Felt Like Being on Vacation!

David Hawksworth is a very well-known chef in our town. He’s the guy responsible for the Rosewood Hotel Georgia’s restaurants in the heart of downtown Vancouver at 801 West Georgia, open since 2011.

And now he has followed up that success with the opening of “Nightingale,” again downtown but this time on West Hastings, next door to the lovely Art Deco “Marine Building.” constructed in 1930. If you get the chance, when in Vancouver…check it out…magnificent…and the elevators…WOW!

Lucky me…my hubby took me to Nightingale for my birthday lunch! We love going out for a nice lunch, I think it reminds us of being on vacation, taking the time to kick back, enjoy great food and share some vino.

Nightingale did not disappoint! The restaurant has two levels, is casually elegant, decorated with cream walls and gold paint Origami nightingales placed here and there on the empty gold picture frame hung walls. The ingredients used in the restaurant are seasonal and sourced locally for the most part.

Once the wine was ordered, we selected what plates we wanted to share…it’s all about sharing plates these days. We think it’s a great concept because it allows us to sample more tastes that way and we both are all for that! Here’s our menu!

• Heirloom tomato salad, cucumber, roasted eggplant, pistachio salsa verde, focaccia. A great combination, the eggplant was more like a baba ganoush…I could make a lunch of just this one item!
• Charred carrots, almond, cilantro, guajillo chili vinaigrette, lime yogurt. Another winner of medium sized carrots roasted to bring out their sweetness, and the lime yogurt and vinaigrette were perfect with them.
• Grilled Pacific Rockfish, fresh ginger, scallion, black pepper. In our opinion, Rockfish is a much underused fish…it’s our fish of choice at home, so sweet and succulent…the Asian style sauce worked so well with it.
• Crispy fried chicken, preserved lemon yogurt, dill espelette. Not to be critical, but we both though the chicken was a bit overcooked…but the preserved lemon yogurt was fantastic!
• Dessert: Poached cherry, blackcurrant, vanilla Pavlova. The cherries and blackcurrant flavours worked so well together! The only comment would be that as Pavlova is sweet, we thought that perhaps a more tart cherry would have balanced the sweetness…and just so you know…Bing cherries are my favourite cherry of all time!

We have two great reasons to return and that’s to sample the pizzas baked in the Italian wood burning pizza oven, with great sounding toppings like N’duja, Fior di latte, San Marzano tomatoes with charred rapini; a Guanciale, green olive, San Marzano tomato, chilli with Fior di latte or a roasted mushroom, new potato, garlic confit and Fontina. And the pasta’s because I can never say no to pasta…could you turn down casarecce, with braised rabbit and rapini or radiatori with pork and heirloom tomato sugo, summer savory and Piave cheese…I know, right?

So…if you live in and around Metro Vancouver…or are planning to be in town…by all means, take yourself to Nightingale! Click here for the link.http://hawknightingale.com/  and…you would be advised to make a reservation.