Temporary restaurants are a new trendy concept I’ve read about popping up in major cities throughout North America. Is your restaurant starting to get flat? Are your customers starting to decline? No biggie, tear up what you have and in its place design a whole new temporary concept. Don’t forget to promote the hell out of it, its new! It’s fresh! And hurry its only open for a limited engagement! Restaurant reviewers, grasping for something interesting to write about will rave about this new concept, how fresh. Customers will flock. And so here I am at 100 days restaurant, named for the number of days the restaurant will be open, at the Opus Hotel in Vancouver, I’m just another sheep flocking to the latest buzz. But I hear they make really good burgers and that’s my excuse.
The day that I’m here is day 114, restaurant name change required, so I guess the buzz really is working. The waiter told us that they plan on being open for another couple of months before they tear down and rebuild, this time to what will be a permanent concept. Why be in a hurry to make changes to something that is obviously working.
The concept is a bit lame; they are trying to sell the place as Art + Food – Remixed. But the whole place just reminds me of a cheesy half finished 80’s graffiti rap music video set. They whole design is trying a bit too hard to look authentic, kinda like white rappers, you know what I mean? But then I’m not here for the décor, picnic tables or white linen.
It’s about the burgers and fortunately the burgers are really good, a solid 8.5/10. The burger patty is fantastic, chopped up, not ground, in house, giving the burger a little extra texture. And because it’s processed in house you can order the burger cooked to your choice. I like mine medium rare with just a little pink in the middle. Most outstanding, so why only an 8.5/10? Sadly, the bun sucked. I think it this one backfired on the chef. The bun was baked with dried basil flakes. Sort of like those 99 cent pizza by the slice places around town that also try and get a bit fancy and throw dried basil flakes in the flour dough mix. In the end all you can taste is the bitter dried saw dusty basil all day long. And that’s the way that it was here, a really really poor choice on the bun, all three of us at the table concurred. The more I think about the crappy bun and remember the lingering bad taste the lower I want to go on the burger score, it was just that bad. However, everything else was absolutely fantastic, so in the end a happy medium at 8.5 is reached. Just like the restaurant, I hope the bun is also temporary and will be replaced along with the concept.
Thumbs up on the desert burger, loved it, if only for its creativity and anything burgers is usually a good thing.
Donut (tasted more like brioche) for the bun, a fudge – cookie vanilla ice cream patty, kiwi for the lettuce, strawberry for the tomato, short bread cookie fries, raspberry purée for the ketchup and whipping crème for the mayo.
OK, I’m thinking of increasing my rating to 9/10 for the whole dual burger experience. No can’t do it, that bun was horrendous. Unfortunately one stupid misstep and it throws everything off. So so close to a truly excellent burger.
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