Still Around: 100-Mile Menu at the RainCity Grill

The 100-Mile Diet idea may have fallen off the radar, but it's still feasible and the 100-Mile Menu is still available at Raincity Grill. I knew I was handicapping the restaurant from the start, but I was too curious not to try it when I went to the restaurant Saturday night with the Vancouver Fine Dining Club.

Once upon a time, before refrigeration and importing made everything available everywhere, people had to make do with what they could harvest and what they could preserve. If you try out some of the older "traditional" recipes, you may discover that everything you need for the recipe will be in-season at the same time: Precisely because the recipe was based on what was available to kitchens, without the benefit of shipping something over from the antipodes.

Before evaluating the 100-Mile Menu at the Raincity Grill (or anywhere else), you have to give some leeway for what they can't use because it's not locally available. If something is on the bland side or if the veggies look boring, well, it's not like they can toss in just anything to pretty it up. Even something as simple as sugar can require a substitute. In some ways, it's like vegan cooking. When you can't use eggs or cream, you have to get creative and use flax or avocado. The result isn't exactly the same, but sometimes it's darn close, and if the chef knows what they're doing, no one will care about what they're missing.

The bread tray here was four ping-pong ball sized chewy white bread buns, plain butter, and a light violet coloured salt. It was a bit tricky to get at the salt in its small dish. What worked for me was to have some butter on the tip of my knife, and use that to press into the salt, thus picking it up ready to spread on your tiny bun.
It was a room temperature bun. Which seems to be the norm now. I don't exactly expect fresh-baked bread, but could it at least be toasty-warm? Heck, why don't restaurants just give out toast? At least it's be nice and hot.

Raincity Grill 100-Mile Tasting Menu ($73, +$9 optional cheese course, +$34 with wine accompaniment)

• North Arm Farm Beetroot Salad - farmhouse goat's cheese cannelloni, hazelnut mulch
• North Arm Farm  is a certified organic farm in Pemberton.
• The cannelloni looked like a tiny piece of sushi. It's smaller than even your standard piece of small sushi. Goat cheese inside, but not very strong. Really just a token piece.
• The "mulch" was more like crushed nuts or crumbs, which is how it is described on the à la carte menu version of this salad.
• The rest of the plate was a sweet salad of large chunks of root vegetables. Overall, the sweetness made the experience almost like eating a fruit salad.
• Vancouver Island Manila Clams - gin & tomato broth, garlic, celery & chard, tuscan toast
• I think someone swiped my toast because I didn't get any. Neither did the other person at our table who ordered the tasting menu. By this time, the four small, chewy, not-warmed buns that had been brought to our table as the usual bread starter was more or less gone, and in any case a ping-pong ball sized bun wasn't going to help a lot here.
• That said, the tasting menu as a whole while not substantial and heavy with grain or potatoes; and although each plate has a smallish looking portion; adds up to a fair-sized meal, so toast here might have made it too much.
• I didn't think there was anything too special here. Tasty enough, so there's nothing bad per se. Broth a tad on the salty side so I could really have used the toast. Watch out for shell shards. I had a little bit in the soup.
• Something you can try here is to systematically scrape out all the clams. They more or less fall right off when you use the little fork provided, and once that chore is done you can have clams in still-hot soup. Instead of clams, then soup that has gone cold.
• Fraser Valley Duck Proscuitto - endive salad, averill creek blackberry gastrique
• If you're thinking papery-thin slices of salty duck, you would be wrong. Duck is a different animal from pig, so duck proscuitto is different.
• On the plate there's the slices of duck proscuitto -- about 4mm thick, and so rare that it looked more like pork -- as well as a thick triangle of what looked like dark grey-brown pulled duck meat pressed together and seared.
• The triangle of duck was very salty! Try it straight away and decide on your strategy here: Eat less of it, get more water, or have it with the meat and/or salad together. It's really that salty.
• Other than that, duck is duck. Next!
• Fraser Valley Roast Pork - smoked potato fondant, ‘north arm farm’ carrots, braised red cabbage, apple-chardonnay jus
• The roast pork here was a very fatty chunk with hard and very crispy skin on. Instead of trying to cut it from the top, if you flip this slightly-more-than 1 cubic inch slab onto its side, you will find you can just take your fork and knife and pull it apart. It comes off cleanly in layers, possibly because of all that fat!
• Fat. Urgh.
• I'm tempted to also take points off for the menu wording as a whole as it feels misleading. This is just one example. When it says "roast pork", I really didn't expect to get so much fat. Maybe it came from a particularly porky pig?
• Optional Farmhouse Cheese course - I skipped this.
• Cranberry Semifreddo - elderflower broth.
• This looked like a chunk of ice cream sitting in saskatoon berry sauce. Very sweet sauce, so definitely have it with the ice cream.
• It's OK. The sauce definitely gives you a sweet finish to your meal. But at the same time, like the clams, there's nothing special here.

