Vancouver restaurant: Great burgers and community spirit at D.I.C.E.D.

Article content

D.I.C.E.D.

Where: 1515 Discovery St., Vancouver.

Article content

When: Tues. to Thurs., 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Wednesday to Thursday; 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday to Sunday.

Info: 778-997-8057. Also, at dicedculinary.com

Don Guthro’s resumé reveals an elastic personality — and body.

Guthro, who trained at the National Ballet of Canada and Royal Winnipeg Ballet, had a short career with San Francisco Ballet until he landed a triple tour, or airborne turns, on his knee, shattering it. He has a degree in commerce and in the culinary arts. He has cooked at The Savoy in London, was executive chef at the Four Seasons Hotel Dubai and was the director of hospitality management and culinary arts at the Vancouver Art Institute, now LaSalle College Vancouver.

Today, he runs a business with several moving parts and his goal is to stay unprofitable. Crazy, some might say — and do.

Article content

The moving parts of his umbrella company, A Plus Projekt Ltd., are Culinary Choreography Catering business, daily meal delivery service to 700 needy souls, D.I.C.E.D. culinary school, and D.I.C.E.D. restaurant. Plus, the company has donated money to meal programs in London, Malaysia and the Philippines via an international organization. In the works are plans to start a product manufacturing division and a food truck.

The catering company and the restaurant currently help fund an at-cost cooking school. The meal delivery program, under contract with a couple of social agencies, makes no profit. 

D.I.C.E.D. — acronym for Diverse Innovation in Culinary Educational Development — is best known as a restaurant near Jericho Beach, with great burgers and beer. Cheap! And good! In the kitchen is a top-tier chef, Quang Dang, formerly the chef at Araxi and the late West restaurant. He had a life reset after suffering a stroke in 2018 where his “brain exploded,” as he describes it.  He accepted the job offer from long-time friend Guthro and his wife, who had mentored him as a newbie to cooking.

Article content

“I like that it’s a fun, comfort-food menu and that this job is so versatile. It’s still about enjoying cooking. If you can’t respect bacon and eggs, then you’re never going to respect foie gras and truffles,” Dang says. “I honestly hope working with Don creates opportunities and more workers in the industry.” And, he adds, many of his friends visit him there more than they ever did at West or Araxi.

In the 14 years preceding the pandemic, this social enterprise model fully sponsored 684 marginalized students to its culinary school, training them to provincial standards. During the pandemic, training moved online with a wider national reach for people already working in restaurant kitchens. The fee, $895 plus tax, covers basic costs in contrast to between $17,000 and $40,000 at other private culinary schools.

Article content

“Basically, I saw a disconnect between culinary schools and students,” Guthro says. “It’s very, very expensive and out of reach for so many. Then they get into the industry earning minimum wage and have to pay off big debts,” he adds. “Less than 10 per cent of students stay in the industry more than three years and I realize there’s not a ton of opportunity.”  D.I.C.E.D. training allows them to work and study and bypass debt.

Growing up with a single mother who raised five kids, Guthro knows life is not about equal opportunities. “It’s why I try to give back so much.” Operating as a business rather than non-profit means he doesn’t have to answer to anyone and can pivot and make changes quickly, he says.

The food at D.I.C.E.D. is pretty much comfort food, cooked with respect and reverence. And — get this — the D.I.C.E.D. burger with local beef, house-made sauces, cheese, pickles and locally made potato buns created to their specifications, at $5.95, costs less than a Big Mac. Upgrade to the Cuddle Burger with chargrilled onions and crispy fried onions, and it’s $7.50. The latter was named by a server, in the cold of winter, who described it as “a cuddle from Don” and the name stuck.

Article content

Albacore tuna taco with cabbage and herb slaw, shaved cucumbers, lettuce, wasabi mayo and crispy onions ($7.50 each) featured dewy fresh tuna. Beetroot salad with feta cheese, radishes, toasted hazelnuts, sprinkles of chive flowers and dijon vinaigrette ($7.50) is a big, bright, healthy bowl of goodness.

And the daily soup was a dense vegetarian stew, rich with flavour from a long-simmered stock, then blitzed with some of the veggies.

The burgers and the classic breakfast with two eggs, bacon, sausage, ham or avocado and hash browns are the restaurant’s biggest sellers. The popular Louisiana-style biscuits that come with breakfasts are sold separately with butter and jam.

Other dishes on the lunch menu include grilled or crispy chicken sandwiches, poutine, pizza and a daily pasta. Desserts are hit and miss — ask and they just might have a crème brûlée or cheesecake or bread pudding — but are more likely to have some brownies, butter tarts and squares.

Article content

And there’s beer, cocktails and wine with an option to bring your own for a corkage fee.

Plus for the summer season, on Friday and Saturday evenings, there’s live music on the patio.

Side dishes: Earls’ first cookbook

The folks at Earls restaurant realized they had failed their most ardent fans. Online, thousands of them were emulating their favourite dishes with “not-quite-correct recipes” online.

As a mea culpa, Earls has put out a cookbook, Earls, The Cookbook, with over 120 recipes for customer favourites spanning the restaurant’s 40-year history. Many were developed in the test kitchen at the downtown Hornby Street restaurant by a coterie of notable consulting local chefs and culinary development chef David Wong.

Article content

It’s a chatty cookbook with anecdotes, history of the restaurant and stories behind recipes that are all home-cook friendly. The ‘New Classics’ section contains recipes for dishes the team deems to be the latest iconic Earls’ dishes, given their popularity. I’m just going to have to try the scallop risotto, described as decadent and created by none other than consulting chef Hamid Salimian. I also have stickies on the buffalo cauliflower, “an immediate crowd-pleaser,” and warm kale salad, which apparently has an Earls’ dedicated social media folder filled with collected rave reviews.

Anthony Bourdain-endorsed Lunch Lady

Nguyen Thi Thanh — friend to the owners of the popular Lunch Lady restaurant on Commercial Drive, its inspiration and its namesake — also had a famous fan in Anthony Bourdain. He featured her on his CNN show No Reservations in 2009 and her lunch spot in Ho Chi Minh City reached an altogether new level of fame. Thanh is finally making the trek to cook at the Vancouver location with her trade-marked recipes for Lunch Lady’s  two-year anniversary. She’ll be on site from June 28 onwards for the summer, from Tuesday to Friday over the lunch and dinner rushes. Her recipes books will also be available for purchase at the restaurant. Alas, tickets for a six-course dinner collaboration between Thanh and restaurant chef Benedict Lim sold out immediately. 

Article content

mia.stainsby@shaw.ca

twitter.com/miastainsby

instagram.com/miastainsby

vancouversun.com/tag/word-of-mouth-blog/

More news, fewer ads, faster load time: Get unlimited, ad-lite access to the Vancouver Sun, the Province, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites for just $14/month or $140/year. Subscribe now through the Vancouver Sun or The Province.