Two New French-Style Brasseries Are Bringing the Fun Back Into Vancouver’s Food Scene

        I’m so excited, and I just can’t hide it

        I’m about to lose control and I think I like it

It’s 6.30 p.m. on a Thursday in the dog days of summer, and on an unassuming corner of Fraser Street, the heat is on. Entering Chez Céline feels like showing up to a house party just as it hits its groove. As the Pointer Sisters rev up, a staff member dances through the room twirling a glass bottle containing a sparkler. It’s a celebration, all right.

If this bijou brasserie co-owned by the estimable J-C Poirier (chef/owner of Michelin-starred St. Lawrence) generates an unapologetically positive energy across its smart but simple 50-seat room, a five-minute drive northwest there’s a similar vibe pulsing at June on Cambie—albeit in grander, more sophisticated surrounds. Seemingly out of nowhere, Vancouver has birthed two French-style brasseries with a mission to put the fun back into eating out.

At June, a sharply dressed doorman greets and guides you inside as your eyes adjust to the lower light level and the realization that this new space from Cam Watt and Keenan Hood of The Keefer Bar is a seriously sexy proposition. Mexico City-based designer Héctor Esrawe has employed soft curves and sleek surfaces throughout, all inhabiting a warming colour spectrum from copper through rose to mulberry, offset with accents of moss green and natural wood. The bar forms a seductive sweep along the length of one wall, plush semicircular booths dot the main space, and at the back, there’s a DJ booth, staffed nightly. Somehow the whole effect manages to be arrestingly futuristic but also comfortingly retro, an impression made even more forcefully downstairs at Lala, where thick velvet curtains open into an intimate 40-seat lounge where classic cocktails are served alongside vinyl cuts. I feel the ghost of David Lynch nodding approval.

Two brasseries, both high energy in completely different ways, and both serving French food with a twist. The menus are similar in structure and in intent: these are dishes designed to be shared and mixed and matched however the diner feels like eating on the night. Twenty-odd years ago, there were some who argued Vancouver’s culinary USP was “casual fine dining.” It says a lot about how the city has evolved over the past two decades that back then the term was used in connection with popular midlevel chains: Earls, Cactus Club, Milestones, et al. But with Chez Céline and June, the moniker finally makes sense—and in all the best ways.

In Vancouver, “the restaurant experience over the last few years has become a little bit stiff,” Poirier suggests. “Maybe Michelin has something to do with it, and some of the chefs and cooks want to push towards that, but I don’t think that’s the way.

“People want something more simple, more delicious, more affordable, and that’s the reason this year, you are seeing restaurants opening that are giving people what they want.”

Both brasserie kitchens have impeccable credentials. At Chez Céline, Poirier and his wife, Dara Dammann-Poirier, own 50 per cent of the restaurant with two senior St. Lawrence alum—Margaux Herder (his former sous chef) and David Lawson (sommelier)—holding 25 per cent each. At June, head chef Connor Sperling was formerly the chef de cuisine at Published on Main—from where the other senior kitchen staff also hail. These are talented folks who know how to win accolades, including from Michelin, and despite the more approachable atmosphere at these new ventures, the quality of the cooking remains precise and technical. And flat-out delicious.

Chez Céline’s sourdough flatbread comes with various topping options, including a great house-made “Boursin,” but tonight we choose the escargots. This is bread worth all the carbs—structured but still soft, chewy, and unabashedly sour—topped with snails sitting in a slick of green garlic butter. A punchy way to start, this flavour-bomb of an appetizer has quickly become one of the restaurant’s signature dishes.

Croque monsieur croquettes are playful, crispy cubes filled with béchamel and topped with a pillow of shaved ham and aged gruyère. A salad of discs of tender golden beets sprinkled with walnuts comes topped with a generous slice of chèvre, the richness cut by the welcome sharpness of the dressing. From the vegetable specials, the first of the season’s tomatoes from Glorious Organics are dressed in a vibrant pesto and surround a scoop of fresh Puglian burrata. Classic options include beef tartare and baked oysters florentine.