I give them points for putting together a decent 100-Mile Diet concept menu, but sadly have to take points away for the boring clams, and disappointing duck and pork. Dessert was OK, but not a particularly great finish. Best part was the salad, which is a slightly smaller portion than on their vegetarian Regional Menu.

That Saturday night, the restaurant didn't really get busy till closer to 7pm when it was full. Best bet for just walking in would be around 5.30pm, or after maybe 8.30pm.


The bill, including one pot of peppermint tea and 12% tax, came out to just over $85 before tip.

Undercooked? Flatbread at Cosca

There's something funny about the flatbread at Cosca. I think the dough is undercooked.

I rallied a couple of friends to go to Cosca to try the flatbread again after having gone once before with the Food Bloggers in January to sample the pasta. I'd had flatbread there too, and the diners at our table immediately remarked how undercooked it was. At the time, I thought it was a fluke. Well, when both our pizzas came with undercooked dough last night, I guess it's some new pizza fashion.

Yes, I actually carved the dough open and touched the inside, which was clearly still sticky, though not so much as to have a raw dough look. The result in your mouth is a slightly gummy experience that can stick to your teeth. The taste of the ingredients isn't so strong to begin with, and this experience is now compounded with a texture/feel in your mouth from the dough that dominates.
If they keep this up, I recommend skipping it and going to a neapolitan pizza joint. Nicli Antica Pizzeria, is one I tried quite recently, and the pizza experience there is way superior. Heck, even Pizza Factory would give you a better pizza experience.

Also, Cosca uses a long rectangle shape, which means the area:perimeter ratio is lower than using a circle shape, which in turn means more edge crust. The pizza is maybe 12" x 4", you get quite a bit less area (and hence ingredients) for a $10-$12 pizza/flatbread than a $2-$3 more neapolitan pizza. If you don't mind frozen pizza, then it's no contest versus Western Family thin crust pizza, recently on sale at Superstore at a bargain basement price of $3.98!

The two pizzas we tried were Cosca (basil, pomodoro sauce, fresh mozzarella, parmigiano; $10) and Funghi Selvatico (wild mushroom medley, pecorino – romano; $11). Honestly, for the price, go to a neapolitan pizza place, which has comparable price but, if VPN certified, MUST use the highest quality ingredients as well.

Which is not to say Cosca doesn't have good food. It's just better to get flatbread elsewhere.

On to desserts (all $8 each)! This totally saved dinner.

My friends had actually read my review of the desserts at Cosca and decided on the Tartufo. I had gone with my eye on the torte, a hazelnut cherry chocolate torte, and was not disappointed. Not the huge portions as the other desserts, but it's rich and chocolatey enough that you'd be overwhelmed anyway. Two thirds of the way through, it started to give me a mild burning sensation in the back of your throat, which always turns me off the rest of dessert. I think I get that way from too much chocolate!
The torte sits on a ~5mm crust of what looks like finely crushed nuts. The cherries are syrupy, like maraschino cherries, and you get a couple of samples on your plate along with some whipped cream. The rest is embedded into the chocolate torte slice.

