To celebrate my company's upcoming nuptuals with Oracle, we went out for fine dining at Connor Butler. We haven't been able to get into Connor Butler in 4 previous nights out. Dine out vancouver is currently running so everybody is going for $35 meals everywere else, and Connor isn't. So he had lots of space. Interestingly, the Maitre' D does day trading and he knew about the BEA/Oracle deal.
What a wonderful meal we had. We chose the 6 course Surprise menu. But really, it was a 12 course menu because D and and I each got different items. Where has that happened before? So many of the dishes were just tremendous. I think the Gnocchi was the highlight amongst highlights. I've never had it that good before. The duck breast, lamb, sirloin, prawns, lobster bisque, fois gras terrine, ling cod were all simply amazing. We paired it with a very nice 2003 Chateau la Neurthe (89 parker points). We then did a wine pairing with the desert courses. We had an amazing number of amouse bouches including two courses, and then a wonderful little post desert desert tray.
Drink markup is very reasonable, double the BCLDB prices. The wine selection was good, for example our favourite US Chardonnay, Mer Soleil, was on the list. The wine selection could have used a bit more variety, and I'm always agin Canadian wines. Service was excellent. Our benchmark for good service is never having a completely empty wine or water glass.
Connor regularly came out to explain the food dishes and to talk. I thought that was tremendous. He totally loves food, has a bubbly personality, and is extremely personable. We chatted with him afterwards about great restaurants that he and we have been to. We've both given up on getting into French Laundry, he'd heard about Tetsuyas, we all agreed that we are agin the current cooking trend of froths, etc.
There are a few things that could use some improvement. We felt there were a couple of the food items that left a little bit to be desired. The "closer" desert, the grand item, of chocolate brownie and truffle ice cream just didn't do it. I think you have to nail your chocolate desert. It also felt a little bit like he was doing too many things. It seems strange to say that, but we felt almost overwhelmed by the sheer number of different flavours. Of course, we didn't have to split every course that came so part of our feeling is attributed to our actions. There was a deep fried amouse bouche that was really greasy. I also thought the wine list needed a bit of work. How can there not be a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc in preference to Mission Hill?? There also weren't nearly enough Australian Shirazes available.
These "complaints" are pretty small in the overall experience. Serving at least 25 different food items and only missing perfection on 3-4 of them is incredible.
Now that we aren't going back to Lumiere, I would say that Connor's is pretty close to my top restaurant in Vancouver for fine dining. I'd rate Connor's higher than our 4/5s of Watermark, Crocodile, C, Cru, Raincity, Parkside, Rare, Bistro Pastis, Vila Del Lupo, and far higher than our 3/5s such as West, Bishops, Fuel, Gastropod, Brix. I can't think of a fine dining restaurant I would rather go to. I'm enthusiastic enough that I think we'll try to have the W3C Technical Architecture Group February f2f dinner out at Connor's.
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