Executive chef David Wong likes to create foods from scratch and makes his own tofu
Mia Stainsby
Sun
Oru’s executive chef David Wong is passionate about the Pan-Asian style of food. Photograph by: Glenn Baglo, PNG, Vancouver Sun
Sake Kasu Sablefish is one of the highlights of Oru’s menu. Photograph by: Glenn Baglo, PNG, Vancouver Sun
AT A GLANCE
ORU
Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel, 1038 Canada Place
604-695-5500.
www.orucuisine.com
Open for breakfast, lunch, dinner daily.
Overall: 4
Food: F4
Ambience: F4
Service: Ff4
Price: $$/$$$
No wonder I fell in love: It’s a James Cheng building — the Fairmont Pacific Rim.
And inside, the Oru dining room, designed by MGB Architecture+ Design, stretches out long and lean like a bowling alley. If your table is at the far end, you might feel tempted to try a Kate Moss strut.
A 180-foot origami ( “oru” means to bend or fold, like origami) light fixture marches along the ceiling and one side of the room is glass; the other side is a gleaming kitchen, wide open for viewing.
The light sculpture is crafted by Vancouver origami master Joseph Wu, who was fascinated with paper since he was three. As an adult, he gave up his job as a scientist to work with paper.
The executive chef for the hotel is David Wong and his Pan-Asian menu is a difficult choice for a couple of reasons. It can be a mish-mashy mosaic with no cohesive “there” there and secondly, it takes time to master skills and techniques from so many culinary cultures.
But in the end, what matters is how diners feel about their experience, and I liked mine. Wong is passionate about this style of food and some of it is plucked from his food-loving family. He makes his own tofu, sambal, hoisin and XO sauce (a spicy dried seafood sauce); he also makes his own Chinese steamed buns as well as his own chow fun, won ton and ramen noodles. He tried making Vietnamese baguette for the lunchtime bahn mi subs, but hasn’t yet mastered the unique texture, though he’s working at it. He wants to have a run at the finicky soba noodle, too.
“There’s absolute dedication, passion and excitement for the cooks when we make it ourselves,” says Wong. “There’s no pride in bringing in products. We don’t need to make tofu but it’s exciting watching the soy milk congeal. Any time we can make things more authentic, we will do it.” Next, he wants to bring in whole pigs to butcher and make his own charcuterie. He says his grandmother gave him a solid foundation in traditional Cantonese cooking, but his mother was more adventurous.
“I really have such fond memories of my youth and time in the kitchen with them. We’d dig clams every weekend, forage watercress in god-forsaken places. We had the biggest garden in Nanaimo. Oh my God, so many fruit trees,” he says. You can see where he got the fire in his belly to cook.
The standout dish for me was the house-smoked B.C. sablefish claypot with lap chong (Chinese sausage) fried rice, snap peas, cloud ear and shiitake mushrooms ($24). The fish was gorgeous, visually, and in the mouth. Tom kha talay ($24) is a Thai soup with beautiful local spot prawns, squid, mussels, and a coconut broth with lemon grass and galangal. Dungeness crab and corn soup ($11) was smooth with a definite crab presence. Tuna tataki with avocado, toasted sesame puree, and soy-ginger vinaigrette ($12) was fresh and vibrant.
Grilled Korean beef short rib ($14) could have been more succulent and Korean bibimbap (a rice bowl with sauteed julienned vegetables) tended to be a dry style. Wong couldn’t decide whether to go dry or wet (dolsot) with the bibimbap and says he’ll change it up for a wetter texture with a runnier egg, which would mix with the rice like a sauce.
The menu says it’s served in a sizzling bowl, which would normally be stone, good for cooking a raw egg, but it came in a porcelain bowl.
Desserts are Pan-Asian tweaks (gentle) on western desserts. A neatly formed bread pudding comes with jackfruit ice cream (delicately flavoured) and a ganache chocolate tart gets a lift with cardamom ice cream. Nice!
There’s also a cafe (Giovane). It looks like a winner and I’ll be writing a separate review down the road. I can’t wait to try the sugar buns I’ve heard about.
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