At $8 I think this is slightly overpriced, and I don't think I'd choose it over their delicious tiramisu. But if you need to end dinner with chocolate, this definitely satisfies your chocolate craving.
If you don't like syrupy cherries, they are easy enough to spot in the torte, even in the dim candlelight of the room, and you can give them away.

On your way out of the restaurant, look on the wall for a surprisingly dense Wine Map of Italy. It's also marked with where the chef is from.

1927 Lounge at the Rosewood Hotel Georgia

After wrapping up dinner at MARKET on Saturday night, my companions and I dashed over in the crisp cold night to the Rosewood Hotel Georgia to continue drinks and chatting. Sadly, the Bel Café had closed and Hawksworth was packed, so we sat ourselves at the bar in the 1927 Lobby Lounge. If you like the look of big ice cubes, you'll get it here with 8 cubic inch cubes.

If you've never walked through the hotel after it's revitalization, definitely go! I mentioned it briefly after a glimpse when I went to the Bel Café for dessert, but it deserves a good look in the late evening when all is quiet. In addition to period decor and some interesting flower arrangements, there's a collection of fine art right in the lobby. On the hotel main web page is a link to a PDF summarizing this art collection.

The bar in the 1927 Lobby Lounge is very tight in the narrow but deep lounge. If you find it a bit busy, you are free to sit elsewhere in the hotel's long and spacious lobby, where small bites and drinks menus are available at each table. Having just finished a lovely light dinner at MARKET, I was in the mood for a dessert to share, but the Warm Soft Pretzels with Sea Salt and Ravens Cream Ale Mustard ($6) caught my eye as a novelty I hadn't had before.

From the description I had expected several individual soft pretzels dusted with crystals of sea salt baked on. Even my companions, who had apparently had the same in Europe, were pretty sure of this. What was served was quite different and disappointing.

The warm "pretzel" (which I think can only be properly called a pretzel if it has the distinctive pretzel twist) looked like a mini loaf of french bread about six inches long and pre-sliced. It was the proper brown colour and had the usual chewy and slightly sweet pretzel-bread composition, but it was not a "pretzel" per se.
No visible sea salt on it, but there were flakes of salt that crumbled off the bread, so that was barely in evidence with each bite.
And the mustard was slimy and grainy, and basically tasted like mustard.

Bread with mustard. $6. Hmm... Easy to share, to be sure. But honestly, skip this.

The drinks were a bit more interesting at least to watch.
The "Cavalier" (Hennessy v.s. Cognac, fresh apple cider, lemon, rosemary maple syrup, jerry) includes a sprig of rosemary set afire over a glass. The fire puts itself out once the natural oils have burnt off, and the cocktail is poured right over this sprig and into the glass. Then the rosemary is used to stir the drink before it is sent off.

The bartender Derek here was an attentive but stoic guy. It didn't look it, but he was listening and if you wondered about this and that at the bar, he'd bring it over unbidden and mention an informative thing or two. However, he'll not engage you as much as other bartenders, especially on the busy Dine Out Vancouver night we were there, so if you're looking for a more chatty time even in a busy bar, try Hawksworth in the same hotel. If you want to be left to your own companions, or are not going to sit at the bar anyway, then you'll have a more private time at the 1927 Lobby Lounge or just elsewhere in the lobby.

P.S. If you do go to the bar at Hawksworth, have a close look at the bar. There's a strip where they prep the drinks, and there are round holes with what looks like a propeller. Do NOT press this. Trust me.

Tapas at Market by Jean-Georges

I wanted to take my friends from Chilliwack somewhere special as they don't come into town often. And they eat like birds. I settled on MARKET by Jean-Georges hoping that the small bites would be fantastically put together -- and fortunately I was right.

