If Hawksworth in the Hotel Georgia is the hot new restaurant of the high end this summer, the new Save On Meats has owned the every end. The reincarnation of the 50-plus-year-old working class icon at 43 West Hastings hasnt enjoyed many moments of rest since opening a month ago, and for good reason: its cheap and accessible to everyone with a few bucks to spare and a belly full of rumble.
Its odd that many people actually feared the end result of its year-long renovation would represent the decadent cherry on top of a decades worth of the intense gentrification in and around Gastown.
Granted, owner Mark Brand opened five other businesses that are contemporary with the areas general ascension (see Boneta, Sea Monstr Sushi, The Diamond, Sharks + Hammers, Catalog Gallery), but one can hardly yell bourgeois! when ordering the entirely edible bacon cheeseburger and fries selling for $6 or a basic breakfast for $4.
Yeah, but its for hipsters, the same naysayers gripe, at which point its clear that theres just no winning with them.
Such people will be happy to know that cool has little to do with Save On Meats. The restaurant and attached butcher/ fishmonger shop are still for working people of every stripe a succinct rebuttal to the serial tut-tutters who assumed it would be otherwise.
OK, but its popularity will drive up rents in the area, others will complain. Alas, that ship sailed a long time ago, well after the resource-based economy that once propped up this neighbourhood evaporated (goodbye loggers and fishermen, hello software engineers and hairstylists).
Ill concede that some of Gastowns new restaurants and club pubs can strain credulity (and wallets), but there is no sense of exclusivity or popped-collar douchery at Save On Meats, nor any aspirational feint toward high style. Its real, and thats worthy of note in a restaurant scene that rarely deals in reality.
A casual first pass reveals a décor that is so straightforward it borders on boring. The long lunch counter/bar running the length of the room appears as simple as that in any diner, especially when its full of people mowing down milk shakes and chowing on well-stuffed sourdough BLTs. But look a little closer at the seats. Notice how theyre chrome-stilted, green-buttoned leather high chairs, and check out the wooden bar tops, which are made from beams rescued from the original Save On Meats. Theyve been sanded to a new grain and polished to a respectful shine.
Running parallel are a series of cozy booths that look as if they were installed in the 50s, but peek underneath and youll find the table-tops have no legs (fastened directly to the wall instead). Each one comes equipped with plug-ins to charge phones and computers (yes, theres Wi-Fi).
The charming, near-Rockwellian signs on the wall trumpeting Holiday Ham and more werent produced in a signage shop in the wake of the Second World War, but were painstakingly painted by hand on the third floor by local artist Dan Climan. Go a few times and youll start noticing other things that make the room a feast for your eyes.
The food is nothing special. And while its hard to wax poetic on an open-faced chicken sandwich drowned in salty gravy or about sides of peas and carrots, theres still love in the kitchen. It is what it is: the very definition of basic. The $6 burger is a wicked steal arguably the best deal going in Vancouver today, and they know their way around an ice cream scoop. In any event, one doesnt walk into a place like this with visions of foie gras in triplicate.
The service could use some help. In our first visits, my family and I were subjected to a barrage of easily avoidable mistakes. Whether it was the accidental loading of fried egg and chili to my burger (a happy outcome, to be sure), the sudden unavailability of certain items after theyve been ordered, or the inability to properly clear a finished meal in fewer than four trips, I left each time thinking the staff required managerial direction.
That said, I would never expect all the front-of-house protocols to be met in a place that follows bangers and mash with apple brown betty. This isnt Hawksworth, after all.
In short, the new Save On Meats is much like the original, only cleaner, a hell of a lot busier and fully kitted out for the needs of a busy, wired, city-dwelling, 21st century customer base that doesnt have a lot of cash to throw around. Thats sort of me to the letter, so Im seriously considering moving in.
43 West Hastings, 604-569-3568, SaveOnMeats.ca
