Barista Colter Jones does double duty with pastry chef Dawne Gourley at 49th Parallel, which also includes Lucky’s Doughnuts. Andrew Morrison photos
Nose to Tail dinners at Cibo Cibo Trattoria’s executive chef Neil Taylor and the Italian restaurants’ general manager Steve Edwards have paired up for weekly Nose To Tail dinners every Tuesday night in June. Lillian Wei photo
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ometimes it’s better not to concentrate too much on what you’re eating and simply enjoy the food. For those who are not yet fans of the nose-to-tail culinary trend, that might be the best approach for the series of weekly Nose to Tail dinners at Cibo. The menu includes grilled ox heart with porcini and bone marrow salsa, devilled squab livers and hearts, crispy lamb’s tongue and chocolate, blood and orange gelato. But please, please don’t say “Ick!” Executive chef Neil Taylor and his team have created a wonderful menu of delicate flavours, with each dish beautifully
prepared with complementary flavours. While these dishes may be common in other countries, many Canadians have not yet developed a taste for them. Here’s your chance. Cibo has definitely honoured the sacrifice that these animals make for our culinary pleasures. The Nose To Tail Dinners are every Tuesday night in June. Cibo Trattoria is in Moda Hotel (900 Seymour.) It was voted the best new restaurant by enRoute magazine in 2009 and was also named one of the top Italian restaurants in the world by Ospitalita Italiana in 2011. CiboTrattoria.com
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June 14 - 20, 2012
Main Street gets lucky OnThePLATE By Andrew Morrison
New 49th Parallel café also offers some of the best donuts in town
D
oes Main Street need another coffee shop? It’s a silly question, really, but it was floated nevertheless when Kitsilano’s 49th Parallel Coffee Roasters announced last month that it would open its second location at Main and 13th. If we lived in a one dimensional world where all cafes were created equal, the answer would be no. There are well over a hundred places to get a cup of coffee on Main between Railtown and Riley Park. The choices can be bewildering, but there are precious few that I’d visit more than once or want to spend any amount of time in. The new 49th Parallel location — hardly two weeks old — is immediately added to that number for several reasons, chief among them being the delicious ace up its sleeve. If you took away all the coffee, I’d still return for the doughnuts — Lucky’s Doughnuts, to be precise. The new, off-shoot brand from 49th Parallel owner Vince Piccolo is being incubated here in a back corner of the voluminous, 100-seat address, where a crew led by 49th Parallel fixture Colter Jones (one of the best baristas in the world) and pastry chef Dawne Gourley hand-pipe tasty rings galore and stack them behind glass right where customers queue to order. Doughnuts come in many guises from “Sugar & Spice” (cinnamon and cardamom) and “Old Fashioned” (drenched in salted caramel) to peanut butter-glazed filled with raspberry jelly and plump fritters topped with applewood smoked bacon. I’ve tried them all, and I think their straight-up chocolate doughnut — so rich and dense with chocolate flavour — is the best in show. I’m also a sucker for the Lemon Bismarck, which oozes with tart decadence, but if I had to pick a favourite, it would be the one with bacon. Though slightly inferior to the bacon doughnut at Cartems on the DTES (which boasts a wonderful maple and bourbon glaze that swats at the bacon’s saltiness), it’s still a bacon doughnut, which is in and of itself an invariably wonderful thing. I wasn’t a big fan of the mango (too saccharine in its tanginess) or the honey, orange and pistachio (too pistachio-y), but such diversity invites nitpickery with one or two failures standing only to enrich the overall experience. Just ask Goldilocks or Forrest Gump. It marks a point in our city’s history when
it is emerging from something of a quality doughnut drought. We’ve long had to count on doughnuts from Lee’s on Granville Island and Honey’s in Deep Cove to keep us sane and satiated in a dark ring-world ruled by Tim Hortons. And while no newcomer will topple the timbit behemoth or even make it the slightest bit nervous, they can still provide us with vastly superior alternatives, as both Lucky’s and Cartems do in spades. Piccolo is smart, too. Rather than committing his new brand to a location of its own out of the gate, he has it umbilically connected to 49th Parallel, a well-regarded company with lots of already existing loyal customers. When I asked him if he was already looking towards building another 49th Parallel, he just smiled and said “Probably not. But we might see more of Lucky’s.” And why not? On its first day, the new cafe was hit with a tidal wave of keeners. There were line-ups and nary a seat to be had, and the chatter was all about the doughnuts. But however much we might be besotted by its new and novel strengths in doughnuttery, let’s not forget that 49th Parallel is an elite local coffee company that approaches every cup with the kind of Newtonian seriousness we usually see from fetishists. Truly, a bad coffee here is about as likely as a bad sandwich at Meat & Bread or a bad sauce at Cioppino’s. It’s just not going to happen. And they’re getting more interactive with coffee, too, offering “flights” so customers can compare beans and hosting educational seminars and courses at a specially-made, wholly convertible table with stools that swing out on gorgeous, wrought iron arms. It’s one of the most beautifully constructed pieces of furniture I’ve ever laid eyes on. It even has a hand-crank that can raise and lower the level by a foot. As I said up top, there are over 100 places on this street to get a cup of coffee, and though some are better than others, not everyone in the community is a coffee nerd. Most people who sit in cafes these days do so among friends for a quick klatch or to read a book or hone in on some free wi-fi. To compete, a swell, inviting environment is a must, and 49th Parallel has just that, with plenty of exposed beams, industrial light fixtures, lots of little zones for ensconcing, and a growing vinyl collection to boot (Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” was playing on my last visit). I particularly loved the look of the tucked away, button-leather booth that could probably sit five at a squeeze, and my bum was lost in one of the cozy, over-sized armchairs (next to a fireplace of course). And on finer days, the garage doors will lift to bring fresh air in and customers out to a 30-seat patio. Take it all in at 2902 Main (at 13th Ave).
WEVancouver.com