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Vancouver flocks to divine Cioppino's
JOANNE KATES
Saturday, March 31, 2001
Vancouver is aglow. Clouds of palest pink, spots of electric
yellow forsythia, mauves so hot they can hardly be real: This is
spring in Canada's prettiest city. Whole streets are transformed
into avenues of colour thanks to the simultaneous explosion of
plums, cherries and magnolia trees in blossom.
Every Sunday these spring days, Pino Posterero tends the
small garden terrace in front of Pino's restaurant. But Pino
still hasn't figured out why he left Toronto. Eight years ago,
exhausted by success, he left Borgo Antico on Yorkville Avenue,
where his celestial Italian cooking had wowed the dining
cognoscenti, and went home to Italy, seeking rest.
The respite was short-lived. Within one year, Umberto Menghi
(Vancouver's uber restaurateur) had hired Pino to teach Italian
cooking to tourists in his Tuscan villa. Before he knew it, Pino
had signed on as Umberto's executive chef in Vancouver, taking
responsibility for the food at Il Giardino and the rest of
Umberto's stable. Three years ago an investor with very deep
pockets gave Pino $4-million to buy his way out of Umberto-land.
Pino used the money to gut a gorgeous old industrial building in
Vancouver's trendy Yaletown and turn it into Cioppino's,
a warm, elegant restaurant with huge exposed wooden beams, an
open kitchen and an intimate "wine room" for small
parties.
Cioppino's
opened almost 18 months ago, followed this past November by
Enoteca, the next door space. Cioppino's
is white tablecloths and suave service, candlelit dinners and
big cabs. Enoteca is the junior member, exposed brick walls and
arches, a fireplace and wooden tables, a display case of
antipasti at the front. Make no mistake -- Pino Posterero is
congenitally incapable of producing less than first quality, in
both food and service.
At lunchtime Enoteca is an exercise in gastronomical
divinity, thanks to Pino's strange marriage of sushi with
Italiana. Lunch at Enoteca starts with a huge pile of local
Pacific uni (sea urchin) so sweet and shiny it makes your taste
buds smile. Ama-ebi (raw shrimp) so sweet and fresh. White fatty
tuna that goes down like Normandy butter. Geoduck (giant local
clam) so fresh it's almost alive.
Then we move on to Italiana. Everybody does mussels, often in
tomato sauce. Pino does tomato sauce too. But his tomato sauce
is different, the masterwork of a lovable obsessive. First, the
sauce is combined with fish stock. Is it a standard fish stock?
Not in Pino's kitchen. Instead of water, Pino builds his fish
stock it on a base of chicken stock, for a richer, less fishy
flavour. He uses oodles of garlic cloves that have first been
oven-roasted with olive oil. Voilà,Pino's mussels, a cut
above the average bivalve.
His vitello tonnato is pinkly perfect veal roast with creamy
tuna sauce. Every day he makes pillowy gnocchi, agnolotti
stuffed with fresh seafood, and his signature soup -- purée or
sweet potatoes and almonds with fresh blue crab, a creamy sweet
invention with the almond and crab for depth. He makes a small
slit in the breast of free-range chicken and inserts rosemary
and thyme butter, then roasts it on the rotisserie till done
just so, sitting it atop house-made sauerkraut with little bits
of smoky ham.
At dinnertime le tout Vancouver (as well as the
Toronto Maple Leafs and the New York Rangers when they're in
town) flocks to Cioppino's.
Green risotto is heady with spring -- asparagus and fresh peas,
and it actually owns both fine taste and credible texture.
Quebec pré-salé lamb (grazed on salty fields) is pinkly
tender, served with sweet confit garlic cloves (very long
cooked), and fat-grained couscous happily soaked in lamb jus.
Cioppino (the house signature seafood stew) is based on the
same felicitous tomato/fish broth as the mussels. This one's
freight is perfectly cooked shrimp, mussels, fat scallops, sea
bass and new potatoes. Our sole quarrel with dinner is pacing.
Everything comes much too quickly, even the lovable desserts. It
would take a week to hoover every Pino dessert, and it would be
worth every calorie. Espresso chocolate custard is deep dark
mocha, what every Starbucks confection longs to be when it grows
up. House made ices come in sweet pure lichee, maple syrup,
Valrhona chocolate, and green pistachio. Pino makes cheesecake
from goat's milk and cream cheese, balancing sweet/savoury
tension on a knife point. His lemon tart is a citric cloud in
perfectly short crust. Panna cotta (translates as "cooked
cream") is the simple and yet sinful Italian classic writ
well. As if that were not enough, there is the trio of velvety
crèmes brulées: Pistachio, lemon and chocolate. Pino Posterero
takes no prisoners.
Cioppino's
and Enoteca. 1133 Hamilton St., Vancouver, 604-685-8462. Not
accessible to people in wheelchairs.
The correct telephone number for Toronto's Silver Spoon is
416-516-8112.
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