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 June 26, 2008
Vancouver's extra-special cocktail; How this city has become one of the world's best places to order a drink
Section: Westcoast Life
Byline: Joanne Sasvari
Source: Special to the Vancouver Sun
Illustrations: Colour Photo: Mark Van Manen, Vancouver Sun / Cocktail historians Anistatia Miller (left) and Jared Brown are among many international experts who
visited Vancouver's bars and lounges recently. All praised the city's cocktails.
Colour Photo: Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun / Vancouver bartenders Brian Grant (left) of Yew's and Josh Pape of Chambar's placed fourth and second, respectively, at
this year's Giffard Liquers international cocktail contest in France. Grant mixed a Pacifica Cocktail while Pape whipped up his Le The de Demon specialty. The
competition included bartenders from France, Germany, England, Sweden and Poland.
Take a measure of style and an equal portion of
substance. Add a pinch of history, a splash of
creativity and a generous dash of hospitality. Shake it
all up and serve with a garnish of something
deliciously frivolous.
That's how you make a great cocktail.
It's also a pretty good recipe for a great cocktail city.
And if it sounds an awful lot like this city, that's
because Vancouver is quickly becoming one of the
world's best places to get a decent drink.
"If you add up the number of bars here doing great,
original, classic creations that are what you could call
artisanal cocktails, there are probably more bars
doing it here than there are in Manhattan," says
cocktail historian Jared Brown.
"This city has more passion about cocktails and it's
had it longer than most places in North America,"
adds Anistatia Miller, his partner in both life and
work.
Miller and Brown are just two of the many
international cocktail experts to hit town recently,
eager to check out the scene. They've come to teach
techniques, share recipes, scout out talent and, above
all, enjoy a cocktail or two.
"We were all really, really impressed by the cocktails
we had here," says Miranda Dickson, the U.K.-based
head of brand education for Wyborowa Vodka. "It
was one of the most exciting cities we've visited, in
terms of a cocktail experience."
"It was so evident that on every menu there were
some serious drinks, and not just in the obvious
places," says her colleague, master mixologist Dre
Masso.
Dickson and Masso visited Vancouver in March and
returned this month to host a two-day seminar and
competition called the International Cocktail
Experience, which featured presentations by Brown and Miller.
They've done these seminars in cities all over the
world, including Toronto and Montreal, and what
they found in Vancouver simply blew them away.
"It was such a stark contrast to Montreal, you
wouldn't even have known you were in the same
country," Dickson says.
But ICE isn't the only major cocktail event that's been
held here in the past year.
Last fall, Bruno Giffard, head of the family-owned
Giffard Liqueurs, visited town to host a competition
looking for bartenders to participate in his company's
international cocktail contest, held each May in
France.
And why not? After all, in 2007, a Vancouverite,
Chris Brown of Beyond Restaurant and Lounge,
surprised the Europeans by apparently coming out of
nowhere to win the whole thing.
This year, Chambar's Josh Pape placed second and
Yew's Brian Grant came in fourth, proving that our
bartenders can hold their own against the best from
France, Germany, England, Sweden and Poland.
"There's a really serious core of cocktail bartenders in
Vancouver who can compete with anyone, anywhere
in the world," Pape says.
There have been numerous other competitions in the
past year, hosted by companies such as Grey Goose,
Effen and Grand Marnier. And each time, the
international reps remark on the quality, creativity
and knowledge they've seen.
In fact, what our bartenders are doing is creating
what celebrity mixologist Tony Abou-Ganim calls
"destination cocktails."
"How many places can you walk up to the bar and be
guaranteed you're going to have a great bartender
experience?" asks Abou-Ganim, who was here in
March, with fellow international bartending superstar
Dale DeGroff, to lead the Finlandia Finnishing
School for local bartenders.
"Would you go out of your way for that experience?
Absolutely."
And if the world's bartending community is going out
of its way to taste Vancouver's cocktails, the rest of
the world can't be far behind.
Although today's craze for handcrafted cocktails is
only a few years old, the city's love affair with the
cocktail blossomed in the 1950s, when the first
cocktail lounge opened at the Sylvia Hotel. It came
into full flower in the late '80s at the original
Delilah's in the Buchan Hotel.
It was there that a bartender known only as Lola
introduced the city's first 60-cocktail list, which
featured modern martinis with cheeky names like the
Friend of Dorothy (Stolichnaya vodka, Midori melon
liqueur and Rose's Lime Cordial) or Martini
Navratilova (Stoli and Gatorade).
"This city was the first in North America to start
writing those deep cocktail menus," says Brown, who
believes Delilah's may have started the
continent-wide mega-martini trend of the '90s.
He and Miller discovered Delilah's in 1994 when
they moved to Vancouver from the United States.
