Robbie Robinson steps up as chef Pascal Georges leaves Five Sails restaurant.
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Five Sails
Where: Pan Pacific Hotel, 999 Canada Place, Vancouver
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When: Monday to Friday, lunch and dinner; Saturday and Sunday, dinner and afternoon tea
Info: 604-844-2855. fivesails.ca
My timing wasn’t great. But it wasn’t bad either. I recently went to check out the dinner at Five Sails at the Pan Pacific Hotel, which the ever-expanding Glowbal Group of restaurants had assumed ownership of just as the COVID-19 pandemic rolled in.
Bah! A few days before I visited, the chef, Pascal Georges, had left and I see there’s now a high-end catering company under his name. I’d had lunch at the Five Sails while he was still chef and was really impressed by his clean and striking food — his experience at Michelin star restaurants in France was evident — and I had not yet written about it.
His successor, Robbie Robinson is no stranger to Vancouver. He stood out as chef at Smoking Dog bistro — where Georges had also cooked when he arrived in Vancouver. After that, Robinson opened the more casual Steel Toad gastropub, but for the past few years, he’s been in Toronto working at Canoe, described by Canada’s 100 Best Restaurants as “adamantly Canadian.”
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Along the way, he cooked under Michel Jacob (Le Crocodile), David Hawksworth (West), Lee Parsons (Wedgewood Hotel), and J.C. Poirier (Chow), all standout chefs and restaurants. He’s also done a stint at London’s Claridges, a Gordon Ramsay restaurant where Ramsay screamed at him four times.
“Hats off to chef Michel Jacob and David Hawksworth,” Robinson says. “They set me on the straight and narrow. Le Croc was the perfect place to learn. I was taught to do things perfectly first and then worked on speed. I was a teenager. I needed those structures.”
Robinson’s Nishga’a Nation heritage sparked his interest in food. Although he grew up in Vancouver, he spent a lot of time in the Nass River area with an extended family of fishermen eating “fabulous seafood.”
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“That’s all we ate as well as lots of elk from hunting.”
Robinson’s restaurant life started as a dishwasher at Joe Fortes before graduating to the salad station there. Emad Yacoub, his current boss and head of the Glowbal Group of restaurants, had hired him just before Yacoub moved on to Toronto temporarily. In a perfect bookend, Robinson had just returned from Toronto when Yacoub hired him again, only this time to head a kitchen.
The Five Sails dining room has had a refresh but the attention-grabber is the expansive view of Coal Harbour, Stanley Park and the North Shore mountains — natural beauty by day and twinkly with lights when dark. But Five Sails is not just a view restaurant.
Robinson will continue with George’s elegant French style menu for the next while but he’ll gradually make it his own, leaning into adamantly local and Canadian.
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“I’ve always cooked French,” he says. “But Canoe had a huge, huge influence on me. Seasonality and local ingredients were huge.”
And another surprise to me — talented chef Stefan Hartmann is now culinary director of the Glowbal group and will work with Robinson on the transition of the menu.
Remember Hartmann’s beautiful food at Bauhaus before he decamped to head the Tacofino restaurants? He then spent a New York moment cooking at Autostrada downtown before leaving there.
My dinner at Five Sails was excellent. The food is a light and bright, but with a robust French influence. The wowza dish was my husband’s 12-ounce pork chop dish ($46). It upends commonly-held notions about pork chops, often cooked to dryness to appease people’s fear of trichinosis — not a problem these days as commercial pigs aren’t fed raw meat scraps, the source of the problem.
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The hunky Fraser Valley pork chop was partially sliced, rosé in the centre and moist and flavourful. To get to that sweet spot, Robinson tests the meat with a cake tester.
“I insert it for a couple of seconds, touch it to my wrist and I can tell the temperature. No one understands why I do that and everyone’s saying I should sous vide it to perfection but I’m super old school from my Le Crocodile days and it was the same at Canoe. I’m trying to teach it to my team.”
The pork chop came with wild mushrooms, pistachios, cacao, asparagus flan, cured pata negra and a green apple mustard jus. The clincher was a sublime potato espuma velvetized with cream via ISI foamer and layered with parsnip foam, served in a cup with sliced truffles and a Parmesan crisp. Absolutely luscious.
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My husband couldn’t finish the dish, especially after I told him to save room for pastry chef Daria Andriienko’s desserts.
For starters, we had braised escargot married with roasted sweetbreads ($29) with heirloom carrots, spinach puree and a hazelnut tuille.
“It’s one of my favourites and I’ll keep it on the menu,” Robinson says.
Scallops in a nest ($28) went off script — it had a salted caramel sauce hit with white chocolate and presented with fava beans and edible flowers. Not to worry, it wasn’t cloying.
My main was pan-seared sea bass piccata ($46) which I was told was farmed sustainably. It was served with market veggies and a lemon caper butter sauce. It really was a lovely piece of fish, with a crisp golden sear.
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If you’ve room for dessert, don’t miss out on Andriienko’s douceur de pomme verte — a trompe l’oeil of a granny smith apple. It begins with passion fruit mousse with an apple compote centre, frozen into the apple shape, then it’s dipped in white chocolate, followed by a green glaze. The coatings harden and it’s served atop a sablé cookie. The “apple” was delivered to the table shrouded in smoke under a glass dome which is lifted at the table and the server pours creme anglaise around the base. It’s breathtaking. She’d just created a fall dessert — a creme brulée tart paired with maple sage ice cream, caramel crunch and spiced-up whipped cream. At just 22, she’s a pastry chef to watch.
Christophe Chabre sets the right tone as front of house manager. He’s previously managed Cafe Boulud at the Four Seasons Toronto before being recruited by The Chase Hospitality Group, which has restaurants in Toronto and the U.S.
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The Pan Pacific is tourist central in normal times but Chabre is turning it into a restaurant for locals, and it’s been happening.
“I think instead of staying too extremely traditional, the chef’s approach was to go with the seasons and change the menu often. The service is more personable and we try to connect with guests. We just gave it a boost of youth,” Chabre says.
Service is on point without formality or stuffiness.
The reassurance guests are feeling with the vaccine cards has undeniably boosted business, with the room selling out every weekend and near sellouts during the week. I’d mentioned to the expanding nature of the Glowbal group. Next on deck — Riley’s, it will be opening soon downtown.
The Botanist restaurant at the Fairmont Pacific Rim has launched The Garden Club dinner series, an edible fundraiser supporting the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House’s Urban Garden Farm. The non-profit farm grows produce for various programs including the SRO Collaborative, lunches at the Neighbourhood House and free produce market days on Fridays.
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Botanist’s three-course Garden Club dinners and a cocktail by champion bartender Jeff Savage will be available to Nov. 27 for $110 with portion of sales benefiting the Urban Farm and its programs. The goal is to fund more than 2,000 meals for the program.
The menu will change depending on what volunteers bring in from the farm to supplement the dinner.
When I visited, chef Hector Laguna’s menu had pan-seared sable fish with kale under a blanket of potato foam and sprinkle of Burgundy truffles; for the main, duck breast — huge portion, slightly pink — with a gorgeous green mole and collard green stems dipped in ground sunflower seeds. The dessert was light but large — salal berry cloud with citrus cake and lemon curd.
Savage’s yummy cocktail was tinted a bright magenta from salal berries and topped with egg white foam. Really folks, this is a delicious donation.
Source: vancouversun.com
