Garden Terrace and the Chartwell make way for gorgeous space that is very Vancouver
Joanne Sasvari
Sun
Bartender Devon Thom offers festive drinks in the new Yew Restaurant & Bar at the Four Seasons Hotel. Photograph by : Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun
Let’s see, what shall it be?
Perhaps a flight of vodka at the raw bar. Or maybe one of the 150 wines available by the glass. Or how about a handcrafted cocktail and some divine nibbles to go with it?
As food and beverage director Marco Ciraulo says of the Four Seasons’ new restaurant-bar-lounge, Yew: “It’s not necessarily the typical hotel lounge where you sit and sip your tea.”
Six months ago, even the Four Seasons’ most loyal customers would have had to admit that the old Garden Terrace was past its prime. So the hotel began a massive renovation designed to create a whole new concept in drinking and dining.
This week, Yew Restaurant & Bar opened its doors, and one thing is immediately clear — this is a great place to go for a drink.
Gone is the ladylike but cavernous Garden Terrace. Gone is the cosy but tiny lounge off to the side. And gone, too, is the old-fashioned Chartwell.
In their place is a gorgeous, soaring space with spare lines and rich, natural materials.
A huge fireplace separates the lounge and restaurant. And what a lounge it is — sexy banquettes and a wine cellar where the old lounge used to be, along with high-top tables, a graceful granite-and-alder bar and, across the room, the sleek raw bar.
It’s all very “international big city” — but also very Vancouver.
“It was very important for me to have a very urban lifestyle here, but with a West Coast influence,” Ciraulo says.
Yew looks great, but even more important is the skill behind the bar.
“The idea was to have a lot of hand-crafted cocktails done with love,” Ciraulo says. “We took a lot of the classic drinks and gave them a little twist and modified that to our style. Some of the drinks are shaken, some are stirred, some are rolled and some are muddled, so we have every style.”
The bar staff have been training for weeks, says restaurant manager Jeff Hanson, adding that their energy, enthusiasm and knowledge of cocktail culture are as important as their mixing skills.
And, he adds, “One thing that’s really going to surprise people is, first of all, we’re not the expensive place.”
After all, they want people to visit Yew every day, not just on special occasions.
“We don’t want to be pretentious, we don’t want to be complicated, but at the same time we don’t want to be simple,” Ciraulo says. “We want to be Yew Restaurant.”
– Yew Restaurant & Bar is located at the Four Seasons Hotel, 791 West Georgia St., 604-692-4939, www.fourseasons.com/vancouver.
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RECIPES
Here are two cocktails from Yew Restaurant & Bar.
Navan Fizz
3/4 oz Navan vanilla liqueur
1/4 oz cream sherry
1/2 oz fresh sweet and sour mix (see note )
1/2 oz applesauce
Dash pasteurized egg white
Champagne
Rim a chilled cocktail glass with cinnamon sugar. Pour all ingredients except champagne into a cocktail shaker and shake well. Gently add a little champagne to shaker and strain into cocktail glass — this will keep the drink from foaming over, but will preserve the bubbles. Top with more champagne. Garnish with an orange twist. Serves 1.
Note: To make sweet and sour mix, combine 1 part heavy sugar syrup (3 parts sugar, 2 parts water, boiled until thick and allowed to cool) with 1 part lemon juice.
Cafe A La Pistachio
1 oz Mount Gay rum
1 oz Kahlua coffee liqueur
1 oz heavy cream (butterfat content of 36 to 40 per cent)
1/2 oz Amoretti pistachio syrup (available in Italian markets)
Rim a chilled cocktail glass with finely chopped pistachios. Drizzle chocolate syrup down insides of glass to create an attractive pattern. Pour rum, Kahlua, cream and syrup into a cocktail shaker and shake well. Pour into glass. Serves 1.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007