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Authors: Timothy Taylor
Tags: Contemporary, Mystery
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more sumptuous just then, nothing more compelling, more richly personal than the
idea
of the key lime pie that Jules liked.)
“For example,” Jules said.
It had not been since Quartey that Jeremy had had such a sweeping sense that somebody knew exactly what he was talking about.
She said yes a week later, to the question she had been anticipating. He started to address the harder choice this answer represented. “You know, one thing I’ve always thought about working together—you and I.…” He stammered into a conversational cul-de-sac.
“You don’t have to say it,” she said quietly. “We both understand.” There would be a measure of disappointment on both sides. It couldn’t be helped.
And so, that spring, The Monkey’s Paw did open. A narrowfifty-seater on Cambie Street in Vancouver’s Crosstown neighbourhood, edgy but with cheap rents. They served bistro fare on a fixed price menu that changed daily with what could be found in Chinatown that morning. A restaurant other chefs would go to. Local but not dogmatic. It wasn’t a question of being opposed to imported ingredients, but of preference, of allegiance, of knowing what goodness came from the earth around you, from the soil under your feet.
The typical dinner chalkboard read:
Prix Fixe Menu:
$24.00
Down:
Pacific wild prawns
Saltspring Island chevre with toasties
Set:
Fraser Valley free-range duck breast, roasted
Lime-marinated sockeye salmon, grilled
All with inspirational sauces and seasonal veggies.
More details? Just ask
.
Hutt:
Jules’s increasingly famous dessert trolley. Get some
.
They riffed on sauces, using classical motifs: pear-mustard, chive-cream, shallot-ginger, roasted fennel. It was simple, coherent, Blood cooking in a relais-style room with six nights of Sunday nights.
They had two people out front—Zeena and Dominic—who worked the whole room without zones. Service was enthusiastic and knowledgeable. They went over each new menu item as a group before dinner service.
The room itself was simple: planked wood floors, a single vaulted front window next to a blue door with a centre brass knob. Tables and chairs from Ikea. North wall, brick; south wall painted dark brown to the five-foot mark to simulate wainscotting. The art work was haphazard, the product of piece-by-piece collection at local art-college auctions: etchings, woodcuts, off-kilter portrait photography and a large neo-classical still life with a menacing quality Jeremy couldn’t identify. Jules donated three metal sculptures by a student artist named Fenton Sooner, who had gone on to enter high-profile collections, including (rumour had it) Steve Martin’s. Stylized birds, thought Jeremy, who named the trio Heckle, Jeckle and Hide. They were worth more than all the other art in the restaurant combined, more than the furniture, but they held much greater value to Jeremy and Jules in the image of perseverance that they provided. Fenton Sooner stuck with it, completed the fraught transition from apprenticeship to recognition, and his crows were an emblem of gawky tenacity.
In the black-and-white-tiled kitchen, meanwhile, Jeremy and Jules had their fun at very close quarters. They had a single wood-topped prep area, an old Vulcan-Hart range with a chrome hood, where they worked side by side on the mains and the hot appetizers. There was an L-shaped pass-through in the middle of the room, where they rotated during dinner to deal with cold appetizers and salads. Jules rolled into yet a third position, desserts, as each evening wound to a close. With a dishwasher arriving late to clear the dish pit, there was barely room for anybody else.
The neighbourhood offered a shifting multicultural client base that nobody could consciously target. Film school kids in the mid-morning. (It was a financial necessity to open for the coffee trade.) Business lunches for the kind of businesses that embraced neighbourhoods in the earliest stages of gentrification:
idea
of the key lime pie that Jules liked.)
“For example,” Jules said.
It had not been since Quartey that Jeremy had had such a sweeping sense that somebody knew exactly what he was talking about.
She said yes a week later, to the question she had been anticipating. He started to address the harder choice this answer represented. “You know, one thing I’ve always thought about working together—you and I.…” He stammered into a conversational cul-de-sac.
“You don’t have to say it,” she said quietly. “We both understand.” There would be a measure of disappointment on both sides. It couldn’t be helped.
And so, that spring, The Monkey’s Paw did open. A narrowfifty-seater on Cambie Street in Vancouver’s Crosstown neighbourhood, edgy but with cheap rents. They served bistro fare on a fixed price menu that changed daily with what could be found in Chinatown that morning. A restaurant other chefs would go to. Local but not dogmatic. It wasn’t a question of being opposed to imported ingredients, but of preference, of allegiance, of knowing what goodness came from the earth around you, from the soil under your feet.
The typical dinner chalkboard read:
Prix Fixe Menu:
$24.00
Down:
Pacific wild prawns
Saltspring Island chevre with toasties
Set:
Fraser Valley free-range duck breast, roasted
Lime-marinated sockeye salmon, grilled
All with inspirational sauces and seasonal veggies.
More details? Just ask
.
Hutt:
Jules’s increasingly famous dessert trolley. Get some
.
They riffed on sauces, using classical motifs: pear-mustard, chive-cream, shallot-ginger, roasted fennel. It was simple, coherent, Blood cooking in a relais-style room with six nights of Sunday nights.
They had two people out front—Zeena and Dominic—who worked the whole room without zones. Service was enthusiastic and knowledgeable. They went over each new menu item as a group before dinner service.
The room itself was simple: planked wood floors, a single vaulted front window next to a blue door with a centre brass knob. Tables and chairs from Ikea. North wall, brick; south wall painted dark brown to the five-foot mark to simulate wainscotting. The art work was haphazard, the product of piece-by-piece collection at local art-college auctions: etchings, woodcuts, off-kilter portrait photography and a large neo-classical still life with a menacing quality Jeremy couldn’t identify. Jules donated three metal sculptures by a student artist named Fenton Sooner, who had gone on to enter high-profile collections, including (rumour had it) Steve Martin’s. Stylized birds, thought Jeremy, who named the trio Heckle, Jeckle and Hide. They were worth more than all the other art in the restaurant combined, more than the furniture, but they held much greater value to Jeremy and Jules in the image of perseverance that they provided. Fenton Sooner stuck with it, completed the fraught transition from apprenticeship to recognition, and his crows were an emblem of gawky tenacity.
In the black-and-white-tiled kitchen, meanwhile, Jeremy and Jules had their fun at very close quarters. They had a single wood-topped prep area, an old Vulcan-Hart range with a chrome hood, where they worked side by side on the mains and the hot appetizers. There was an L-shaped pass-through in the middle of the room, where they rotated during dinner to deal with cold appetizers and salads. Jules rolled into yet a third position, desserts, as each evening wound to a close. With a dishwasher arriving late to clear the dish pit, there was barely room for anybody else.
The neighbourhood offered a shifting multicultural client base that nobody could consciously target. Film school kids in the mid-morning. (It was a financial necessity to open for the coffee trade.) Business lunches for the kind of businesses that embraced neighbourhoods in the earliest stages of gentrification:
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