Canada's Best New Restaurants 2011

Maple bacon glazed veal sweetbreads with black truffle, kohlrabi and celery truffle emulsion; seared weathervane scallops with crackling; the showcase wine cellar.

A more than fashionably late opening (David Hawksworth left West restaurant in 2008, hoping to launch for the Winter Olympics) gives a chef time to meditate. On fine dining without starched whites. On the decline of ’80s-style expense accounts. On Vancouver’s propensity for polar fleece. On the natural bounty and cultural diversity of British Columbia. On being a Canadian-driven cook with international aspirations.

The result, set in Vancouver’s revamped 1927 Rosewood Hotel Georgia, ushers in a new era of post-formal dining. Infused with belle époque optimism, Hawksworth revives some sorely underused adjectives: Designer Alessandro Munge’s shimmering multimillion-dollar interior is downright fancy (accessorize with a whiskey-washed tequila cocktail); the alabaster-and-plaster Pearl Room (with its Linda Evans earring of a chandelier) is glamorous; the Art Room (with its Rodney Graham wall relief and Serge Mouille spider lamps) is, gasp, extravagant.

A view of the restaurant’s Pearl room.

A seamless fusion of Asian, European and West Coast elements, the cuisine reflects its city with subtlety rather than shock value. Seared scallops with homemade XO sauce wear a pork-crackling fascinator sprinkled with togarashi powder. Sticky, sultry, finger-licking veal sweetbreads – fried in bacon fat and maple syrup, c’mon! – are everything you knew you loved about chicken wings and didn’t know you loved about kohlrabi and kumquats. Slow-cooked halibut is cloaked in almost-translucent chorizo, duck bathes in Chinese five-spice broth. For dessert, cream of calamansi, the tiny Asian citrus, comes with Italian and French meringue.

Hawksworth’s technical assurance is backed by chef de cuisine Kristian Eligh and seven sommeliers led by shaggy Terry Threlfall (lured back from London’s Chez Bruce). There’s no audible clanking or cursing in the NASA-worthy kitchen: noisy equipment is banished behind sound panelling and inter-station communication is computerized.

Having spent a decade in Michelin-starred kitchens in Europe, David Hawksworth is aiming to bring one home here. Equal parts romance and risk, this gambit is an ambitious chef’s love letter to a city that has grown up alongside him. This could be Paris or London, yes, but the point is this is Vancouver right now.