Baan Lao To Go and Anar Persian Cuisine have stood out, particularly during this trying pandemic period
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Where: 4100 Bayview St., Richmond.
When: 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.; 4 to 8 p.m. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays; open Mondays on long weekends.
Info: 778-839-5675; baanlao.ca
As takeout food goes, this is pretty awesome. I earlier described the exquisite and exclusive multi-course Thai food at Baan Lao before the recent indoor dining ban — a special occasion experience at $190 per person plus drinks, tip, tax.
But during the ban, chef/owner Nutcha Phanthoupheng resorted to takeout and the scaled-down casual fare proved so popular with locals, she has resolved to continue it going forward. There might be a hiatus as she ramps back up for fine dining.
She’s been swamped with orders on the weekends, and that’s not surprising as she applies the same stubborn attention, precision, patience and aesthetics to the takeout as she does with her fine-dining menu.
“The neighbourhood loves it and unless we are totally inundated with the indoor fine dining, we will keep it up. If we can’t manage all the menu options, then we’ll offer some of the items,” Phanthoupheng says. So heads up, folks: Her nine-course “fine dining experience” was doing super well before the lockdown and inundation just might occur.
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I tried the second most popular item on the Baan Lao To Go menu — the rotisserie chicken dinner ($55), a light meal for two to have as a picnic at Garry Point Park, a few minutes away. The set meal comes with a roasted half organic chicken with hand-pressed fresh naam jim gai yaang (tamarind) sauce, a green papaya salad, organic jasmine rice and some lovely Thai iced tea.
Phanthoupheng buys poultry and beef from Sumas Mountain Organic Farm, an SPCA-certified farm. The chicken, marinated 24 hours with a blend of 17 herbs and spices, was tweaked for flavour it until it passed an important test — the thumbs up from her daughters. “Our kids are very fickle and they are our guinea pigs,” she says. The chicken dish seduces one regular into ordering it every two or three days.
Most chefs would opt for tamarind paste but she presses fresh tamarind for a sharp hit of sour when sauces call for it. “Everything is made fresh daily. Nothing is stored overnight,” she says. After working for a former chef for the Thai royal family in his one-Michelin star restaurant, that’s Phanthoupheng’s cooking philosophy. Even her ice creams and sorbets for her tasting menus were made fresh daily.
The organic jasmine rice is grown on her farm in Thailand and is sold by the kilogram at the restaurant. Locals were crazy about the spicy tamarind sauce and now they sell that, too. We also ordered organic chicken and coconut milk soup ($26, a main course) with a heavenly balance of galangal, lemongrass, makrut lime and a hit of fresh red chilli. It was delicious with lots of chicken, but the beige monotone didn’t present as prettily as the other dishes. For dessert, we hada beautifully presented, pandan-infused sticky rice crowned with a pinwheel of fresh mango.
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The To Go dinner menu offers three set menus (Land, Sea, and Field) for $55 to $65, as well as the rotisserie chicken dinner and about eight a la carte items ($22 to $26). The lunch menu is similar, minus the Land, Sea and Field options.
The best sellers are the pad thai, the rotisserie chicken, the Land set meal. While the pad with tiger prawns isn’t gift-wrapped in an egg net as on the fine dining menu, the noodle dish is essentially the same, including the sauce with hand pressed tamarind — a sauce that takes her four hours to make. “It’s why the pad thai is so delicious. I do it myself and won’t share the secrets from the Royal kitchen,” says Phanthoupheng. The prawns, she says, are Ocean Wise.
A la carte dishes include organic Berkshire pork with holy basil, garlic, chili, oyster sauce and anchovy sauce over jasmine rice and stir-fried handmade tofu with holy basil, garlic, chili and mushroom sauce. On days off, the chef is out searching for and researching local ingredients. When I texted her recently, she was visiting her artisan tofu maker learning about the craft. “It’s run by a family who have been making it for four generations. It’s made by hand, not machine,” she says.
Where: 12051 Third Ave., Richmond.
When: 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., Tuesday to Sunday.
Info: 778-834-1707; anargrill.com
I love Persian tahchin — the rice with a crispy, golden crusty bottom. I buy it from Afra grocery store in North Vancouver and I’ve tried making it myself, but I’d give myself a C-plus. Well, I just got a nice little tip from Tila Akhavan, manager at Anar Persian Cuisine in Steveston: “Just cook it low and long.”
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Don’t you need higher heat to make it crisp? I ask.
“No, no, no!” she says. “Everybody makes that mistake. Keep it low and cook it longer.”
I’ll take her advice because I ordered tahchin layered with chicken ($50) from Anar —which, by the way, means pomegranate — and it was lovely with minglings of ghee, yogurt, saffron, egg yolk, barberry and pistachio. It feeds four to six people.
To accompany the tahchin, we had the vegetarian Umami Platter ($24) with stuffed vine leaves, falafel, hummus, roasted eggplant, grilled turmeric eggplant with whey and mint, spinach dip and fresh yogurt.
Next to the tahchin, kebabs are big sellers here. “It’s complicated to make because the meat has to stick to the skewer just right,” says Akhavan. The restaurant spent $200,000 to install a fire grill for the right kind of char and smoke on the meats. But, she says, Persian food is a very good source of vegetarian and vegan dishes.
“We wanted to introduce Persian food to a community that might not know much about it and people are happy to have us. When people come in and know the names of the dishes, I know that they’re from the North Shore,” she laughs. The Chinese community are particularly fond of the lamb dishes, she says.
Anar has 22 seats on the patio for outdoor dining.
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B.C. Distilled, the annual micro-distillery festival, is on hold until 2022, but the organizers have partnered with five top B.C. artisan distilleries to benefit PADS (Pacific Assistance Dogs Society). Until June 15, the distilleries will donate $45 from five limited-edition spirits directly to PADS, which breeds, raises and trains assistances dogs for people in need of physical and emotional support.
The participating distilleries are Devine Spirits, Okanagan Spirits Craft Distillery, The Dubh Glas Distillery, True North Distilleries and Wayward Distillery. Sales are available online or at the distillery while they last. They’ll be releasing between 50 and 100 bottles only.
“This is our second year without B.C. Distilled and we’re missing an opportunity to work with the wonderful people at PADS,” says Alex Hamer, B.C. Distilled’s founder. B.C. Distilled has raised about $21,000 for PADS since 2017.
Pride month at Purdys
Purdys Chocolatier has commissioned Canadian-Taiwanese queer artist Edward Fu-Chen Juan to design a special edition chocolate box called All Together Now Gift Box in celebration of Pride month. Five dollars from every box will be donated to The Get REAL Movement, a non-profit supporting 2SLGBTQ+ andpart of Purdys Purple Partnership program supporting various organizations and causes including 2SLGBTQ+, BIPOC, women and youth, women’s health and sustainable cocoa. The Pride collection will be available online and in shops for the month of June.
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Source: vancouversun.com
