Restaurant has charm, is inviting and places importance in the details, which makes up for some of the misses in the kitchen
Mia Stainsby
Sun
Joe Kwan, co-owner of Okra Asian Bistro in North Vancouver, holds mango and basil tiger tiger prawns and stirfried diced chicken and vegetables served with Belgium endives. Photograph by : Stuart Davis, Vancouver Sun
Look way up to the ceiling for a Lilliputian moment. The light fixtures are cone-shaped coils of incense made for giants.
These fixtures at Okra Asian Bistro, I learn, are made with temple incense, offerings to larger-than-life Buddhas. “I won’t light them,” laughs Okra owner Joe Kwan, imagining nothing but smoked food at his restaurant.
Judging by the large wooden Buddha sculpture in the window, the emphatic incense, Kwan’s gracious manner and gentle music that tends toward Moby, Sting and Enya, Okra does have hints of templedom. But that is not to say the menu is Buddhist-based vegetarian — it abounds in meat, poultry and seafood.
Chinese/Malaysian restaurant called Okra has only an appetizer dedicated to its name and it isn’t cooked within an inch of its life as it often is. The kitchen marinates it in Asian spices then grills it with garlic butter, retaining a pleasant crunch.
Kwan’s been in the restaurant business for some 20 years — the Vancouver years were spent as manager of Landmark Hotpot House, Tropika and Banana Leaf restaurants. At Okra, the pan-Asian food is Westernized, notably in presentation and in the single servings.
Okra is yet another sign of the upwardly mobile Lonsdale landscape, a spin-off from the developing waterfront. Restaurants that feel more downtown than suburban are feeling their way onto the strip. Deuce, a couple of blocks away, also brought a dash of downtown cool to the neighbourhood with its stripped-down modern look and tapas cuisine.
Although Okra’s menu has the traditional appetizers and entrées, all the dishes can be shared. And prices are inviting, with entrées hovering around the $10 mark although portions are smaller than usual. The most expensive — Alaskan king crab legs — are $20. In the kitchen, one of the cooks has worked at Banana Leaf and brings a Malaysian flair to the menu.
Of the dishes I tried, I was most taken with one called Golden Tofu. I know, I know what you’re thinking, but this dish has the heft of a meat dish. The chef starts with a block of tofu, scoops a semi-circle off the top, deep-fries it to golden and fills the indentation with a spicy mix of shredded cucumber and bean sprouts.
Kung pao chicken delivered lots of flavour; mango and basil tiger prawns featured large, moist prawns; Hokkien fried rice noodles were a loosely and neatly-tossed mound, not a dense tangle.
I wasn’t, however, enthralled with an overly sour stir-fried ginger beef; the spicy seafood soup, with prawns, mussels and clams was a challenge — it was screaming hot, made even hotter by incendiary bits of chili. Being a green mango salad fan, I happily ordered the dish but was disappointed to find a surfeit of green peppers muscling out the mango.
Desserts didn’t electrify but were competently prepared. Deep-fried bananas were served with fruit and chocolate syrup. A coconut pandan leaf crepe with coconut filling didn’t enthrall. I noticed a decent selection of beers and some good-value wines by the bottle.
Okra has charm, it’s very inviting and places importance in the details like the live orchids and take-home bags closed with an origami fold. It makes up for some of the misses in the kitchen.
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OKRA ASIAN BISTRO
1440 Lonsdale Ave., North Vancouver, 604-990-0330
Overall: 3 1/2
Food: 3
Ambience: 3 1/2
Service: 3 1/2
Price: $/$$
Restaurant visits are conducted anonymously and interviews are done by phone. Restaurants are rated out of five stars.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007