Owner Stephan Gagnon brings a taste for good wine and good food prepared without fuss
Mia Stainsby
Sun
Owner Stephan Gagnon and his partner Linda Horsfall enjoy steak frites and ling cod at Les Faux Bourgeois on Fraser in east Vancouver. Photograph by : Stuart Davis, Vancouver Sun
LES FAUX BOURGEOIS
663 East 15th Ave., 604-873-9733. www.lesfauxbourgeois.com.
Dinner, Tuesday to Saturday.
Overall: fffho
Food: fffho
Ambience: ffffo
Service: ffffo
Price: $$
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The name, Les Faux Bourgeois, refers to the owner, not you, the diner. Owner Stephan Gagnon is a working class stiff (a contractor, who’s built some notable restaurants in Vancouver) and he’s got this passion for good food, a fake bourgeois, he says.
“I don’t like fancy things, but I love good wine and good food that’s cooked without a lot of fuss,” he says. His dream of running a restaurant materialized last year when he opened Jules Bistro with Emanuel Joinville. The lively and affordable French bistro was an instant hit. He sold his share last November and recently opened Faux Bourgeois, which has a Jules kind of vibe. There’s a demand for such a place considering how real estate has changed the make up of the east side. At Le Faux, Gagnon partnered with Andreas Seppelt, who’s also involved in Go Fish off False Creek.
Les Faux is an irresistible bargain which is why there’s huge buzz. It tugs me two ways: It makes me pine for Paris and on the other hand, I feel I’m already there. The servers are “classic French bistro guys from France” and they didn’t bring a harumphy attitude with them. One is a trained sommelier. And judging by the animated conversation, Les Faux attracts a lot of French-speaking customers.
On the menu, mains are $10 (baguette de merguez) to $19 (fillet de boeuf grillé). Tina Fineza, chef at Flying Tiger, was brought in as consultant for the first few weeks to help chef Gilles L’Heureux reorient himself to Vancouver suppliers after six years cooking in Mexico.
Our second meal there went swimmingly well — a lovely country paté and onion soup; a delicious organic chicken pot au feu and a cassoulet, all delicious. We finished with a lemon tart.
It’s not that our first visit was disappointing. I loved the ambience, but some dishes needed improvement. L’escargots were tender, garlicky and tasty. Steak frites came with yummy frites, but the steak, although flavourful, was a little chewy; the Alsatian tart had great flavour, but the shell could have been crisper; a wild line-caught ling cod with manila clams and savoy cabbage had great flavour combinations but the fish was overcooked. The chocolate mousse needed a little more chocolate intensity. I’m hoping it was the new kitchen getting to its feet. Make note of the chalkboard menu, even if you have to leave the table, to read the specials. Wines are constantly changing with “a little bit of everything,” and mark-up is “a little less than double,” says Gagnon. (The industry norm is double the retail price.)
And coming soon is Les Faux Bourgeois’ next-door coffee bar. It’ll be a coffee bar by day and an extension of the restaurant by night for large groups. The place is extremely busy, which is a good part of its allure so book ahead to avoid cooling your heels on Kingsway. It seems to me Les Faux Bourgeois’s warming, hearty dishes arrived just in time for Gore-Tex weather.
© The Vancouver Sun 2008