Where the food is as artistic as the lobby sculptures

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Listel Hotel

Listel Hotel chef Chris Whitaker.

By Julie Hatfield Globe correspondent  January 09, 2016

VANCOUVER, B.C. — It wasn't just the stinging nettle risotto or the rhubarb shrub (with spruce tips) or even the chickpea miso hazelnut ice cream in the restaurant that made us love the Hotel Listel.

It was also the metal man sitting just outside the front door, created by Israeli sculptor Boaz Vaadia, and the whimsical metallic female sculptures at the elevators that jiggled as you walked by them. A raven mask used for potlatches looks out from a hallway wall. Written on the front window of the hotel is Theodore Roethke's "The Waking." ("I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.")

It's an art hotel, sure, that connects with the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. The lobby, the 129 guest rooms and public spaces throughout are packed with original art from both First Nation artists and international painters and sculptors. Everywhere, beginning with the welcome mat at the front door, are philosophical sayings about art and life, such as the Marcel Proust's quote: "The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes."

The Listel is also a green hotel, with solar panels on the roof, geothermal heating system throughout, and a zero waste philosophy with nothing going into a landfill. Refillable bottles in each room are for the free, unlimited, still or sparkling water that flows from taps located in the halls of the pretty building.

But the restaurant — Forage — is the star of the show. Chef Chris Whittaker is known, after just three years, not only for his award-winning creamy spot prawn chowder with poached egg and smoked chicharron and for all of his adventurous, unpretentious food, but most recently for hiring what may be the only full-time, in-house fermenter in North America, if not the world.

Todd Graham, who was head brewer at a local brewery before taking food fermentation classes, works with Whittaker to present the most amazing, strange-but-delicious dishes using as many local farms as possible and fermenting for up to two years. An appetizer featured kimchi deviled eggs, a side dish was hay-smoked confit potato — and a homemade flaky cream puff with mead-spiked cherries with loganberries was definitely worth the time and trouble.

Whittaker offers a special "Forage in the City" package that includes two nights at the Listel, breakfast, and a 10-course West Coast seasonal tasting menu at Forage, a two-hour rainforest walk and food identification tour with the chef, a private preserving workshop to make mustard and jam, a welcome gift of pickles and blueberry rosemary jam, and a foraging cookbook, for $899. Regular room prices at the hotel, at 1300 Robson St., start at $189 in the winter and $259 in the summer.

Listel Hotel

Chris Whitaker (right) and local brewer Todd Graham team to make creative dishes for Forage, the hotel's restaurant.

Julie Hatfield can be reached at julhatfield@comcast.net.
Source: Where the food is as artistic as the lobby sculptures