Dine Out Vancouver 2008 – Coast Restaurant

Coast Restaurant is the creation of Emad and Shannon Yacou. The restaurant is located in the very trendy Yaletown district, just minutes from downtown Vancouver. It’s a very hip place with a two story high main dining room and a “community table” where you can watch Executive Chef Josh Wolfe cook the food right in front of you.

Coast is a very loud restaurant. If you close your eyes, you almost swear you were at a bar because of the noise level and high volume music being pumped through the loud speakers. The open kitchen also adds to the noise. Other restaurants with open kitchens have a glass window dividing it from the dining room. But not Coast. You see and hear everything that’s going on. It’s pretty much what I expect a Yaletown restaurant to be like.

International Oysters by the Dozen

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This is what Coast is known for – oysters from every coast. However, on this night Coast didn’t have any oysters from the European coast so our dozen oysters are made up of four each from the East coast, West coast and Japanese coast.

Sarah loved the Japanese oysters. I like them all equally. Coast paired my oysters with a glass of Blue Mountain Champagne. Oyster and Champagne. It doesn’t get much better than that!

Dungeness Crab & Halibut Cake

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I can taste the crab but not so much the halibut. The cake was served with a pickled vegetable salad and preserved lemon aioli. I had it paired with glass of Mission Hill Five Vineyards Chardonnay. Overall, not a bad appetizer.

Hawaiian Ahi Tuna Tartar

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Sarah opened with the Hawaiian Ahi Tuna Tartar, made with mango, pine nuts and chili lime sauce. I liked it more than the crab cake. However, I felt the flavor of the tuna was being masked by the very strong sauce.

Moroccan Spiced Lamb Sirloin

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For my main course, I had the lamb. Generally, I don’t like lamb because it has a very gamy taste. However, Coast did a great job with this sirloin. It was cook just right and didn’t taste gamy at all. It went really well with the Mission Hill Five Vineyards Merlot.

Miso Glazed Queen Charlotte Sablefish

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Coast is a known for seafood so it doesn’t surprise me that the Sablefish was better than the lamb. The fish was done perfectly. Extremely tender and not dry at all, the fish was complimented by a side of fingerling potatoes, bell peppers with a kaffir lime buerre blanc.

Peanut Butter Bar & Warm Milk Chocolate Fondue

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It doesn’t get much sweeter than dipping a pineapple into melted chocolate. Well, it does if you add a $15 (for 2oz) glass of Mission Hill Reserve Late Harvest Riesling to the mix. Can you say sugar rush?

Thanks to the Oyster and Champagne, dinner at Coast Restaurant came to $175 with tax and tip, which is expensive for a Dine Out Vancouver for two but it was still quite reasonable. The restaurant is a little loud for my taste but I can see why the Yaletown locals like it so much.

I’m Not The Only One Who Takes Pics of My Dinner

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You think I started some kind of trend? Maybe I’ll start taking pictures of people taking pictures of their dinners. You got to love the power of the Zoom! 😈

You can read another review of Coast over at Michael Kwan’s blog.

Coast on Urbanspoon