre overpriced morsels set the tone quite nicely for its neighbor. The evening started out well enough. Spare but tasteful interior, snappy service, drinks and openers arrived within about 5 minutes. Australian Cabernet Sauvignon was good, but the glass was only 1/4 full.
My partner, who will be adding her review after me, ordered a dish of foie gras croquettes, which turned out to be three tiny little things that were quite unusual and tasty and worth trying for the novelty, if greasy and pricey. My opener of sauteed nettles, radish, chili turned out to be bland and prosaic, a more palatable version of Kale, minus the excitement. After that snappy opening it was a good fifteen minutes until a simple opener of sliced sausage and bread found its way to my plate. The wild leek risotto on my partner's side of the table taunted me with its greenness. I wound up eating half of it. By far the best dish of the evening. Twenty minutes after those plates were cleared were still twiddling our thumbs. After being forced to run out to feed the meter, I was stunned to find the food still not there. When it arrived, my sloping hill pork was small and surrounded by a forest of the same greens I'd had as an opener - bland and tasteless. The pork was hard and tasteless and small and half fat. My partner's buttermilk fried polderside chicken was a heart attack-inducing mound of batter fit for KFC, but at KFC you at least would have gotten a nice bucket to go with it. $20 for three pieces of chicken that could hardly be found under a buttery armament of deep-fried skin?
Vancouver has indeed learned the recipe for success. Create an upscale image and you can serve tasteless slop for $20 and the customers will come rolling in. There are definitely good restaurants and chefs out there, but the majority I've visited leave me feeling ripped off. Very rarely does the cuisine justify the price tag, and refuel is a worthy opener to our odyssey of disappointment and hubris.