They have since moved on to London and spend
much of their time overseeing a spirits museum in the
South of France. But they lived here for three years,
and they credit this city with inspiring them to make
cocktails their career.
It wasn't just the 'tinis at Delilah's -- or, later, at Lola's
own joint, Lola's at Century House -- that they loved.
"A big part of it was the lounge music," Brown
recalls.
It was also the swanky hotel lounges and the
retro-funky hangouts like the Waldorf Hotel's Blue
Lizard Lounge and, of course, the tiki bar at Trader
Vic's, where they served fantastical drinks like the
Scorpion, a rum-based concoction that arrived in a
giant bowl garnished with a floating gardenia.
"Remember when they tried to close Trader Vic's?"
Miller says with a laugh. "There was this big protest,
all these young lounge lizards."
By now Lola has left to work in Hollywood, Trader
Vic's has long been closed and, even though Delilah's
still serves cleverly named cocktails at its new
location, they aren't, frankly, very good. No matter,
because there are plenty of other places that are
serving good cocktails.
And not just good cocktails, but epic ones, like
Boneta's bloody mary made with heirloom-tomato
gazpacho, housemade Worcestershire sauce and a
garnish of quail egg and bacon. Or Chambar's bellini
update made with sparkling wine, peach puree and a
basil-peppercorn reduction. Or West's retro-fabulous
original-recipe mai tai with house-made orgeat
(almond syrup).
In the best bars, the bartenders are following the
city's culinary trend of using only fresh, local,
seasonal ingredients.
"We're trying to balance drinks the same way a chef
makes a dish. That's how I approach a drink,"
Chambar's Pape says.
It's not just the flavour and craftsmanship and balance
of the drink that matters, but everything else, too.
"What impressed me in Vancouver was the impact
when you went into places. Everything was 360
degrees thought out," says Dickson, who compares
Vancouver's scene to that of Sydney, Australia.
"The bars look good, they're designed well, and the
drinks are put together well. And it's not limited to
one or two places."
Beyond that, there is the talent behind the bar. As
Brown points out, "a bartender's job is, first and
foremost, to create the type of experience that ensures
a customer's impression is better when he leaves than
when he came in."
One of the great strengths of the scene here is that the
bartenders are such a tight-knit community.
"We all kind of work together and bounce ideas off
each other," Pape says. "We don't really compete
with each other."
So when West's David Wolowidnyk (who is also the
Grey Goose Vodka "arbiter of cool" national pour
master champion) and Colin Macdougall won this
month's ICE competition, their colleagues ribbed
them with good-humoured resignation.
And when the relatively unknown Brian Grant won
the local Giffard competition last fall, a respectful
murmur went through the crowd.
"There's a very adult attitude among the bartenders,"
Dickson observes. "They have a genuine appetite for
what they are doing."
Pape says: "We really do have something interesting
here that I'm really proud to be part of."
It's a sentiment echoed time and again in
conversations with the city's best bartenders, from
Ron Oliver at Bluewater to Mark Brand at Boneta to
Nick Devine at the Cascade Room to Jay Jones just
about everywhere.
Dickson, the been-everywhere, seen-everything
cocktail expert who's been tasting drinks around the
world for the last three years, sums it up best. She
says, "We were like, 'Oh, my God, we love
Vancouver.'"
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10 Great Cocktail Lounges
Vancouver has no shortage of places to try
handcrafted, artisanal and classic cocktails. Here are
10 of the best:
-
Anywhere cocktail consultant and mixologist
extraordinaire Jay Jones is shaking a drink, training
the staff or designing the cocktail list, including the
Granville Room (957 Granville St., 604-633-0056),
FPinfomart.ca Page 2
Fuel (1944 W. Fourth Ave., 604-288-7905,
Fuelrestaurant.ca), and Donnelly Nightclubs
(Dhmbars.ca)
- Bluewater Cafe, 1095 Hamilton St., 688-8078,
Bluewatercafe.net
- Boneta, 1 West Cordova St., 604-684-1844,
Boneta.ca
- Cascade Room, 2616 Main St., 604-709-8650,
Thecascade.ca
- Chambar, 562 Beatty St., 604-879-8650,
Chambar.com
- Chow Restaurant, 3121 Granville St.,
604-608-2469, Chow-restaurant.com
- George Ultra Lounge, 1137 Hamilton St.,
604-628-5555, Georgelounge.com
- Ocean Club, 105 - 100 Park Royal, West
Vancouver, 604-926-2326, Theoceanclub.ca /
Mountain Club, 40 - 4314 Main St., Whistler,
604-932-6009, Themountainclub.ca
- West, 2881 Granville St., 604-738-8938,
Westrestaurant.com
- Yew Restaurant + Lounge, Four Seasons Hotel, 791
West Georgia, 604-689-9333, Fourseasons.coma
FPinfomart.ca
www.giffard.com
www.nonsdrinks.com
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