Vancouver is a city that has much to offer apart from the beautiful scenery it is a centre for food and a visit to this city of sea and mountains can’t be complete without dining at C, a eatery that calls it’s self ‘Vancouver’s most progressive sea food restaurant.
C sits on the edge of Vancouver’s False Creek, situated between glamorous yachts and multimillion dollar apartments. So what makes this restaurant stand out? It’s the lengths the owner, Harry Kambolis and executive chef Rob Clark go to find sustainable produce.
Kambolis is an active environmentalist and was one of the first to make an entire menu from locally sourced ingredients. C was also a founding restaurant in Vancouver’s Ocean Wise programme, which set out to promote sustainable seafood.
I tried out the five course tasting menu with matching international wines. We started with British Colombia’s Blue Mountain, a brut rose sparkling wine, its sweet and tangy taste, which went well with the creamy lobster bisque. The next dish to make its appearance on the table was pickled beet salad, with a glass of Nk’mip Pinot Blanc, the only winery owned by Native Americans in Canada. The pickled beet was fresh and palette cleansing but the wine failed to live up to expectation.
The third course of spot prawns with bacon lime totellini, black bean puree and jalapeno fluid gel was the best dish from the menu. The flavours may seem unusual and not compatible but they worked together beautifully. The dish was accompanied by Le Rote Vernaccia di San Gimignango from Tuscany. The acidity in the wine cut through the strong spicy flavours of the dish.
Seared scallops was our fourth dish with fingerling potatoes, asparagus and lemon oil emulation. The scallops where some of the biggest I have seen, much bigger than anything I have been served in the UK; this was a heavy dish and the wine, Andeluna Torreontes from Mendoza complemented the dish perfectly.
By this time I was feeling full, I thought the scallops might have finished me off but when the beautifully presented dessert was placed in front of me I suddenly found room for it – and how could I not with chocolate mousse with chilli cake and beet parfait. The chocolate mousse and chilli cake was delicious, but the spice sneaks up on you and takes you by surprise. The beet parfait is the perfect summer dish as it’s refreshing and cleanses the palate. This was served with the Robert Mondavi Moscato d’Oro, from California, a sweet dessert wine that did not overwhelm the yummy desserts.
My dining partner is vegetarian and the restaurant seemed more than happy to adapt the menu to make it meat and fish free. Which is unusual for any restaurant to do, the sommelier, who paired up the wines certainly knew her stuff, and it is a mark of any good restaurant to have a sommelier.
On a trip to Vancouver you cannot miss out trying it’s amazing local sea food and C is certainly one of the best places to try it.
Reviewed by: Cat Hughes
2-1600 Howe Street
Vancouver, BC V6Z 2L9
Tel 604.681.1164
