Lately I’ve found myself lamenting the state of the Vancouver food scene. I don’t know if it’s just that I’m particularly unhappy at my current job, sleep deprived because of it and just generally cranky, or if something is really actually wrong at the heart of food in Vancouver. I’ve been trying to put my finger on it and I think I’ve narrowed it down to six main sub-problems which all lead to this mediocre, over-priced, un-influential mess of food culture here.
The Pay VS cost of living
Now I will be the first to admit that some of the items on my hate list cannot be changed by me nor anyone else and this one defiantly falls into that category. The simple fact is that the cost of living in Vancouver is outrageous. According to the first hit on Google for a comparison to Toronto, Vancouver is about 8-10% more expensive than Canada’s largest city. Renting a restaurant space in the city is astronomical and leaves very little room for smaller places offering cheaper food or more niche items to survive. This in turn means there is less money to go around after paying rent on a restaurant for things like, oh, say staff costs.
That meal you and 150 other people just each paid $200 for … the 8 people that cooked it got paid an average of $9 an hour to make it. Even at hotel restaurants where pay per hour is better, the average line cook still works 4 hours a day for free. Your chefs will say that it’s your fault you have to come in 3 hours early to get your prep done because you are too slow, but that’s crap and they know it. They also know that there’s not a lot of choice for a line cook, because that working for free nonsense is the same everywhere.
Asian influence
Why does everything need an “Asian influence”? I was browsing Sherman’s Food Adventures and came across a post about the newly opened Hawksworth restaurant. For those who don’t know too much about David Hawksworth, he was the chef at West restaurant for a number of years, is in the BC restaurant hall of fame (yes, there is such a thing) and was known for seasonally driven local food. So the restaurant bearing his name would typify the very thing he has preached all those years while spending other people’s money you say? But, no. As Sherman correctly points out (he loves it though), there is enormous “Asian influence” across the board on the Hawksworth menu from the XO sauce on the scallop appetizer, to the five spice broth and enoki mushrooms on the duck main. I’m not saying these aren’t nice dishes, I haven’t eaten there, I don’t know, my point is just that what happened to local food?
Living in a very “ethnic” (as it is often referred to) part of town I understand that there is a large and influential Asian community in Vancouver and that as I will get to later, a lot of food writers and bloggers are Asian, but why does every restaurant need to have Asian influence? Can a restaurant be good and popular and successful without it? Even West which used to be quintessentially Canadian, on the first menu I found on their site has “Yuzu marinated Octopus Tentacles”. Being on the inside of the food scene a little, I know that this doesn’t happen to be on their menu because they found a supplier who is growing great little fresh yuzu fruit on their farm in Abbotsford. The juice comes in little bottles shipped all the way from Japan and is about as close to fresh juice as Real Lemon is to a lemon. You wouldn’t serve Real Lemon in your fine dining restaurant why are you serving Real Yuzu?
Food Bloggers
I admit, I am sort of a food blogger. I try to blog more about cooking, than about eating, but still there are a couple of posts up there, I know. I’m calling out Sherman, and Chow Times, and Ho Yummy and whoever else is out there pretending to know about food. You work in a bank! Because you’ve eaten everywhere, doesn’t mean you understand anything, and it doesn’t mean you know about food, it just means you’re probably not hungry anymore. If someone has the time and wherewithal and most importantly money to eat at a different restaurant every day, you can be damn sure they aren’t working in one. These blogs are not commissioned and put up content that ego-driven chefs (read: Chefs) will read, and think that these people know what they are talking about and make changes accordingly. But they are not the voice of the people. Or maybe they are and the people just suck. Letting your cultural biases dictate what you order is fine, if every other blog isn’t doing the exact same thing.
I feel somewhat bad for calling out I’m Only Here For the Food. But the guy eats places, not once, but twice , and can’t even be bothered to order the namesake dish of the restaurant. Why visit places that cared about falafel so much they named their restaurant after it and not order the falafel!
House-made!
According to the message boards at Something Awful, this is the case everywhere, but I’m including it on the list for 2 reasons – eating out in Vancouver (at a nice, sit-down, tablecloth kind of place) is absurdly expensive, and because it dilutes the effect of all the work that the hundreds of cooks do every day to house-make something.
House made should mean that it is made, from scratch in house. House baked is an entirely other thing, meaning that it comes in unbaked but still purchased and is baked “fresh” on premises. Everywhere I’ve worked and everywhere everyone I’ve talked to has worked lies on their menu. Mostly about “House-made”, but sometimes about “real brandy” or other times about “Wild Mushrooms”. I love mushrooms, and I know that real wild mushrooms are expensive and time consuming to deal with once they are bought. Most importantly however, they are tasty. So when I see them on a menu, I give the benefit of the doubt and trust that they are wild mushrooms. When they are not (as is sadly often the case), I get very angry. I feel betrayed and ripped off. I will not eat at your restaurant again. You think I’m dumb and don’t know what a wild mushroom looks like. I don’t need that thank you. Other things are harder to tell though, like “House made preserves”. I want to believe in and reward anyone who is passionate about preserves enough to make them in house for a busy restaurant, so I will order then. When they end up being substandard bought in slop then again the whole thing of the betrayal and the sadness comes again. Stop lying. Make it and be proud of how much better it is than crap that comes in a bucket, or don’t and put the price down. It has bothered me when I have had to serve things that were being called “house made” that I didn’t make so much that I would tell the servers to tell the guests that they were not “house made” and that I didn’t want to be associated with such garbage.
Liquor Tax
Liquor is very expensive. Coming from a place where for better or worse liquor is cheap (and goes on sale and becomes even cheaper), and is available from the supermarket to BC was a shock and every time I have to go to the government run liquor store (but not on a Sunday, they don’t open on a Sunday) I feel like a criminal or a heroin addict going to get their methadone. I don’t like it. I’m a responsible drinker and treating people like children makes them act like children. The high price of liquor makes it hard for restaurants to make it here as most other places a large percentage of gross revenue comes from liquor sales, but here, who has the money? I would love to order a $100 bottle of wine, if I knew that it didn’t cost $10 for the government to buy to resell at the liquor store to be bought by the restaurant to be re-sold to me. And then pay tax on it. If booze was cheaper, food would be better.
Vij’s/Tojos
Vij’s and Tojos! Why?! They are such icons in the Vancouver food scene! And often quoted in proper books (The Flavor Bible comes to mind). What have they done!? -I hear you all scream.
As much as they are a part of the Vancouver food scene, they are also not a part of the Vancouver food scene. Have you ever run into a cook that used to work at either place that wasn’t Indian or Japanese respectively? Me neither. Vij make a point of only hiring Punjabi women to work in his kitchen. He is proud of this and is quoted in a number of places stating this. What’s wrong with that? Vij’s is an island, totally cut off from the rest of the world. You can’t go stage there, you can’t work there. It’s not how it’s done. It’s the same for Tojos. I want to see more Indian influence on menus, but I can’t learn about Indian food from the so-called best Indian restaurant in Vancouver, because I’m not Indian! How crazy and isolationist is that?
So what does this all mean? I don’t know. Right now I’m in the anger stage of the five Kibler-Ross model stages. Next comes Bargaining. I’ll have to post again when that comes.
