(closed late 2023)

February 2023

This place looks like another increment of the groundhog of great eating nosing its way out into the Coast Sunshine. It’s no Michelin star candidate but easily the kind of place you might go in a Vancouver neighbourhood for service, surroundings, and good food.

It’s along the lower Gibsons retail Gower Point Road strip which doesn’t completely stop moving in the winter but really rocks with hungry tourists come summer. It’s in a new (renovated)? building and the room has a potentially inviting outdoor venue and a clean West-coast modern interior. We offered by phone friends a birthday gift as they were having their celebratory dinner a few months ago on the staff were very helpful.

Lunch at 130 on Friday found the place about 15% full but the kitchen was in full swing.

There was an abbreviated but very BC-oriented wine list, and three menu categories (small, medium and large) on the lunch card. Seaweed beignet suggested the restaurant name might indicate a veggie direction among “small” dishes, but kale with beef and nduja (spicy sausage) aranchi suggested otherwise. Oysters and marinated beet root were among medium choices, and we opted for a lamb shoulder pasta and gnocci with mushrooms and an egg from among the nice-looking “large” choices.

Our oysters were medium-sized, accompanied by nice contrasting sauces, and perfectly-shucked. The gnocci needed salt but perked up with it, succulent under the melting yolk. Lamb shoulder radiatore-like frilly pasta stole the show with a heat-infused sauce and contrasting flavour of tiny olives. Pretty delicious. A northern-Rhône-varietal BC Terra Vista “Figaro” for $72 was nice if a bit sweet and murky in its varietal flavour.

Our server was businesslike and quick in spite of the small subscription at an off-rush time, but certainly not unpleasant. $168 including wine and a tip let us know that this place appreciates its position among competitors, and knows what a comparable show (for no doubt a much higher venue overhead) would command in the city.

Food 8.9 service 7.8 ambience 9.1 value 8.0 peace and quiet 8.5 (but could be much different at dinner)

February 25 2023

We returned for dinner on a special birthday. Although it was snowing like mad outside the restaurant was almost full and the atmosphere was warm and cheerful.

Our server was a young man, solicitous but moving quickly. We (having told ourselves a dozen times never to do so) let him talk us into ordering all three of our courses at once. Even though we told him we wanted a slow relaxed cadence the food arrived pretty promptly as we finished each course. We were out of there in an hour.

But the food was quite lovely. Their popular “seaweed beignets” were deep-fried crunchy ping-pong balls with a soft centre, accompanied by a flat dish of a very nice contrasting beige mayo. Next were two of their “medium” items, one a smoked salmon and radish plate with a wonderful deep-fried but light bread about the size of an inflated saucer. The other a marinated beet salad that had a strong tangy dressing the flavour of which I couldn’t identify which isn’t described in the menu. Quite delicious with a few accompanying solid dressing items.

Finally a maincourse shared between us which was roast octopus with pork belly. The pork was ethereally tender and succulent and the octopus fully softened by pre-cooking which not everybody accomplishes. The dressing for this was quite similar to the one on the beet salad, very tasty but not very different.

We brought a 2012 village Chambolle-Musigny from Roumier which I brought home from the producer about five years ago. I still have three bottles but wish I had three cases: fabulously fragrant. The corkage was $25.

This place is certainly the class act on the Coast now and we will definitely be back. We would have liked to take our time a bit more than we were able to and once again promised ourselves to stick to our “one course at a time” ordering strategy. The serving staff seem a little inexperienced and probably will settle into a more professional approach. But the overall experience was quite lovely.

$106 pre-tip remembering that we brought our own wine is still a pretty good deal everything considered.

This time I would say food 9.2 service 7.5 ambience 9.3 value 8.8 peace and quiet 8.3.

April 8, 2023

Another lovely meal at this favourite spot in Gibsons. The pink scallops and the hamburger were particularly outstanding. A couple of issues however:

The wine list is very limited. Hoping for something special we splurged on the La Stella “Espressivo”, their top-priced wine ($120), a south Okanagan Bordeaux blend. Two of the four of us liked it, for me it was pretty ordinary for the price, boiled vegetable and even a hint of wet fur on the nose, and a fairly bitter prominence in the mouth. They do corkage for $25 so I would consider bringing your own bottle unless you’re drinking club soda or beer.

Service. There’s a pattern to the behaviour of the servers which I’m guessing is driven by management’s wish to clear the house of early diners by 8 PM or so, but may also reflect some arrogance in the kitchen or the ownership. When someone bringing food, clearing plates, or filling the water glasses announces what they are doing in a loud voice as they approach the table, whoever sitting there conversing has to either stop or just talk louder. The repeated clear message is that what the server is doing is much more important than what’s going on at the table (which it may be but confident experienced service people learn how to hide their contempt).

I like my food saltier than most people and the another message in medium- to high-end places that provide no salt and pepper on the table is that the chef knows the right way to season food. Our server was verging on surly when I requested salt. Come on…

Here’s hoping that once the owners have their feet on the ground financially the managers and chef will help their line staff to tone, and slow, things down a bit. Or everybody develop a bit more realistic version of their place in the culinary universe.

A quite reasonable $300 pre–tip for four even with that expensive wine. Service was more like a 5 on this occasion, otherwise everything was as usual just great.

May 2023.

I couldn’t resist this brief comment. Lunch includes a “breakfast sandwich” which is an absolute homerun. Merguez sausage patty topped with a fried egg, eggplant and an absolutely mouthwatering sourish sauce. Forget about “breakfast”, if that thing is on the menu at any meal do not miss it. Service was the same strident nervous show. Why can’t people just be normal?

For the sandwich alone 9.5