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SEE AND BE SCENE

“Our biggest challenge,” says Juli Hodgson, speaking of her design for Goldfish Pacific Kitchen in Yaletown, “was the budget, and finding value from all of our suppliers and trades.” Hodgson’s thriving design firm has conceived many commercial spaces, including the Aritzia stores. She recently did Goldfish for owners Bud Kanke (and his Joe Fortes partners Darren Gates and Frenchie Gagnon) on the site of the former Circolo (which was designed, ironically, by Werner Forster for Umberto Menghi). Circolo was all Tuscan terra cotta and heavy woods; Kanke’s vision was simply to brighten the room. But Hodgson thought the space was back-to-front, resulting in a complete demolition, and the installation (including a large patio and two private dining rooms, an increasing trend in new design) of a 250-seat restaurant.

A rough rule-of-thumb for restaurant construction (as in the dramatic rooms that Earls and Cactus Club have built in the past two years) is about $10-12,000 per seat, more if the building is freestanding. In the case of Goldfish, Hodgson had a budget of just a million dollars (much more was required to buy out Menghi and provide the wine inventory that Kanke has set his reputation by). The math—$4,000 per seat—was demanding.

Hodgson, whose only other restaurant had been South Granville’s Chow, was aided by two bright young architects, Linus Lam and Denise Liu, who, she says, “value-engineered the design components through fresh eyes,” and contractor Raam Yar, “who was tied in with excellent craftspeople.” The first move at Goldfish was to reverse the room, moving the bar to the north wall. Against a huge marble slab that emulates a gigantic wave in motion (called “Canada Stone” at the Italian quarry), the bar is the room’s first, most striking note. Just as impressive, though, are the open sightlines to the very back of the room, and beyond onto the patio, where turquoise Philippe Starck chairs sidle up to white outdoor sofas and lush plantings. The tables, of the same blue-veined Canada Stone, pull cool notes through the room, front to back, while back-lit panels draw the eye side to side. It’s a cool-toned visual feast without being busy. For contrast, and warmth when the weather cools, Hodgson designed espresso-coloured wooden chairs, sleek but comfortable, and upholstered them in white faux-ostrich fabric.

It’s all very pretty, but on busy nights sometimes too noisy to speak comfortably over dinner. (And when it opened in June, the food seemed less aggressively flavoured compared to consulting chef Murray Bancroft’s test plates we’d tasted previously.) “We’ll be adjusting the sound levels,” said Hodgson—presumably with a few acoustical engineering tricks—“but still keeping it bright and lively, in concert with the customers.”

RETURN OF THE POWER LUNCH

“Our average lunch cheques are almost as big as dinner,” reports Metro’s restaurant director (and chef) Brian Fowke. “People are daylight drinking again—lots of martinis and wine—and since Chartwell and CinCin closed for lunch, there aren’t a lot of options. We’re happy to host them.”
Metro, in a space vacated by a Japanese chop shop, was designed by David Nicolay, whose forward but comfortable design can now be seen across the city at Habit, Coast, Cascade, FigMint, and Sanafir. His signature is cleanly wrought edges and cool sightlines, clearly defined spaces with connective tissue: a glimpse or more of the kitchen. The Metro renovation cost Fowke and his partners $1.5 million for the 210-seat space.

Fowke’s plates, which can veer from slightly fussed to brilliant, work well in their surroundings. The long Corian bar (where we ate some small plates of luxe frites with truffle oil and parmesan, and long-cut duck sausage in a gorgeous slop of onion and corn chutney) backs into an elegant lounge set with short soft sofas.

Our lunch at Italian Kitchen, the newest of the Glowbal Restaurant Group’s chainlet (Glowbal, Afterglow, Coast, Sanafir), is less an Italian restaurant as a replication of a New York Italian restaurant. It, too, was overflowing at a recent lunch. Female servers are clad in smart dresses by Dirty Girl (black and white, with subtle polka dots) that cross their cleavage like a seat belt. The main floor dining rooms, by Box Design, suggest the Futurists in photographs of Italian industry, while upstairs, a central bar plays podium to resin wicker chairs and paper-covered tables.

“Welcome to the Art of Sharing” suggested the maitre d’, who recommended family-style platters (antipasto, meat, fish, vegetable) and we liked them just fine—when they finally arrived. More interesting is the clamour: a line-up into the street for a large restaurant, dressed-up people, and a cacophony more suggestive of midnight than lunch.

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