Best New Informal: Salt Tasting Room

“A brilliant concept that delivers,” said one judge of Salt (Gold), a restaurant with no chef or kitchen, tucked away down Blood Alley in Gastown. “I wish I’d thought of it first,” commented another, “but it took the mad genius of [proprietor] Sean Heather to pull together Salt’s blackboard menus of high-grade charcuterie, cheeses, condiments and wine.” The Saint Andre triple-cream brie with Similkameen honeycomb is a carnal experience; so too the piccalilli with Lincolnshire Poacher cheese and the sopprasata. It’s an indoor picnic, in an edgy, hip room that’s redefined the modern restaurant. La Buca (“The Hole”—Silver), which opened late in the year, is Parkside’s Andrey Durbach and Chris Stewart’s richly sauced little room that sees genuine and generous cooking in a restaurant-starved gulch. Go for wonderfully deep pastas, and a cerebral pannacotta which, in its myriad incarnations, is a light and creamy delight. The West End’s Kingyo (Bronze) fuels the city’s craze for izakaya, but in a well-executed room set apart from the sleek and spare or the kitsch of other Japanese pubs. Notable dishes include succulent tempura prawn balls, yuzu jalapeno pasta, cubed Kobe beef and almond tofu—a dessert that’s a perfect balancing act between firm and creamy. Crave (Honourable Mention) saw Wayne Martin leave the Four Seasons to open a neighbourhood boite that redefines the genre one rigatoni at a time with short-rib poutine, barbecued ribs and great black cod. Sanafir (Honourable Mention) is a room of gauzy magic with trios of North African-, Asian- and Indian-inspired small plates that are “as flavoursome,” commented one judge, “as the waitstaff.”

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