With bright, clean flavours Zab Bite draws Thai food fans

Zab Bite serves food from Northern Thailand’s E-Sarn region

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Zab Bite

Where: 4197 Fraser Street, Vancouver

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When: Weekdays, 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Weekends, 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Info: 778-681-5752 zabbite.ca

Passing by East 26th Avenue and Fraser Street, you might wonder if something good this way comes, because there are people milling about on one of the corners.

The answer is yes. It’s a new Thai restaurant, Zab Bite, cheery and affordable where the food pleasantly hits the yum notes with bright, pleasant, clean flavours.  It’s a buzzy spot.

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The food is from the chef’s home region of northeastern Thailand, variously referred to as E-Sarn, Issan, or Isarn, and bordered by Laos and Cambodia. “We want to be as authentic as possible and not adjust to adapt to the people here,” says Warisara Laohongvichit, 22, one of four owners, the one who recently graduated with business and marketing skills. The others are “hitting the early 30s,” she says.

Her nickname since birth has been Gift, she says. “Everyone calls me that except in official situations.” The signature cocktail, From Me to You, riffs on her nickname.

This restaurant is not to be confused with another unrelated Thai restaurant in Yaletown called Zab Zaab.  Zab, in the Thai language, means “yummy, spicy, flavourful,” says Laohongvichit. “When something’s delicious, we go ‘zab mak mak’, or ‘very good’.” They discovered the similarity in names a few weeks after opening.

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New Thai restaurant, Zab Bite, is cheery and affordable where the food pleasantly hits the yum notes with bright, clean flavours. sun

The Zab Bite owners are friends, with roles of chef, cook, accountant and marketer.  Although they want food to be authentic, they do allow guests to choose their preferred level of spiciness. “E-Sarn food is really, really spicy,” says Laohongvichit.

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The chef, Percy Tanwattanaku, who was visiting family in Thailand when I called, is self-taught, learning his way around the Thai kitchen at his family’s resort as a youngster, then opening a restaurant in Bangkok. “He has other businesses, but his passion is to cook E-Sarn food,” she said.

When I dropped in for lunch recently without a reservation, a cheerful server took our contact number and said they’d call when a table came up in about 20 minutes. We went for coffee at The Prado coffee bar kitty corner from the restaurant and sure enough, 20 minutes later, they called.

On the menu, Pad Thai — the rice noodle dish flavoured with tamarind, sugar, and dried shrimp — tossed with bean sprouts, peanuts, egg, shrimp and tofu —  is billed as the signature dish, but it’s the least regional dish on the menu. It’s more a national dish created in the 1930s as a Thai government response to a rice shortage and hard economic times. Rice noodles were cheap and the government encouraged street vendors and home cooks to make the dish. Then in 2002, the Thai government promoted it as part of an initiative to market Thai food internationally for economic and cultural benefits. It worked on me. I always order it.

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At Zab Bite, the Pad Thai ($20) isn’t the finest in the city — the prawns and tofu were overcooked — but the noodles were loose, not clumpy. It was good, solid comfort food.

My favourite of the dishes I tried was the Assorted Appetizers ($32), artfully arranged in a basket, with vegetable spring roll, crispy pork toast, prawn wrap and pork jerky. The half dozen two-bite pork toasts are topped with ground, marinated pork and sesame seeds and deep fried. I enjoyed both the spring roll and the prawn wrap. The jerky isn’t the dried version you might expect. The pork is marinated, dried a bit, then deep fried.

“In E-Sarn, it’s hot and it’s dried in the sun. The farmers who make it depend on natural resources and sun is one of them,” says Laohongvichit. The platter came with three sauces, a hot sauce for the jerky, a sweet chili sauce for the spring rolls, and a vinegar one for the pork toast.

The Papaya Salad couldn’t quite decide what to be — a heat missile? Fish sauce sour? Sweetened with shrimp and peanuts? There are three variations ($15 to $17). The dish always adds refreshing bites during a Thai meal. The crisp papaya was cut a little bigger than I like but it was a brightener for a meal with fried dishes on the table.

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There are two curry offerings — Green Curry and Penang Red Curry. I ordered the coconut-milk based green curry ($19) which comes with eggplant and chicken, stewed beef or tofu. The curry pastes are imported from Thailand and we asked for medium spicy. It was actually mild and pleasant, not too complex but maybe just right for lunch.

The simple Thai dessert that makes me weak-kneed is mango sticky rice. But drat! They didn’t have it because the mangos weren’t ripe enough for it.

Laohongvichit says the most popular dishes, aside from Pad Thai are the Yum Crying Tiger and Nam Tok Crispy Grilled Pork. The former is named either for the melting beef fat that drips like tears on the grill or could it be the spicy sauce that could make a tiger cry? Another theory, Laohongvichit says, is “because the beef is very juicy, like tears.” The sauce is a trifecta of spicy, sour, and salty with chili, palm sugar, lime juice, and fish sauce.

Nam Tok Crispy Grilled Pork is a salad with grilled pork and a spicy sauce of herbs, rice powder, dried chili, herbs and shallots. “It’s a secret sauce. The chef doesn’t tell me what’s in it,” says Laohongvichit.

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At lunch, the Lunch O’Clock menu offers some dishes at discounted prices. The chef is working on new dishes and will be adding and subtracting from the menu, according to the seasons.

For drinks, you can choose non-alcoholic Thai beverages like milk tea or Ovaltine Volcano, a beer or cocktail or an unnamed house red or white wine. Curious, I ordered the Pink Milk, which is milk with a red syrup. “Very popular in Thailand with students. They’re usually sold at carts and they’ll have it after classes,” says Laohongvichit.

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The Avenue cocktail from The Connaught Bar recipe book sun

SIDE DISHES

Cocktails and more cocktails

Get your tickets to Vancouver Cocktail Week, taking place March 3 to 10, with its signature events, neighbourhood cocktail crawls, guest bartenders, pop-ups, seminars, and cinq a sept happenings around town. Events include a super elegant cocktail brunch at Botanist, distillery tours with cocktails, cocktail-paired dinners, whisky tastings, a rum-inspired dinner, a drag show with cocktails, and much, much more.

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To find out more about the event, presented by The Alchemist Magazine, and to buy tickets visit alchemistmagazine.ca.

On April 11, the seventh annual Science of Cocktails returns with its 30 cocktail stations at Science World where the city’s best bartenders shake it up with science-driven cocktails along with a dozen food stations, and science demos. The event helps thousands of individuals benefit from Science World, including students, under-resourced schools, refugees, immigrants, people living with autism, physical and developmental disabilities as well as those facing financial barriers. The event has raised over $1.5 million in the past six years. For information and tickets to the event, visit scienceworld.ca/science-of-cocktails.

And if you can’t enjoy cocktails at the above events, you can soon access over 200 recipes from one of the world’s best bars. The Connaught Bar: Recipes and Iconic Creations (Phaidon) hits bookstores on April 10. International heavyweight chef Massimo Battura describes the London bar as revolutionary and iconic.

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“The Connaught Bar has managed to stay contemporary after 15 years of activity, always changing with the times without ever changing its identity and perspective on the world,” he says. That’s how the revered bar was crowned as No. 1 on the World’s 50 Best Bars list twice in recent years. And now, you can recreate their cocktails at home. The book contains over 200 recipes for drinks and their housemade signature ingredients.

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