Saturday February 4th was at the tail end of Dine Out Vancouver, but I still managed a reservation for three at 5.30pm, and was warned of a 2-hour dining limit. No problem. We took our time, but because we were just nibbling on small plates it turned out quite fine. Chatting the night away still saw us exiting just at 7.30pm, by which time the restaurant was buzzing.

It's a tight semi-circular space with a smaller room and a bigger main room. In between is a bar, and additional seating all along the window. The very dim light in the smaller room near the stairway up from Alberni Street tends to blind you to the claustrophobic environment, however.
Despite the business of the night, water was prompt and staff were impeccably polite. From the moment you walk in, you are treated like a VIP with a friendliness and professionalism that doesn't slide into too much familiarity.

The restaurant was switched over to streamline the Dine Out Vancouver menu, but most of the menu you see online was still available (sadly, no Foie Gras Brulé). I was anxious about time, so I started us right away with a Black Truffle and Fontina Cheese pizza ($19) which I'd heard about from various blogs, while my guests took their time with the menu -- They're older, old school, and not into being rushed.

What came to our table was a Beef Carpacio, Mushrooms, Arugula, and Parmesan pizza ($16). Oops. Our server sorted it out, apologized for the typo that sent the order to the kitchen, and offered it to us on the house. Thanks!

The pizza here is sort-of chewy thin crust, like neapolitan pizza, but with a broader crust/edge for picking up. The arugula on top is fresh and just dumped on (and lightly tossed in a slightly sour/citrusy dressing) so you can have as much or little as you want. Thinly shaved parmesan. Enough beef carpaccio to cover it to the edge.

The pizza here is also SMALL. Maybe six inches or so in diameter. Like a kid's pizza. Humph.

Still, for something that LOOKS simple, the flavour was wonderful. Somehow, it all came together beautifully, especially with the dressing on the arugula to give it a nice contrast. My guests were astonished and wondered if the black truffle pizza could possibly compare.

Next up, the Black Truffle pizza. Truffling anything typically raises it up a notch, but doesn't guarantee top marks. Same here. Normally I'd say it was really good, with a savory flavour and a subtlety to it that stood out enough not to be missed. The fontina cheese wasn't stinky, either. On top was sprinkled a gob of fresh endive.
However, having just had the beef carpaccio pizza, I'd have to give the other a higher score.

Because I had ordered the pizza so early, a basket of bread was only now brought to our table. Four chewy buns with very chewy crusts. Very slightly warm, still nice and soft on the inside. Not fresh baked, but probably not old either. A plain large triangle of butter. Nice bread, but boring presentation. Restaurants could do so much more in this department to jazz things up.

My companions finally settled on their choices: three oysters, seared scallops, and the sashimi.

I'm not big into oysters ($3 each) -- I just don't have an appreciation for the different types and invariably get a chip or two of the shucked shell in my mouth. It was okay. The sauces were a typical cocktail sauce (the red stuff you get for shrimp rings) and a red wine concoction that was like a vinaigrette. This latter was very strong and more than a couple of drops would have killed the flavour. The oysters themselves had a very strong seawater flavour, which my companion insisted was because it was very fresh.
I have to say the Kusshi oysters from Bishops had that more mildly and therefore tasted better to me.

The Seared Scallops with Caramelized Cauliflower and Caper-Raisin Emulsion ($15 for three) was delicious, but I thought nothing to write home about. However, that may have been because one of my companions stole my seared cauliflower! She wasn't into scallops but was curious about that at least. :-( The scallop itself was very tender, and suddenly softer in the center, which suggested it may have been left slightly raw inside. It was dark in the dining room and the one small candle didn't shed enough light for a proper look.

Finally, the MARKET Sashimi with Crispy Rice and Chipotle Emulsion ($14 for 3). Normally done with tuna but they had swapped it with salmon. I have to take points away here for the differently sized chunks of salmon. It's already a small piece of sashimi to start, with the rice being a rectangle of about 1-1/2" x 1/2" x 1/2". One chunk of salmon sitting on top of this rice was about 30% bigger than the others. I wasn't quick enough and ended up with the biggest piece, sadly. However, as one of my companions just about melted at how good this appy was, I cut my portion in half so she could have another bite.

