What is street food? Street food is good food that's not fancy. It's a great meal you can order quickly, yet without feeling like you're supposed to leave fast. It's food the locals usually know about--food that you don't feel strange eating by yourself, but are always glad to reveal to a special friend. Street food costs less than $10 per person. You order it at the counter, or at least pay for it there.
Pea Soup, Please
Restaurant review by Alana McFarlane
Cafe S'il Vous Plait is hardly your greasy spoon diner. It's on the
corner of Robson and Richards in downtown Vancouver, and to some it's not even obvious
that it is a diner.
I've walked by Cafe S'il Vous Plait for twenty years, ever since I started making the trek downtown with my grandmother in the 70's. I remember the plants--the windows, which bend around the restaurant's face, are filled with plant species galore. Snippets of vines, three-foot-high palms, and bouncy ferns vie for sunspace. But somehow it never occurred to me to try the food until eight months ago.
Tired of crappy Japanese, and disappointed with the one health food outlet in the mall, my regular Thursday lunch mate and I brainstormed somewhere new to eat. Somewhere we could sit and have a good conversation without cell phones ringing in our ears. I don't remember who thought of it--I think it was Bonnie--but we ended up in front of the black, narrow swinging doors on the corner of Robson and Richards one Thursday afternoon.
What immediately hit me was the faint musty smell--not wholly unpleasant. (Bonnie couldn't smell anything.) I was skeptical of this new place. I have a nose's nose, and if the food wasn't really good, I mean REALLY good, I knew the restaurant would sink into my collection of "problem" places, places we'd go to only if we couldn't think of anywhere else, and only if we didn't feel like tempura grease. Needless to say my critic meter intensified.
Small black wooden booths lined the Robson Street side of the small room, matched by a soda bar across the aisle. The Richards Street side of the restaurant sheltered two-person booths with black tables and wooden chairs. I felt strangely at home here.
An artist type smiled at us and stretched his arm towards the row of mostly empty booths. (It was 11:45am. Bonnie and I liked to beat the lunchtime rush for seating.) Geez, the booths were small. Bonnie, a formidable woman in both character and size, squeezed in without too much complaint.
The waiter brought us laminated menus. The selections were simple but appetizing and familiar: peanut butter and banana sandwich, macaroni and cheese with salad, soup…ah yes, soup, the true test of a kitchen. I ordered the pea soup over the mushroom or borscht. Bonnie ordered the same, recalling that a long time ago it was good.
Our lunch came in under seven minutes. We were presented with a generous bowl of pea soup, nice-looking salad with shredded carrot and cabbage, and a half slice of corn bread. That bread! It was so good. It became something of joke every Thursday, as I always seemed to get the bigger piece. Bonnie even started asking our regular, good-natured waiter for the bigger piece. And yet, somehow, she always got the bitty one.
The corn bread caper was as reliably funny as the soup was good. A little salt, maybe, was all that was needed. Filtered water arrived at our table as soon as we sat down. The table was always clean.
Now, even on rainy Thursdays, Bonnie and I still make the four-block hike to our favorite lunch spot. (Four blocks is a fair distance to go when it's raining in downtown Vancouver and the foodfair is just beneath the office tower.) We've even devised a special rainy day route, cutting through Eaton's to save two blocks.
Pea soup, salad, and corn bread--$5.75. It's a deal. I haven't tried anything else, but when our waiter whisks someone else's lunch plate to the next booth, it always smells good. I guess someday I'll get tired of the soup and begin exploring the menu. Quiche perhaps. I'll let you know when I do. Until then, it's "Pea soup, please".
Cafe S'il Vous Plait, corner of Robson and Richards, Vancouver, B.C., Canada