OYSTERS AT THEIR BRINY BEST

Fans line up for Fanny Bay faves

Take one grandmother with culinary smarts, a stint as a produce manager, and the early days of Food Network when it was more about chefs than gladiators — mix it up and you get a chef.

“It's what piqued my interest in food,” says Tommy Shorthouse, the chef at Fanny Bay Oyster Bar.

“I'd watch my Scottish grandmother transform ingredients my grandfather brought home from the store. She'd cook the Sunday roasts but also sesame chicken, pad thai, Greek food. She was really versatile, and it influenced me.”

After graduating from culinary school, he worked at Boulevard, Yew, Wild Tale, was co-chef at Tableau Bar Bistro, chef at Homer Street Cafe, and for more than two years now has helmed the kitchen at Fanny Bay Oyster Bar. When he took over, he made qualitative changes, elevating the food while keeping it casual and behold, he landed a Michelin recommendation for the restaurant.

He's focused on seafood — meat makes a cameo appearance in a scallops and pork belly dish, but that's it. And why not, when it's affiliated with the fifth generation of a shellfish-producing family. The Taylor family began Taylor Shellfish Farms in 1890 in Washington and in 1980, added farms on Vancouver Island. The fully integrated, sustainable operation with hatchery, nursery, growing, processing and distribution arms sells mussels, clams and geoduck at wholesale and retail levels. The cool thing about bivalves? They need nothing more than ocean algae for food. Malindi Taylor runs the Fanny Bay Oyster Bar and Shellfish Market in Vancouver.

Seafood quality at Fanny Bay Oyster Bar is evident in the dishes and especially in the display of fresh oysters. “I have such a high regard for oysters now,” says Shorthouse. “I see them like wine with flavour profiles, influences from their environment, the time it takes to age; each one is unique and seasonal.”

This quality has one regular customer consuming a good two dozen oysters. An ardent oyster fan more typically tops off at about a dozen. “It's because we have so many varieties,” says Shorthouse.

Not long ago, I attended a sake paired seafood dinner at Fanny Bay Oyster Bar where Shorthouse cooked dishes to match sakes chosen by a sake samurai — yes, really, that's a thing. His dishes impressed me enough that I vowed to return. Chef, that ethereal chawan mushi with Dungeness crab at the sake dinner humbly asks for a place on the regular menu.

When I returned for dinner, Happy Hour was winding down. And happy is the operative word. “We created a monster,” says Shorthouse. “People line up before two o'clock every day. There are 10 to 20 people. It's definitely popular.” Responding to popularity, Happy Hour stretches from 2 to 6 p.m. Patrons pay a little less for some of the regular items and drinks, which includes an oyster whisky shooter.

You must have oysters here. They're so fresh and briny and taste of innocence. I don't like condiments with them myself, but there's lemon, fresh horseradish, and apple cider mignonette if you're not a purist.

Fish tacos featured very good yellowfin tuna. And as I've suddenly, inexplicably become a potato head and love potatoes, I couldn't resist truffle fries. I'm such a truffle fry pig. Sablefish collar came three to a plate, battered, deep-fried, with peppadew (red pepper) purée and blistered shishito peppers. There wasn't a lot of flesh on the collars, but chef doesn't want good product to go to waste. “I think of them as seafood chicken wings,” says Shorthouse.

The scallops and pork belly dish was a yin and yang contrast with the bouncy simplicity of grilled scallops and the dark intensity of the pork belly. “It's a three-day process,” he says of the pork. “It's cured with five spice, roasted slow and low, rested, then portioned in cubes. Then it's fried in a soy glaze and paired with apple chutney.” The dish is garnished with seasonal products.

A squid ink pasta features scallops and prawns, simply tossed with olive oil, garlic, herbs and chili. The seafood was first rate, and while I'm all for restrained saucing in pasta, this dish could have used more olive oil and seasoning for liftoff.

For dessert, the apple tarte Tatin pleased me to no end with muscle-bound chunks of caramelized apples overwhelming a modest round of pastry beneath and the scoop of vanilla ice cream on the brink of turning saucy.

The drinks menu has a nice mix of B.C. wines and craft beers, a handful of sakes, and several house cocktails. There's French Champagne if you want to take dinner up a notch, and for fun, oyster shooters.

As for the market in the name of this place, you'll find all kinds of shellfish available on the website, as well as chowder and cioppino kits, crab cakes, sablefish, tuna and smoked and canned seafood.

If you come across a server named Ada, say hello from me. She was sunshine on a rainy evening.