Group of athletes team up to create Players Chophouse, where steak’s a good bet while cheering on the hometown favourites
Mia Stainsby
Sun
Dave Rouleau (left) and Chad Walton, both of Pitt Meadows, pose with their server Whitney Murton at Players Chophouse, before taking in a Canucks game. Photograph by : Stuart Davis, Vancouver Sun
What do you get when a dozen professional hockey and football players, an Olympic/ World skeleton racing champ, an actress, and a former chef to Wesley Snipes get together? They could spawn a whole new sport or. . . of course! A new restaurant. (The Olympic skeleton racer silver medallist, by the way, is Jeff Pain.)
There’s quite an athletic team behind Players Chophouse, which is within walking distance to GM Place, BC Place and the theatres. When you walk into the restaurant and are confronted by the 14-by-10-foot video projection screen and the plasma TVs, it feels like the modern equivalent of the Roman coliseum.
Players was previously another steakhouse called Wilsons, which met an unfortunate end, assisted by the 2004/2005 NHL lockout. It’s a spacious, dark, wood-panelled room, with the manly attributes of a modern steakhouse.
Sports fanatics might be able to decipher the column of numbers stretching from the main floor to mezzanine level but since regular people will never guess, I’ll tell you: They’re the jersey numbers of the hockey and football players within the ownership.
I’m tempted, like Gertrude Stein, to say a steakhouse is a steakhouse is a steakhouse but, of course, that’s not entirely true. The quality of steak rules, of course. What the crowd wants here, as well as good meat, is permission to roar when there’s a goal or when one of the “players” is in the restaurant, visiting tables. And here, the room is big enough the ceiling high enough to withstand the decibels.
The food is really centred around steaks and chops; the seafood and other dishes definitely take a back seat, except for the crab cakes, which I found to be top-notch. On game nights, you might be better off in the lounge with its more beer-friendly dishes, including pizzas, starters and sandwiches.
A 14-ounce California rib-eye was cooked as requested, medium-rare, and it was juicy and flavourful. The vegetables were forgettable and they seemed to recur on other plates. Braised Asian pear shortribs were as tender and fall-apart as could be. The slow-roasted prime rib dish (14-ounce or 18 ounce) cried out for a 200-pound linebacker to absorb the shock of it. Here again, the meat outshone the veggies; furthermore, the Yorkshire pudding was too dry, not even warm, and entirely unappealing. Too bad, because I love Yorkshire pud.
The seafood in the paella was overcooked, which was not surprising considering how scorching hot the dish was. “Charred” mussels were a letdown; they cooked, I guess, in their own juices and lemon. I prefer them in a yummy broth.
West Coast seafood chowder also featured overcooked fish; and if only the seared yellowfin tuna was as sparklingly fresh as the peashoot salad it came with.
Entree dishes cost upwards of $24; steaks and chops go from $24 to $46.
Players isn’t a foodie destination but if you’re looking for an upscale sports bar with straight-ahead steaks and a linebacker, skeleton racer or goalie in the house, you’ll be very pleased.
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PLAYERS CHOPHOUSE
Overall: 3
Food: 2 1/2
Ambience: 3 1/2
Service: 3 1/2
Price: $$$
808 Beatty St., 604-694-2467, www.vancouverchophouse.ca
Open for lunch and dinner, Monday to Friday; 3 p.m. to midnight, Saturday and Sunday.
Restaurant visits are conducted anonymously and interviews are done by phone. Restaurants are rated out of five stars.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007