Once again, Vancouverites have weighed in with their choices for which restaurants, bars, pubs, and cafés make this city one of the tastiest places on Earth. And you’ve done an amazing job, so thank you for that.
But what about the so-called experts? Who did they vote for?
Since the public has had their say, we thought we’d pick the brains of Westender’s resident gastronomic authorities, and ask them who they picked with their votes.
We gathered wine expert and consultant Michaela Morris, veteran food and drink writer Michael White, restaurant reviewer and columnist Anya Levykh and myself, Robert Mangelsdorf, certified Level 1 Cicerone and BJCP Apprentice (and editor of The Growler, the best craft beer magazine anywhere).
So here’s our take on who we think should have won. Bear in mind, these are our own personal opinions, based on no specific criteria whatsoever. Take with a very large grain of salt. –Robert Mangelsdorf, editor
Best Chef: Angus An
If not for his resolute modesty – if he possessed the natural-born instincts for self-promotion and social fearlessness that have helped make, for instance, Vikram Vij a brand as much as a chef — Angus An would be widely recognized as one of Vancouver’s best and most impactful chefs. But this isn’t, and may never be, his goal: “For me, it’s about ego,” he said in a 2015 Vancouver magazine profile. “I try not to have one.”
Since the opening of his flagship Kitsilano restaurant, Maenam, in 2009, An has simply put his head down and gone about the business of forever changing this city’s notion of what represents good, authentic Thai food. As such, he is as important as Vij in terms of elevating a particular cuisine to previously uncharted heights. And the past year has been the most ambitious of An’s career: The arrival of Fat Mao, a noodle shop in Chinatown, and Freebird, an Asian-style rotisserie chicken “shack” at New West’s River Market, doubled the size of his burgeoning empire. (Longtail Kitchen, a Thai street-food concept that opened at the Market in 2012, rounds out the portfolio.) All of these eateries are affordable and consistently excellent, whether or not An is in the kitchen.
So, a message to An: Allow yourself at least a sliver of ego. You’ve earned it.
Best Bagels: Siegel’s Bagels
My commitment to the religious doctrines of my Jewish heritage is such that any principled synagogue would excommunicate me if I belonged to one. But my cultural and, in some ways, sentimental relationship to the People Who Live to Kvetch is deep and complex, encompassing behaviours as varied and ridiculous as harbouring existential angst because Woody Allen hasn’t made a genuinely classic film since 1992, feeling outsized pride about the fact that the backroom architects and enablers of rock ’n’ roll is essentially a roll call of renegade Semites, and being serious beyond reason as to what constitutes a great bagel.
And, in my opinion, Siegel’s purveys the best bagels in Vancouver. When namesake founder Joel Siegel arrived here from Montreal in the late ’80s, our city had never enjoyed access to the superior bagels of his hometown – only the ridiculous donut-shaped bread rolls for which New York has yet to apologize. To this day, the properly dense, fragrant, modestly proportioned bagels levered out of Siegel’s’ raging wood-fired ovens are the best I’ve eaten outside of Mile End. Their rosemary-rocksalt bagel (so good that Joel’s daughter, Parise, named her own breakaway mini-chain after them) is a work of genius. Shmear one with one of Siegel’s’ house-made cream cheeses and follow it with a cinnamon-raisin rugolach. Oy!
Various locations
Best Whisky Selection: My apartment
I didn’t choose whisky; whisky chose me. Throughout a quarter century of legal drinking – the only constant of which has been an unwavering hatred of beer – my tastes have evolved from middling gin-and-tonics, to wines of wide-ranging quality, to Bombay Sapphire served unaccompanied in a frozen martini glass. And then, roughly a decade ago, I discovered, and fell hard for, whisky in all its permutations, served neat or with a single rock.
Fortunately, my love of whisky is catholic enough that I can be as happy nursing a tumbler of Wild Turkey as a heavily peated Islay brand whose bottle commands three figures. Unfortunately, no matter what I might order, drinking whisky in a country where spirits are subject to miserly dispensation laws means the pastime always costs a small fortune. While my friends enjoy filled-to-the-brim $6 pints of a very good craft brew, I struggle not to drain my $10 ounce of Woodford Reserve in less than two minutes. I work in media – you know I can’t afford to do this. (Meanwhile, at a Mexican restaurant in Seattle, I was stunned when a request for some Maker’s Mark brought forth a virtually overflowing rocks glass that required the outlay of a single five-note.)
So, increasingly, my imbibing takes place at home. To be clear, there may only be one or two bottles from which to choose, but they will be great bottles. And, relative to going out, the experience will be an unbeatable bargain.
