I read the enRoute magazine's yearly food edition on my flight yesterday. I was stunningly disappointed but not surprised that they picked Vancouver's Nu restaurant as the best new restaurant in Canada. Deanna and I visited in March and we wrote up a disappointed review. We were not the only folks disappointed in the restaurant.
I think the restaurant reviewers have forgotten about the "critic" part of reviews. They've bought into the hype and forgotten the quality. The reviews even mentioned the specific dishes that we uniformly didn't like. Having funky syringes to insert beer into seafood, swanko (but uncomfortable) chairs, a good pedigree of ownership and a trendy crowd does not make for a great restaurant.
This is an another example of a disappointing trend in vancouver. A lot of what happens in Vancouver is like "Hollywood North", where hype and style are confused with substance. I think in some people's mind, style IS substance. Must be all the new money.