This was surprisingly good. GET IT. Normally, sashimi is a slab of raw fish sitting on a blob of rice and you dab it in soy sauce. Here it is a crispy rice cracker, slightly seared on the outside without making too much of the grains chewy.
If you've ever burnt, seared, or deep-fried rice, you'll know that it has a tendency to get crusty on the outside, gummy on the inside, and then it likes to paste itself down on your teeth. Trust me, it's really irritating and the last thing you want to do in a posh restaurant is stick your finger into your mouth to scrape rice off your teeth.
Well, nothing like that here. There's a nice crunch to the rice, and a sweet and very-slightly-spicy taste. Each bite-sized portion assembly was worth the almost $5/bite.

My companions eat like birds (just like the last time they had to slog through a nine-course tasting at C) so after they finished their wine, they were done. The restaurant didn't LOOK busy from our vantage, but it actually had diners waiting for their seats. I nudged my companions gently to pack it up.

As one of my companions was celebrating her birthday, they also brought out a complimentary dessert, what was probably a Chocolate Pudding with Softly Whipped Cream and Crystallized Violets (normally appears on the prix fixe lunch menu) on a plate with chocolate "Happy Birthday" and a single candle. There's a bit of chocolate cake underneath all that very smooth pudding. Thanks!

The bill, including one bottle of white wine, came out to something like $165 after tax. I didn't see all the particulars because they insisted on splitting it, and definitely not letting me pay for the wine. Yes, even birthday girl whipped out her credit card, which I thought was a faux pas.

We nipped over to the 1927 Lobby Lounge in the Rosewood Hotel Georgia after to continue drinks and conversation.

Dine Out Vancouver 2012 - Salmon n' Bannock Bistro

Overall, for a Dine Out menu of $28, Salmon and Bannock offers okay value and a sample of what sets them apart (bannock and game meat). If you're expecting aboriginal food to somehow be a very novel experience in taste and presentation, then you're already setting yourself up for disappointment and it can be hard to remove that element when you are evaluating the food, ambiance, and the restaurant as a whole. Seriously: What does "aboriginal food and presentation" look like to you?

That said, the food is basically good edging up to very good. The novelty is really limited to the elk roast. If you're more serious about game meat then you might want to instead try one of the prix fixe fixed-menu feasts, which run from $30 to $50 per person, minimum 4 persons.

The room used to be Habibi's, a hummus place. Now it's decorated with framed aboriginal art that seems to clash with the music that's played in the background (although, really, do you want to hear traditional aboriginal music?). Oh, and watch out for the low-hanging mini-canoe.

Appetizer

• Indian candy on organic mix greens with bannock crackers:
• "Indian Candy" turned out to be, as expected, candied salmon flakes.
• The Indian Candy was flaked salmon meat, the largest chunk maybe the size of a 25-cent coin. But there was only a little of it, maybe two tablespoons. The rest is salad. Pick this and you're basically ordering a salad.
• Dig into the salad to find chopped up nuts.
• The bannock "crackers" were two slices of bread that looked like it had been shaped into a baguette and cut slightly on a diagonal, and the crust removed. Mine were slightly toasted but not crispy. Bannock is a slightly chewy bread that's denser than most breads, and typically fried. Nice to try as a novelty, but bread is bread.
• Spicy mixed game chorizo skewer with peppers, red onions and double smoked cheddar:
• The chorizo (sausage) was a single skewer on a long lettuce leaf. Those who tried it said they didn't find any cheddar on it, but that the meat was good.
• Halibut consommé garnished with west coast toasted seaweed:
• I didn't get to try the halibut consomme. It was a bit hard to share and only one person ordered it.

