Vancouver Mag did it's review of restaurants. There were some suprises, some expected results, and a number of reviews and category selection I really disagreed with. I maintain my own list of Vancouver Restaurant reviews
Restaurant of the Year: West, then Lumiere, C, Sooke Harbour house, Cioppino's. No real explanation of why Rob Feenie, underdog winner of Iron Chef, didn't get the gold. Feels to me like they decided Rob got too big for his britches, which would be totally pathetic. Reward greatness, period.
New Fine Dining: Chambar was the run-away favorite. It beat out Coast, Arbutus Grille in Brentwood Bay, Fifty-Two 80 Bistro in Whistler and Yuji Tapas. I haven't tried any of the others, so hard to compare but I'm suprised that Chambar was so highly rated given my Chambar review.
Design of the Year: Rangoli, followed by Coast and Lift.
New Informal: Go Fish - by the owner of 941/942, followed by Chopstick Café, Rangoli, Cassis Bistro, and Tamarind.
Why is there no "existing informal"? One of my fav informal places, Locus, doesn't fit into any category.
Regional: C, Raincity Grill, Bishops
Appies: Bin 941/942, Lumiere tasting, West, Crui, Hapa Izakaya, Umami
Fine French: Lumiere, Le Crocodile, Le Gavroche, Bacchus, La Belle Auberge.
Bistro: Bistro Pastis, La regalade,Chambar, Elixir, Feenies. We went to Regalade and thought it was pretty good with huge portions, but it's shocking that Salade de Fruits isn't on here given that the mussels are the Vancouver Mag's ingredient of the year and SF just nails them. Fine by me, as it means maybe Salade will only be booked up a few days in advance instead of weeks.
Fine Japanese: Tojo's, Blue Water, En, Yoshi, Zen. Of course Tojo's is on top.
Casual Japanese: Hapa Izakaya, Shiru-Bay, Dan, guu, Japone. Hapa is exactly the right choice, Toshi should have been in here and I was not impressed with Shiru-Bay.
Indian: Vij's, Rubina, Maurya, Rangoli, Tamarind. This is shocking that Akbar's isn't mentioned, and I think Clove is better than Rangoli. Vij's is stale and now over-rated.
Southeast Asian: Montri's, Banana Leaf, Phnom Penh, Simply Thai, Jang Mo Jib
Americas: Baru Latino, Mouse & the Bean, Reef, Rinconcito Salvadoreno, Las Maragaritas, Samba.
Fine Chinese: Sun Sui Wah, Imperial Chinese, Pink Pearl, Szechuan Chonqqing, President Chinese. Sun Sui Wah is where it should be.
Casual Chinese: Hon's Wun-tun, Legendary Noodle, Green Village, Ba Guo Bu Yi Szechuan, Hoi Tong. We like Wing Wah and Ho Tak Kee.
Steakhouse: Gotham's/Morton's, Hy's, Keg, Earls.
Bar: Bacchus, Opus, Gerard, 900 West, Shebeen
Desert: Senses/Diva at the Met, West, Lumiere, CinCin, Blue Water
There are apparently underground restaurants. Illegal restaurants near main/broadway and commercial, wild stuff!
Breakfast: There was no breakfast category. Which is probably right, because Vancouver is terrible for breakfasts. There's simply no place that is open before 9 am, with great coffee and great breakfasts.
Brunch: Now there should be a brunch category. I mean, there was a "best bbq" and "best italian fine dining".
Coffee: How about a best coffee served category, which is Locus for a restaurant and JJ Bean coffee.
Internet Cafe: Yet another missing category. Mine are: Wicked, Soma, SBC.
I am going to be in Vancouver for the last threee s=weeks of Feb.
Thanks for your suggestions, Anything I should know about Vancouver. I am 55 cute and single. Pretty active and curious'
thanks Kathleen
Red Door - Copy of Letter sent to the restaurant, and to Spectra Hospitality Group Inc.
Red Door
2996 Granville Street
Vancouver, BC V6H 3J7
Dear Hilary, General Manager
The inhospitable, unprofessional, disregard of food quality, and the lack of concern for guests is how the conversation begins when describing the management team at Red Door Restaurant.
My apologies in advance for the long letter, but I feel the entire story must be told for you to understand exactly how I came to say the things that I did above.
On Thursday December 13th, 2007 around 8:00pm, two colleagues and I were hungry while working late to prepare for an important conference call the following morning. We called GoWaiters and ordered from Red Door Restaurant because we love the delicious Ginger Beef dish at your restaurant. The tender slices of beef wok fried until crisp, and served with spicy Thai chili peppers and crispy rice noodles, as described on your take out menu, is fantastic.
