ROYAL BANQUET
Brasserie vibe and solid menu outweigh some hiccups at new establishment
The latest David Gunawan eatery, Royal Dinette on Dunsmuir, flirts a lot with flavour and rarely strikes out.
On my first visit to Royal Dinette, I ate from the à la carte side of the menu and I expected a dramatic home run but the ball wasn’t knocked out of the park.
I was surprised because the chef is one of my favourites, David Gunawan, who’s behind the astonishing deliciousness at Farmer’s Apprentice and Grapes and Soda in Kitsilano and South Granville neighbourhoods. On my second visit to try the tasting menu, I found the home run I was looking for. Bases loaded!
It’s not that my first visit was a total disappointment but one dish created discord for me. The pappardelle with beef shank, bok choy and spiced broth had great elements (lovely pasta and beef) but its strong soy-forward aroma clashed with other largely non-Asian dishes, like tomato watermelon and balsamic bellaitano cheese salad. Jarring.
The dish is inspired by food from restaurant chef Jack Chen’s Taiwanese childhood but I find chefs lose objectivity when it comes to childhood dishes. What it means to them and what it means to diners are not the same. In this case, it messed up the menu flow.
Sablefish with a hot and sour broth and oyster mushrooms, another Asian-style dish, is served in a light broth with a Thai sweet-sour flavour. It’s clarified and is glassy clear. “Sometimes the simplest looking dishes take a lot of work,” Gunawan says. It wasn’t as intrusive as the pappardelle.
A carrot dish with curried lentil, house-made labneh, and sliced pear trumpeted Gunawan’s wonderful way with vegetables, à la Farmer’s Apprentice. The carrots tasted fresh from the garden, bursting with flavour. Salt-baked celeriac (roasted whole, encased in salt) was sliced paper-thin and covered a plate; marinated mushrooms, salt cod and gribiche (an aioli-like sauce) are sprinkled and drizzled over. A nice collection of flavours but it’s awkward to eat — the celeriac lifts up as a single sheet and isn’t easy to cut.
For dessert, gala apple (poached and lightly bruleed) with olive oil cake and oatmeal ice cream had me at the apple and the ice cream but the olive oil cake turned out to be crispy little croutons, not worth the bother.
On a second visit, I had the $69 tasting menu and all was forgiven: it was a home run. It started with what I thought would be an acquired-taste dish: sea cucumber with tomato gazpacho, black olive and cucumber sorbet. Once I expunged the look of this weird, blobby, extraterrestrial looking creature from my mind, I was blown away by the dish — it was like a prawn and calamari had a baby. The tomato gazpacho had an acid component brightening everything up and the cucumber sorbet cleansed the palate for the next dish.
And that was trenette (skinny, flat, noodle) with egg yolk and smoked butter and a dusting of dried, powdered black truffle. Pasta doesn’t come any better than this. (Pasta is made daily at a pasta station, which, like the rest of the kitchen, is completely open for all to view.)
A basket of bread arrives with nasturtium butter. It’s from Beyond Bread in Kitsilano. Why bake your own when you can get the best? (Beyond’s croissants get a lot of love from me, too!)
Beef bavette with salt baked celeriac, pickled walnuts and a watercress purée is up next. Beautiful meat but the purée is too bitter. Gunawan says the degree of bitterness does vary depending on where he gets his watercress.
And for dessert, a Coronation grape soda with crème fraîche ice cream. It’s house-made soda using a tea with herbs and kola nut.
My gripes don’t outweigh what’s good about the food. I notice the hiccups more because of who the chef and the strong team behind him are. Service is smooth, staff are smart and friendly (as is the wine list).
The room, with its brasserie vibe, is bigger, more “downtown” than the intimate Farmer’s Apprentice and Grapes and Soda in the South Granville neighbourhood and the noise does escalate as the place fills up. Thankfully, the noise tsunami from the Blackbird Pub upstairs (Donnelly Group property) stays upstairs.