Main courses are concise: two pastas (changing seasonally), a fish, and two meats. Sides couldn’t be more straightforward: green salad, fries, and—the most overt nod to Poirier’s Quebec roots—poutine. The 18-ounce pork chop is cooked on the bone before being sliced for the table and served in a puddle of glossy maple-apple cider sauce with a dollop of grainy mustard. It is a rich dish—meant to be shared—and impossible to leave alone. I didn’t pick up the bone to gnaw it clean, but I am told others have shown no such restraint—and received no judgement. Fries are excellent: golden brown and crunchy and perfect for mopping up that decadent sauce.

The drinks program is similarly to the point, with an eclectic and rotating selection of 20 wines by the glass, a short but smartly arranged cocktail list, and interestingly, a surprisingly extensive collection of zero-proof beers, with draught Guinness the only exception.

If Chez Céline twists French cuisine through a Québécois lens, June’s special sauce is a dash of west coast perspective thanks to its B.C.-raised chef. Sperling’s seafood game is strong: plump, perfectly seared scallops are served on the shell in a pool of dangerously slurpable citrus beurre blanc. Crab dip—a fast favourite—comprises large pieces of sweet, fresh-shucked crab in a bright lemon and crème fraîche dressing, served with seashell-shaped spiced mini madeleines. Bluefin tuna comes peppered and seared with a smoky espelette dressing.

“We’re trying to make food that’s more approachable, that’s easy to eat—that’s not all about us.”—Connor Sperling

The classics—beef tartare, oysters, steak frites—are all present and correct, and there are moreish sweet and sticky frog legs, a ridiculously intense burger that involves a layer of braised beef topped with gruyère, and possibly the best green salad (with lettuces from Endswell Farm) you will ever eat.

Sperling smiles as he approaches. In his arms is a four-kilo tub of beurre d’Isigny. If requested, when you order his Pasta for Rachel created in honour of his wife, the chef will appear tableside to add an extra pat of the glorious French butter to your dish. It is true decadence: the perfect sheet of 16 uncut small raviolis stuffed with whipped potato and comté cheese is already taking a bath in a heady brown butter sauce balanced with pinot gris, lemon, and white wine vinegar. The pasta is light as air, the healthy blanket of cracked black pepper across the top cutting the richness of a sauce so good, you will be struggling to not lick the plate.

Like Poirier, Sperling designed his menu to be more relaxed. “We’re trying to make food that’s more approachable, that’s easy to eat—that’s not all about us,” he explains. At June, he says, the goal is not to win awards, “but that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to approach our work as if we weren’t working at a one star.

“We want to have fun and cook good food, and use this as a learning experience for ourselves.”

With the Keefer team at the helm, it’s no surprise that the bar program at June is particularly exciting: upstairs, under the creative influence of celebrated local mixologist Satoshi Yonemori, the cocktail list is inventive but led by flavour not fad. Akvavit, pisco, and fir negroni, a margarita made super savoury with lovage, an old fashioned taken to new earthy depths with a mushroom amaro and a bitter chocolate mushroom-shaped garnish—it all works. Among the martinis (all of which can be ordered tini-sized), the Burnt Gibson is a standout. Downstairs at Lala, Riley Maggs implements a list of pure classics, all flawlessly executed.

With extended hours (1 a.m. weekdays, 2 a.m. on weekends) and a late-night food menu, June is the brasserie you want to get dressed up for in readiness to see and be seen. “It is meant to be lively, to have an energy—to have supper club vibes,” says the Brazilian-born general manager, Leticia Castro. The intention, she says, was always to create a unique space and vibe—offering the city something new.

Two neighbourhoods, two French-influenced brasseries: a double-shot of comfort food fuelled by fun.

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