The decision to order this to eliminate our aching hunger has always served us well when ordering this in your restaurant. So we ordered the Ginger Beef, three orders to be precise, and one with extra beef as well plus the Grilled Naan and Roti to indulge just a wee bit more on side.
Forty minutes and $60 dollars later it arrived at our office door. The great taste, quality and service you always deliver make the dish all worth the wait.
Then we opened it! To our discovery what we had actually been sent was not more then a tin-foil tray of beef, not a single crispy rice noodle in any of the three trays to be found. After spending 10 minutes with GoWaiters on hold while they called the restaurant and spoke to the Head Chef and Manager on the phone, the Red Door Restaurant decided to resolve with us directly. While on hold with GoWaiters, I received a call from Liz who identified herself as a member of the management team at the restaurant. She informed us that they do not include the crispy rice noodles as a part of the dish because the quality is jeopardized because of the time that it takes to be received by the guest through takeout. When the three of us ordered this off of the takeout menu on the website we would have not order Ginger Beef if the only thing we were receiving was Ginger Beef, nothing else. She said she could send noodles on the side to us even after it had been more then 30 minutes since we had received the order due to the amount of time it took to resolve it. We decided we did not want crispy rice noodles to go with our now cold Ginger Beef. She said she could re-order the Ginger Beef with the crispy rice noodles. We opted not to do this because she just finished telling us the quality of the dish is decrease when they do this. We decided we wanted to have the Pad Thai, which is actually $3.00 cheaper then the Ginger Beef. She said she couldn’t do it. We asked for a refund and her response was a decline. What the option was that she had given us was to (1) send crispy rice noodles, (2) re-send the Ginger Beef as it is actually described on the takeout menu, or (3) give us a $25 Gift Certificate that was not even half of the price of the order that we were “expecting” to receive but didn’t. What we decided with the limited options that we expressed we did not like, was to have one Pad Thai sent to us and four springs rolls that would be covered by the $25 Gift Certificate.
We felt extremely bad for GoWaiters, the unfortunate middle man in this transaction. We called them back and told them to charge us for delivery and made sure we tipped the driver well. They actually waived the delivery because they felt it necessary for the service, time, and effort that we had to endure to resolve this matter that was still unsatisfactory.
When the second delivery arrived, the driver said the manager was complaining about us. He mentioned that she said that “herself and the head chef” were complaining about us. I told the driver our side of the story, and he said, “I knew there were two sides of the story” jokingly.
It is unbelievable the two most senior people in the restaurant at that time who are inevitably responsible for guest satisfaction, food quality, and leading by example for all of the staff there were complaining about the guests. Well it got back to this guest.
If Liz and your head chef are complaining about guests in front of staff, and third party companies, what kind of conduct do you think the rest of the staff in that restaurant are going to portray when they see the people who are suppose providing effective development for everyone on in the restaurant? Statistics show that most guests, customers, and clients in all businesses usually don’t take the time to complain and sooner just slip between the cracks through the back door. It makes you wonder how many guests you may have lost because of the way some staff conduct themselves. Furthermore, these staff “are” Red Door. At the end of the day I am not writing Liz a letter, I am writing Red Door a letter. Liz and your head chef are representatives of your business. Throughout the entire long drawn out conversation we had with her and GoWaiters we were pleasant, patient, opened to ideas that we were satisfactory on both ends.
It is with great regret that the story that you can bet I will tell everyone about the experience that we received with your restaurant is this one.
Best luck with your restaurants future endeavuors.
We live in Yaletown and found this by accident, googling dine and dance in Vancouver for middle age people like myself, as you probably know, there's not too many places to dance for the baby boomers. We were there this past Saturday night, for food we had Coconut Shrimp and Avocado Egg Rolls to start, next was their garlicky Caesar Salad (if you love garlic, you'll love their homemade Caesar Salad dressing). For the main course fall off the bone, St. Louis BBQ Pork Ribs and Grill Chicken Oscar with real Dungeness Crabmeat with Banana Foster for dessert all at an unbelievable price plus no cover for dancing. How many restaurants only mark up their bottles of wine for less than $13? What more can you ask for a magnificent night out without the kids. We were surprised to see it not pack to capacity, go and check this place out for yourself. Hate to see this place disappear, it's been such a long time finding a place where you can dine leisurely and dance without going to clubs playing loud music and feeling out of place. www.howiesbistroandbar.com