Entrée

• Elk roast with red wine and mushroom gravy, carrot and rutabaga purée and seasonal vegetables
• Nothing too special on this plate. In fact, it looked like it might have been a plate of steak from any other restaurant. All the entrées looked like that, but to be fair, you really need to first let go of your expectations of what an aboriginal plating looks like.
• Seasonal vegetables here were brussels sprouts and a half ear of corn. Everyone also got a half ear of corn on their plate, which works out to be a different way of adding mild sweetness to your main. You don't see this very often, so you could conceivably count this toward your aboriginal experience at Salmon n' Bannock.
• Strangely, the pulled elk meat (not a single large slab, more like large chunks from a bigger roast) was thick and infused with jus. And strangely it was to me like duck both in taste and texture. Hard to say how much meat there was... Maybe about the same mass as two burger patties.
• The carrot and rutabaga purée looked like mashed sweet potatoes, but was surprisingly airy and not as sweet. Interesting to try!
• Wild Sockeye Salmon filet with dill beurre blanc served with roasted garlic mashed potatoes and seasonal vegetables
• I'm not huge on salmon, so this was just alright. Tender and juicy meat from what I tasted.
• Ojibway wild rice and barley risotto served with asparagus, wild mushrooms and double smoked cheddar
• Looked and tasted like any other mushroom risotto I've had elsewhere. I think here the flavour wasn't as thoroughly mixed because an initial taste was quite bland but it worked up to a more pleasing savoriness later.
• Came with a lot of asparagus and if the initial portion of risotto looked small, look under the asparagus for the rest.
• Didn't know where the cheddar was, although some people who tried the risotto said it tasted like there was blue cheese in there. I didn't find that myself.

Dessert

• Cinnamon bannock bites served with a hot caramel sauce
• Can't say the bannock screamed cinnamon at me. The whole dessert is basically bread used to sop up a generous amount of caramel. You got four small randomly sized pieces of fried bannock, averaging about 3/4 of a cubic inch each.
• To me, this dessert is less about the bannock than the caramel and having a sweet finish to your meal.

Nothing particularly interesting on the beverage list for a non-drinker like myself. I did try a blackcurrant/elderberry cocktail ($3). It's quite a bit on the sweet side so keep your glass of water. The juices are not fresh squeezed.

The restaurant didn't look it, but it was booked solid with a waiting list for both seatings. It's a small space that only seats about 24 and they allow themselves a half hour between the two 1-1/2 hour seatings, which should be plenty for a party of 2-4. Our party of 6 dragged on because of conversation and a some people who needed to pay by VISA. Apparently they couldn't or didn't think to bring the credit card machine around to the tables. Go to the counter.

It's pricey to go vegan

Every once in a while, my mom reminisces about her childhood days growing on the farm and how they used to have pigs. And invariably she ends up talking about how cruel it is to eat those poor pigs. Closet vegan? She still buys ham and bacon and she talks about how pricey all that phoney meat stuff is.

And going vegan can actually be pricey. Like "Nacho Cheese", the "vegan gourmet cheese alternative" from Follow Your Heart. It retails at Karmavore in New Westminster for $5.89 for a 284g pack ($2.07 per 100g). Compare with, say, a Black Diamond Cheese Bar ($7.97 per 700 grams at Superstore, or $10.47 regular price; sometimes as low as $4.97 at No Frills).

Still, I wanted to let my mom try it. In case she really did want to act on her don't-eat-the-poor-pigs mindset.

This soy "cheese" from Follow Your Heart is wet like tofu but firmer. It's orange, so you might expect a strong cheddar flavour, but the taste reminds me more of nachos than cheese per se. I'm not sure if that's cheating or not. But another way to look at it is whether you miss cheese or if you're too busy enjoying the taste.
The taste is not bad, if you like loaded nachos.

It also melts. Wetter than cheese and without the same stringy cheese stickiness, but at least it melts, so you can retain that experience of cheese.

