By Hannah Bellamy
Image courtesy of Scout Magazine
When I paid my first visit to Rainier Provisions, located at the corner of Cordova and Carrall, it had only been open a week and a half. For now the restaurant exclusively serves lunch, but a notice from management on the entrance says it will soon extend its hours from breakfast to dinner. The new waitresses seem at once thrilled and unsure of procedure. The owner, Sean Heather, looks on and buses tables dutifully.
Heather has several other restaurants in the Downtown Eastside, including Irish Heather Gastropub, Salty Tongue, Judas Goat Taberna, Salt Tasting Room, Shebeen Whisk(e)y House, Everything Cafe, and Bitter. Anticipation for his most recent location in the former Rainier Hotel has teased the area for over a year: the de facto opening was almost 13 months behind its proposed January 2012 date.
It finally opened, evidently to the satisfaction of self-professed foodies from all around Vancouver, as the afternoon I went was a busy one.
Its high-ceilinged, open space has been outfitted with a retail delicatessen, a take-out cafe, and 100-plus eggshell blue seats in the restaurant proper. The walls are white open-face brick, with the exception of a partial wall inserted between the kitchen and the rest of the space, which is wallpapered with vegetable sketches. Clearly, the overall look of the establishment is meant to combine a sense of rural nostalgia and urban decorum.
The retail shelves in the delicatessen are supplied with a variety of quality foods, and the refrigerated display cases are stocked with a selection of cheeses, several types of cured meat from Moccia & Urbani on East Hastings, D-Original sausages, eggs from Rabbit River Farms, and other assorted deli items. Adjacent to the deli cases is the cafe counter, which serves local Stumptown Coffee.
Without overlooking the popularity of the imported Spanish, Italian, French, and UK cheeses available, most of the products are locally sourced. Affirming this are big, embossed letters above the counter: “eat local,” a running theme with most of Heather’s establishments.
The menu varies from roast of the day — sausage stuffed roast suckling pig with Okanogan applesauce, potato Lyonnais, and orange roasted carrots — to kale Caesar salad, to fresh handmade bratwurst, to vegetarian pasta. I ordered the daily salad — chickpea and roasted cauliflower complete with artichoke, cilantro, mint, and lemon, which, like everything on the menu, was reasonably under 10 dollars. The variety of greens and added delicacies made the salad fresh and satisfying.
Of the sweets on the back of the menu, many of which involve Earnest ice cream from Commercial Drive in some form or another, I went for the Picker Shack cherry ice cream sandwich. Every one of Ernest’s concoctions is a winner, the flavours ranging from whiskey walnut to pumpkin pie, but this one is prima facie summer.
Or temporary summer, at least, as I reluctantly leave it all in due time for the wintry afternoon. Rainier is certainly a place to warm up though, in terms of food and atmosphere: the local focus and pared down interior make it uniquely Vancouver, and it seems that so far, Vancouverites agree.
