I think of Vancouver as a really hot 22-year-old co-ed. You know the type – long hair, big, beautiful, bouncy breasts, an internalized belief that her worth depends on her continuing external loveliness, and all the vapidity that belief entails. Vancouver always has a tan. Vancouver wears makeup to yoga. Vancouver’s purse cost more than your car, but you’d never know it.
She’s nice, our city, don’t get me wrong. Well, she’s not mean. But she’s remarkably, shockingly, thoughtless, and will leave you stranded without a ride whenever it pleases her, and doesn’t care that you can’t get a good book, really great pair of shoes, or a cup of coffee for less than $3.00 (or an apartment for less than $1500 a month). She thinks having her centres of higher learning at furthest reaches from her social and cultural core without access via rapid transit is totally awesome. She’s an infuriating navel-gazer. But hey – she means well, right? She’s a nice girl.
Vancouver has been growing up lately, though. She’s showing maturity. Vancouver finished her B.A., was kicked out of Beta Theta Pi House, and has come face to face with the world. Someone recently told her that talking about herself incessantly isn’t cool, and that looks aren’t everything (though when you come from a family that thought an appropriate substitute for the epithet “beautiful” is “ the best place on Earth,” can you really blame her?). Vancouver was introduced to Camus, documentary film, raw beef, the Pinot family. She learned that Clueless was based on Emma, that reading Elle doesn’t make her literary, and that loving U2 doesn’t, realistically, count as having musical taste.
Most importantly for our purposes, Vancouver has realized that a roll-up and a foxy hostess does not a dining experience make, and has begun to step up her gastronomic game. She is emerging from a culinary chrysalis of cruddy chain restaurants as a tapas-loving, raw-cheese eating, organic-local-communal-dining-artisinally-sourced butterfly [ok, my metaphor lost its wings there].*
But, dear Vancouver, you’re not quite there yet. In her earnest efforts to fit into the new grown up world she has found, in her desire to extend beyond the Cactus Clubs and Earls of her culinary youth, Vancouver has fallen prey to the “I adore Manchego/Buddha’s hand/Wagyu beef” pretention that makes us cringe in embarrassment, recalling our own salad days. Vancouver has been seduced by a series of over-priced, poorly-run concept restaurants that are serving us slop and calling it spaetzle.
All LMOD ratings are out of 5.
* I do not mean to denigrate the venerable Vancouver greats who have been serving fine fare with flair since… well, before I was around. We’ll discuss them in time. Bishops – I’m looking at you.
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In today’s crosshairs: the Glowbal Group, and in particular Glowbal and Sanafir.
Walk into either (or most Glowbal restaurants) and we are wowed by over-the-top (and really quite striking) décor. It may remind us of the fancy-in-five-days-and-$15 000 of Restaurant Makeover but it is nice to eat somewhere that has thought beyond the wood-and-mirrors of the early ‘00s. Unfortunately, wow stops there.
High Ceilings and Low Lighting: Sanafir’s an Empty Womb
Highpoints:
None.
Lowpoints:
Met by disinterested door staff (really, why pay a pretty girl $8 an hour to act harassed?) and led to an uncomfortable banquette, I focussed on the pretty light fixtures and remained upbeat.
We surveyed the menu. One of my dining companions, determined to have a cocktail, bemoaned the “sweet ‘n fruity” theme. While sympathetic, I declined to jump on the whine wagon just yet – the “international mixologists” these places seem to keep jetting in can’t get enough of the fruit trend. I wasn’t going to blame Sanafir for that just yet. I, a sucker for bubbles, ordered a champagne cocktail (no not a classic, although Corner Suite Bistro Deluxe serves a delicious one, complete with bitters-soaked sugar cube on which to suck while moodily contemplating civilization’s catastrophic collapse.)
My cocktail came in a flute full of ice with a straw. Listen, I don’t like to think I’m easily outraged, but this was… outrageous! I also don’t think I whine about prices (my credit card just winced) but to be asked to pay $9 for what was, after all the ice, about 3 oz of insipid juice with enough champagne and vodka to legally call it a cocktail was, to be frank, insulting. I commiserated with the poor flute – we had both been maligned.
The service was so shockingly, outrageously bad, I left a penny on the table. And I am an ex-server achingly sensitive to how hard the job can be. But I also know that it is a job, and requires only a modicum of professionalism to do things like bring share plates to a table of people sharing a series of finicky tapas. In a tapas restaurant.
And speaking of the tapas… Sanafir has some Asian, Middle Eastern thing going on that was so boring I didn’t try to figure it out. And thank God, because it would have only compounded my disappointment. Flavourless, cold lamb, oily humus with only passably good bread, over-cooked grilled shrimp. The only memorable moments were a big sprig of rosemary burning like incense, a cute, if unnecessary, touch, and a one inch square piece of sable fish in miso broth. But of 12 tapas, the laws of statistics dictate that one be good, right? (Does statistics have laws? I don’t know. I was told there would be no math.)
LMOD Verdict: 0. Do not want.
Glowbal: Middling on Mainland
And then there was Glowbal. Much of the same criticism to be levelled.
Highpoints:
Other than the obviously excellent people-watching? (People in Yaletown are so amusing! Next time I’m going to bring a hidden camera and post a slideshow of just the mini-dogs and maxi-sunglasses. Guaranteed anti-depressant.)
Mini-fishbowls containing dry ice, above which perched little containers of food, were cute once, but twice on a table and they quickly became hackneyed. However, they did contain a Thai slaw with enough basil to be kind of delicious, and a beef tartare with classic condiments that will do in a pinch, although there are better iterations all over the city.
Lowpoints:
A giant slab of greasy, tough, pale, grilled… thing. When quizzed, our server, who had plunked our “chef’s platter” of “satays” (read: mediocre food on sticks) with no introduction or explanation, identified it as “mushroom… king mushroom, I think.” Your guess is as good as mine, chico! The king mushroom debacle inspired an enjoyable game of “identify the satay”, which included “shrimp!” (slightly over-grilled) “salmon!” (ditto) and “meatball!” (no comment).
We had less fun playing “be polite to the creepy waiter trying to pick us up” game, but still managed to win (lose?).
LMOD Verdict: 1.5. At least the cocktails had vodka and the wine was decent.
But never again, friends, never again (I felt this way after Italian Kitchen also. And, after a tough and flavourless piece of halibut, about Coast too). Glowbal Group, like a cheesy older boyfriend in a bad leather jacket, here’s hoping our pretty city grows out of you soon.
