Name: Winston Location: 228 Lonsdale Ave., North Vancouver Phone: 778-340-6393 Website: Winston-on-lonsdale.com Kitchen: West Coast, inspired by Asia from farm to table Prices: Dinner, shared dishes, $ 6 to $ 40. five-course chef menu, $ 50 per person More information: Open Wednesday to Sunday, brunch 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., dinner 5 p.m. until 9 p.m. Reservations for dinner are recommended. Pick-up and drop-off is available. Small patio. Douglas Lee had me in the home-made fermented and smoked chili oil: Finally, a young chef who has not mistakenly described his fiery spice as XO sauce. More meat than most crispy chili chips on the market, this tempting 14-grain blend smells and resembles a bit of chorizo with a numb underground stream of Sichuan prickly pear ash. Everyday, Winston is a café serving a wide variety of locally roasted coffees and brunch with interesting twists.DARRYL DYCK / The Globe and Mail The $ 4 ramekin with dark crimson mud comes with a subtle “not at all mild” warning on the menu. But we were so busy dipping the sweet buns with brioche milk, while trying to recognize the complex flavors, we were completely taken by surprise by the hot hell that secretly fell in the slow finish. This is not chili oil for faint palates. I swear he took the nipples off my tongue and almost ruined the rest of the meal. But it is bold, intense, completely unexpected and makes you sit and watch it. Like everything else at this sparse cafe in North Vancouver, which serves some of the most adventurous food on the Mainland. During the day, Winston is a café serving a wide variety of locally roasted coffees and brunch with interesting twists – 99-hour pork cheeks next to a banner, for example, or fluffy pandan toast with vanilla butter and condensed Ovaltine milk. The bright, airy, minimalist space is simply decorated with plants and light pendants hanging from double-height ceilings, polished concrete floors, wooden touches, a window corner with cushions and a long communal table in the center. Winston, which opened on the brink of a pandemic, is owned by Andrew Boutilier, who also runs the Koffie Café in downtown Vancouver, which is open during the day. Gentle and sweet-spoken, he reminds me of the famous local retired restaurateur John Bishop – a perfect professional who is too old to be called a hipster, but follows the latest trends (the restaurant’s natural wine list is his passion) as he goes to own pace and take a risk for a young punk in the kitchen. Although the Winston menus are mostly plant-based, the meat dishes were the most memorable. DARRYL DYCK / The Globe and Mail Executive chef Douglas Lee, 24, has local experience at many of Vancouver’s most popular restaurants, including Hapa Izakaya, Joeys, Savio Volpe, L’Abattoir and Nightingale. But he probably learned the most while working in many of the most influential restaurants in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Kyoto – which he asked to remain anonymous because he worked illegally. It was completely unknown before Winston, but it has the creation of a star. That includes enough self-awareness to make his unfiltered Instagram account private, something he did recently. Mr. Lee draws extensively on his Asian heritage (a mix of many cultures, he explained over the phone, but mostly Cantonese), but his cooking cannot be a dovecote. And although his menus are largely vegetarian, his meat dishes were the most memorable. He is obviously having a lot of fun with the à la carte dinner menu, for which the portions are huge and the flavors are wild. Some menu items, such as the billionaire’s cabbage, with a charred wedge-like steak served on top of a ragout meat “animal” and a thick dusting of shaved white cheddar with truffle, are successful. Others, such as the greasy turnip baconator, with the bitter aftertaste, the greasy residues and the “bright” orange cheddar, not so much. This last dish felt like a snack version of the first one and could probably be eliminated. BBQ Lion’s mane mushrooms were hydrated and sautéed to order in a buttered Chinese master oil.DARRYL DYCK / The Globe and Mail But the lion barbecue mushrooms, rehydrated and custom-sautéed in a buttered Chinese main oil (fortified and fortified over time, as a main broth, based on fried shallots and onions) were absolutely delicious. The sweet flavors were anchored with cumin and illuminated with fresh dill. The spongy texture of the mushrooms was balanced with the al dente teething of dark carrots. And the presentation, filled with a plate-sized lid, puffed rice, like crackers, was an elegant fungus-themed game. For me it tasted like mapo tofu through the lens of a French chef. Mr. Lee’s dry chicken was part of the resistance. Mr. Lee’s variation on a Peking duck is salted, cold-smoked and refrigerated for at least four days to safely add a light umami funk scent. I assumed he cooked it in a Rational oven because the dark mahogany peel had such a crunchy crunch, but to my shock I discovered that it was actually baked in the pan thoroughly because his oven was in the eye. If you are going to try this restaurant, I would highly recommend the roulette tasting menu for dinner that changes every week. The dishes, mainly adapted from the à la carte menu, are more refined. And with $ 50 for five lessons, it’s one of the best deals in town. The triangular hummingbird hummus has a satisfying mouthfeel.DARRYL DYCK / The Globe and Mail Ours quickly included pickled kohlrabi, beautifully selected so as not to be too watery, on a garlic hummus with crispy chickpeas for a more satisfying mouthfeel. Smoked eggplant softened to a velvety silky texture in an intricately made parsley remoulade. Shishito peppers with blisters in a creamy horseradish raifort sauce with red sesame, salty nori and fresh herbal oils. and a variation on the billionaire’s cabbage, which was steamed more gently, served with sesame and ginger dressing goma and finished with homemade, barrel-aged soy. By the time the final dish started, I was absolutely impressed by the effort, creativity and finesse of each dish, but my palate was tired of the excessive abundance of sesame seeds – more of a coincidence than a design, says Mr Lee. And I was craving crazy meat. Mr. Lee delivered and finished the night on a strong note with an impressively tender ssam beef knuckle with large portions that had been salted, aged, cooked slowly and cooked to order, with crispy radicchio leaves for wrapping and a mix of delicious pickles and capers. . The ssam beef knuckle was impressively tender and shared. DARRYL DYCK / The Globe and Mail All this was accompanied by extremely warm service and a flight of elegant natural wines which was a total theft for $ 25. Winston would be right at home on Main Street. But what a wonderful surprise it is to find it unpacked in the most intimate setting of North Vancouver. Mr. Lee is a must-see chef. My only concern is that he works so hard that he can burn out before he is overtaken by the slow but sure migration of hipsters to the Burrard Inlet. Plan your weekend with the Good Taste newsletter, which offers wine tips and reviews, recipes, restaurant news and more. Register today.