Overall, however, I'd have to say if you're not vegan, you're overpaying. If you are vegan, however, and still in the early stages where you crave all the goodies you missed, then this isn't bad.


I also got a bag of 4 Gardein Beef Burgers. After trying the burgers from Loving Hut Express which uses this brand, I thought I'd give it a go. I settled on the Ultimate Beefless Burger (sometimes available from Karmavore for $5.29, but more often than likely sold out), in part because our family has been off red meat since forever.

The taste was almost eerily beef-like! Although there was a soy after-taste to it. Firmness and texture were also pretty good if you were comparing it to meat; although it was a beef patty, it clearly didn't look like ground beef.

Do NOT throw this onto a griddle or into a frying pan. It comes with a coat of sauce that will melt off and caramelize like melted sugar. Without this, your burger won't taste good.

At $5.29, however, it works out to $1.32 per patty -- each patty approximately 85g, or less than a quarter pound (which would be 113.398g). Compare with a slab of top sirloin grilling steak at $11.00 per kilogram (or a mere $1.10 per 100 grams) at Save-on-Foods this week.

Superb Food and Service at Bishop's

Bishop's seems to have fallen off the foodie radar, but it is still an excellent little restaurant. Superb food, superb service.

It's been a long time since I went to Bishop's. My dining buddy and I talked about it since October, and finally set a date in early January. Bishop's did a quick January renovation, and our date got pushed back to January 25th -- And for this inconvenience, they surprised us with two glasses of champagne! Wow!

If you haven't been by in a while, it's repainted but still retains the Native American artwork theme which to me feels a bit out of place compared to the structure and colour of the room. It is all on loan from a gallery and every piece is for sale, although that fact is not crassly advertised with price tags. One of the waiters had a native american artwork themed tie, but the hostess informed us it was merely a happy coincidence and a gift from his wife.

Bishop's is a very different dining experience from any other restaurant, except maybe the William Tell (closed over a year now). It's unhurried service that allows for dining out to be a social outing -- that sometimes diners are meeting friends and want to chat a bit before, during, or after their meal. In fact, if you're used to a faster pace, you might think your server had abandoned you.

That said, it's a small room with a small staff. One hostess, one bartender who also tops up your water, and two waiters. At some point or other, everyone served our table, so everyone is working the entire room. When it gets a bit busier, their unhurried service also means more time in between. Be prepared to take your time there. If you're in a hurry, you might have to flag one down.
At 6.30pm on a rainy Wednesday, it was pretty quiet, but around 8pm there was quite a loud buzz from a full restaurant.

No dessert menu up front (why don't restaurants do that?) so we asked for it. I'm big of dessert and if I'm to share two, I'd like to know ahead of time...

We weren't nudged about the menu, and instead approached when it looked like we had come to some sort of decision (or, in our came an impasse). In the meantime, out came the amuse-bouche: A tiny beet jelly topped with just a little house salad.

A small plate of bread was next, with a large square of softened plain butter. One of the two types of bread was several slices of grey currant-caraway bread. It looked dense, but was quite light and very soft. Very nice aroma and flavour, nothing overpowering -- definitely not overdone with the caraway.
The other bread was a few small rounds of parmesan gougère. There was just a delicate amount of parmesan so that you knew it was there, but not strongly. If you've never seen a gougère before, it's like a small, empty, cream puff but a tiny bit firmer and chewier.

Not on the menu but available were Kusshi oysters. My dining buddy was sold immediately. She loved oysters, apparently. Myself, I'd only had them very rarely and admitted I wouldn't be able to properly appreciate it.

Other than the oysters, we aimed for more dessert so skipped any other appy. For the entrée, I had prior to going to the restaurant decided on the sablefish ($39; brandade cake, spinach, truffled sabayon). My dining buddy was torn between the spring salmon ($35; herb parsnip latkes, fennel, vermouth cream) and the Fraser Valley beef tenderloin ($37; pomme puree, mushroom ragout, red wine jus) and the waiter was no help at all, throwing up his hands and insisting the kitchen did everything wonderfully. Finally, she settled on the tenderloin, medium-rare.

