Coast Restaurant

Restaurant: Coast Restaurant
Cuisine: Seafood/West Coast/International
Last visited: March 26, 2010
Location: Vancouver, BC (Downtown)
Address: 1054 Alberni Street
Price Range: $30-50

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: Tres Excellent!!

Food: n/a (didn’t try enough yet)
Service: 5
Ambiance: 6
Overall: n/a
Additional comments:

• Part of the Glowbal Group restaurant family
• Casual fine dining/fine dining
• Popular for seafood
• The higher end Glowbal Group Restaurant
• Beautiful ambiance and decor
• Posh, contemporary, trendy
• Great patio – heated
• Wine Bar
• Trendy/contemporary
• Attracts a business crowd at lunch
• Lounge area
• Good for drinks/late night
• Oyster specials at 3pm to before dinner service
• Ocean Wise

Recommendations: n/a I haven’t tried enough yet. The Mascarpone Chocolate Brownie dessert was the best thing from this particular lunch.

Great heated patio – wish the view wasn’t so corporate, it’s not that relaxing.

Coast Restaurant is part of the infamous Glowbal Group. I have to admit when it comes to restaurant decor and design Glowbal is pretty much untouchable. Even if you don’t like their food you can’t ding them for their atmosphere. It’s a little of an “eat to be seen place” – and that might be an understatement; however most of the Glowbal Group restaurants are. They know what they’re doing, and they know their clientele to the tee, so kudos for them for practically dominating the Vancouver dining scene. I’m not a HUGE Glowbal fan per-say but I don’t hate them either. I have my reasons if I were to go in either direction – I just want good food at a good value with some nice service.

Coast recently moved from its Yaletown location in Vancouver BC – it’s still as pretentious and trendy as it was in Yaletown; attracting yuppies from left right and centre. There’s a large sushi bar in the middle of the restaurant which reminds me of restaurants in LA.

They have a dining room and an extensive wine bar so its a great place to go after work… or during work if your work environment promotes that kind of thing… which I doubt it does. If it does, send me an e-mail… j/k 😉

This is more or less where we sat. I came here for lunch – it was very comfortable and also quite corporate. Keeping in mind it’s very close to the Vancouver business district, I can’t be surprised. The lunch is decently priced for what it is and it’s somewhere you would bring clients to. It’s not an everyday place… unless you’re ballin’. Surprisingly the service we received when it was busy was better than when the lunch time crowd was gone.

This is the lounge area and it’s separate from the dining area. It’s super nice huh? Yeah I was pretty impressed. It reminded me of Las Vegas/LA. I think it’s one of Vancouver’s nicest lounges.

Yeah those are pretty intense crush velvet couches. I think it looks great – not in my house, but it works well here. The lighting makes a difference for sure… it could look like the set of a cheap adult movie in a house…bow chicka bow wow.

On the table:

COAST Signature Chilled Platter – 4/6

• ($29 per person ~ minimum 2 persons)
• 1/2 Chilled Atlantic Lobster, Jumbo Prawn Cocktail, Alaskan King Crab Leg, 1/2 Dungeness Crab, Chilled Honey Mussels, Salmon Sashimi, Spicy Tuna Sushi Roll, Freshly Shucked Oysters. Served with orange-horseradish marmalade, house-made cocktail sauce, COAST seafood sauce.
• Platter above is for 3 people.

• This looked freaking wicked. They brought it out in a wok of dry ice so the thing had smoke coming out of it for a while. The table next to us started taking photos and they weren’t bloggers OR tourists!
• I think it’s worth it for the price.
• It was missing clams and a sherry vinaigrette as a condiment.

• The lobster was big, but the meat was a bit chewy.
• My favourites were the huge crunchy prawns, crabs, and salmon sashimi because it was wild Sockeye salmon – it was sliced very thin.
• The crabs were good, but the Chinese steamed garlic Alaskan King Crab is 1000 X’s better.

• The chilled Honey Mussels tasted fine, but some of them were sooooo small as you can see in the picture. I almost swallowed them whole.
• The oysters had a crisp and salty finish and however both times I ate them I had sand in them. Pretty sure they were just Chef’s Creek. I prefer the oyster bar at the old So.cial at Le Magasin or Joe Fortes Restaurant.
• So.cial at Le Magasin – Oyster post.

• The sushi was okay. It was made pretty lazily and it wasn’t really spicy. It tasted alright but there was a lot of rice to make the roll look big – that bothers me.
• I wasn’t a fan of the condiments and all of us stuck to the cocktail sauce because it had the best flavour.