The half dozen Kusshi oysters came on a plate with six divisions and sitting on ice. Two wedges of lemon were in binder clip style lemon squeezers. These had the unfortunate tendency to cause the lemon wedge to be pushed out toward the handles, but if you look closely, the metal edge is folded, so if you squash the lemon wedge so that it fits inside that edge, it'll be held in place.
Three toppings were presented for the oysters: Picked sea asparagus, pickled horseradish (shaved, not soft shreds that have been soaked forever), and a purplish vinaigrette.

I tried two oysters. I have nothing to compare it with. My dining buddy insists they were fabulous. I'll have to go with her word on that. At 22.50 for the half-dozen, I hope she really enjoyed it.

On to the mains! They came on plates that were nicely on the hot side of warm.

The tenderloin was medium-rare and sliced in half so you could see how red it was on the inside. I thought it was all right, but probably I didn't have enough jus for the full experience. My dining buddy insists that it was wonderful, especially as she really wasn't a beef sort of person normally. She loooved the jus so much she sopped up some with the last little gougère.

If there was one thing that bothered me in the entire meal it would have to be the "pomme puree" that came with the beef tenderloin. Ever since Griffins, I've been watchful about badly done mashed potatoes. There was a slight gummy feel to it, which my dining companion attributed to it having sat on the plate a bit long.

My sablefish was startlingly good. It was so tender it flaked apart very easily and I was actually a bit worried it was overdone. But no, it was definitely not. The fillet was tender and surprisingly moist and flavourful. My companion described the sensation as "velvety". She was definitely awed. It was, however, only a small fillet, definitely small enough to make you want for more.
But the plate didn't leave you hungry because of the slab of brandade cake. Which tasted awfully like just a cake of mashed potato to me, but it's supposed to involve salt cod and olive oil. Anyway, it was the size of a large burger patty, so the entire entree made for a comfortably sized meal.

Next up, dessert. We went with the almond brown butter cake ($14; white chocolate ganache and apricot sorbet) to start. What came to the table was a frightfully small slice of cake, almost smaller than the scoop of sorbet. The white chocolate ganache was a wide stripe smeared on the plate, easy to miss amid the orange sauce.
Small portion, but an explosion of flavour. Even in small pieces, the fragrant cake had a strong almond aroma. The apricot sorbet had a very intense flavour, and it was difficult to imagine the actual fruit being much tastier. It was also very smooth and creamy. Most sorbets I've had have had a very slightly icy grainy feel. Not here.

After a brief discussion, we decided to try another dessert. Nothing else really sounded particularly interesting except the bittersweet chocolate bar ($14; with strawberry pâte de fruits and coulis). "Chocolate bar" sounds like a hard slab you get after tearing off the wrapper. Here it was more like a chocolate truffle. It was about four inches long and a square inch in cross section. The base was chopped nuts and there was topping of airy chocolate cream.
If you tried the chocolate bar separately, it was bitter. If you tried the cream separately, it was surprisingly bland. But if you had the two together, it was excellent. Want it more bitter? Add less cream.

The squares of pâte de fruits (about 1/4" thick and 3/4" sides) were firm but not chewy, and much more flavourful than anything store-bought. They were a bit on the sweet side if you had them straight, but a half or quarter square paired with a bite of chocolate was very nice. I also found it nice on its own after the chocolate for a fruitier finish and after-taste to the dessert.

Including one glass of merlot ($12), the bill came to $155.12 after tax and before tip.

In most restaurants, you're lucky if your server catches your eye to thank you and wave goodbye. At Bishop's, the hostess inquired whether either of us needed a taxi. She also brought my companion's jacket to the stand by the door in preparation for our departure, and waited very patiently while she got ready so that she could open the door for us and bid us good night.