• Orange-horseradish marmalade: I couldn’t taste any horseradish. It wasn’t spicy at all and tasted like marmalade.
• House-made cocktail sauce: It was good, but didn’t have enough of a kick. Just regular. I couldn’t get a picture because we ate it all.

• COAST seafood sauce: This was pretty much house-made mayo.

Lobster Hot Dog – 1.5/6

• Brioche bun, lobster sauerkraut, grainy mustard $17
• I was really excited for this and I was told that it was going to be huge, but it wasn’t. I don’t think it was worth $17. The idea was there, but execution wasn’t.

• The hot dog wasn’t even the length of the bun. There was no flavour and I could see the grainy mustard but couldn’t taste it at all.

• It was a lobster hot dog with way too much filler.
• The hot dog was way too mushy and had no crunch. It tasted like Chinese fish balls. It was pureed white fish mixed with very little pureed lobster meat. I did see specs of red (which is the lobster) in the sausage but they must use soooo little. The texture was as soft as tofu and almost sponge like.

• The picture above is all the actual lobster meat I saw. It was more of a garnish and the rest of the lobster was supposed to be found in the hot dog.
• The sauerkraut wasn’t very flavourful and not pickled or tangy enough.
• The brioche bun was the best part but it was more like a croissant than a brioche. It was very soft, buttery and flavourful; however it added to the mushiness of the hot dog overall.
• I would rather have a Japadog.

His COAST Lunch Box (Fish n’ Chips) – 3/6

• New England clam chowder, fish and chips, wedge salad $12
• For $12 this is totally worth it especially when you throw in the atmosphere.
• The fish was a pretty thick piece of cod and the batter was thin and crispy. It looks quite small, but the meal is $12 and you’ll be full.
• The fries were okay – it reminded me of New York Fries. Restaurants are getting so creative with their fries now so I think Coast/Glowbal should consider upping their game.

New England Clam Chowder – 2.5/6

• Manila clams, double smoked bacon, and potatoes (ordered separately $7)
• This was very average clam chowder. It wasn’t really thick or creamy.
• Quite one dimensional in flavour and it wasn’t even that flavourful.
• Biggest problem was that it was served lukewarm.
• There were onions, carrots, celery, potatoes and a decent amount of clams in it. The pan-fried bacon pieces did nothing in flavour because it was very obvious that it was thrown in last minute.
• I would much rather have any of the chowders I had at the Oceanwise Seafood Chowder Chow Down – Coast won 1st place at that competition for their Sea Urchin Chowder so I expected more from them.

Wedge Salad – 4/6

• This was the best part! Great plating and execution.
• The dressing was a house made Ranch I’m pretty sure. It was almost yogurt like and tangy in flavour.
• The salad also had blue cheese crumbles on it which was a great touch.

Cole Slaw – 1/6

• It was like the remainders of yesterday’s cole slaw at the bottom of the bag. Very limp and very roughly chopped – almost like a garden salad served in a condiment container.

COAST Dessert Menu

• I was very impressed with their selection of desserts. Everything sounded so creative and I wanted to order it all. I think I just might some day. This was the highlight of lunch.
• It was a toss up between the molten banana coconut cake and the brownie – which are also the 2 most popular. We didn’t have much time so we couldn’t wait the 10 minutes for the cake. I WILL go back for it.

Mascarpone Chocolate Brownie – 6/6

• Jasmine tea hot chocolate, pistachio cream, candied pistachio, roasted vanilla pineapple $8
• Holy mother… de-licious. I would come back just for this.
• The only thing is that it’s not really a brownie. It’s more like a very moist and almost sponge like, creamy, fluffy chocolate lava cake. It was a very ooey gooey cake. It actually wasn’t too chocolaty and not too sweet.
• I couldn’t taste any Mascarpone cheese in either the brownie or the pistachio topping so I think it wad used more for texture.

• The Pistachio topping was so fluffy like thick whipped cream. I wasn’t expecting such a rich and dominant pistachio flavour. There was either Amaretto or almond extract to enhance the flavour. It’s not that sweet, but light and very nutty. So well balanced with the brownie.
• There was also smears of pistachio on the plate and I could actually taste the pureed pistachio in it. AMAZING.
• The pineapples were so caramelized and the vanilla wasn’t obvious, but it didn’t matter at this point.
• The Jasmine tea hot chocolate was delicious! It was light and very aromatic and not too sweet. It was served warm in a chocolate wafer cup – however the cup is for decor because it tastes like cardboard and was stale. It was very pretty though and the presentation of the whole dessert was great.
• Every component of this dessert was well executed and the flavours matched perfectly.

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