Oh, Manny
Thirty years ago, Vancouver ordered wine from a short list. Then came Le Gavroche and Manuel Ferreira to change how we wine and dine forever, for better.
By JURGEN GOTHE. Photography by GAETANO FASCIANA

Right from the start it always was about the wine as well as the food. Oh, maybe not the very beginning: the days of shelling 20 pounds of peas after school, or shepherding (it just sounds better than chicken-herding, doesn’t it?) 175,000 fryers, or farming tobacco.

Anyway, there’s not much you can do with tobacco besides rolling it up and setting it on fire, which hardly makes it something special in the culinary department. No, it keeps coming back to the wine selections of Manuel Ferreira, of Le Gavroche, Vancouver’s popular bastion of French cuisine.

Regulars affectionately call it “The Gav,” him “Manny.” And there are legions of regulars, 30 years worth of them. This fall is when The Gav celebrates three solid decades as the French-food flagship for our city, an impressive statistic by any set of standards, especially in a mercurial industry where longevity and success often are measured in terms of months or seasons, occasionally years, rarely decades.

The original “Gavroche” was a street urchin in Les Miserables, cheeky, scruffy, a bit of a rebel. It seemed as good a name as any for founder and first owner Jean-Luc Bertrand 30 years ago. Of course, there already was a famous Gavroche in London’s Upper Brook Street, which preceded ours by a decade. The brothers Roux, Albert and Michel opened that in the heart of the swinging city in the year of Sgt. Pepper’s and proceeded to build it into what eventually became a Michelin three-star eatery. It is still hard to get into on short notice. Somewhat simpler to get into this one, on lower Alberni Street.

Here sits a fixture of Vancouver’s fine dining scene, in a gently refurbished two-storey Victorian house with a fireplace, a terrace up the stairs with a sweeping Vancouver harbour and mountain view, a private dining room on the main floor where this correspondent has enjoyed a number of fine special dinners, from winemakers’ events to an after-the-fact cast-and-crew feast for my wine entertainment Up Your Glass following last year’s Playhouse Wine Festival.

Now “fixture” suggests stability and steadiness, sure, but even a touch of the stodgy sometimes. Not so at The Gav, especially with regard to its wine list. They’re all here: the Viogniers, and the Pinots Gris, the Okanagan head-benders like Joie and Laughing Stock, Tinhorn Creek and Mission Hill; the super-Tuscans and the cult Californians, and still, and always, the fabulous French.

“In the beginning, when I joined [Ferreira came here in 1985, the same year I started DiscDrive] it was French and French only,” he reflects on the then-cellar and the then-approach to matching wine with the food. There wasn’t all that much “matching” going on. “Well, it was a very good base, wine-wise, all those French labels and a couple of imports, from California: Parducci Cabernet/Pinot, Chateau St. Jean [the one that’s sounded as in Miss Brodie’s first name, not the ex-prime minister’s] and a Paul Masson white blend.” Ferreira fondly recalls with a little smile, that it was often requested as “chableese.”

Under Ferreira’s tutelage the cellar expanded to areas other
than Burgundy and Bordeaux, filling the gaps – still from France: the Loire, Rhone, Alsace, the south and the rest of the world’s most famous wine country’s produce. And then it came time to look at the rest of the world, particularly the new world.

It’s a measure of the man and his completely open-minded approach to wine that he became Vancouver’s first fine-dining restaurant to serve Yellow Tail by the glass. “Well, why not? It was consistent, good value, decent drinking wine and people wanted to try it.”

“Give the customer what he wants” was not necessarily the total operating manifesto at Le Gavroche, but it plays a part in the way the menu as well as the wine list has changed over the years.

Are Vancouver’s diners more sophisticated, then? Ferreira offers another term. “I think Vancouverites are much more aware, more conscious of the ingredients, the sources. They want to know where it originates, the style of farming, especially when it comes to raising meats and fish, growing vegetables.”

The focus of The Gav’s food is French; the focus of the wines is the world. Ferreira’s own background in both is solid, if eclectic: he came on to the restaurant scene well into his 20s. As for food, that interest began very early on. On the farm.

An agronomic engineer by profession, with some French kitchen training, he grew up on a French farm. But don’t think quaint homestead with hand-pumped well water and a bicycle or at best a rusty Deux Chevaux for transport. This was life on the farm. But what a farm: “We were doing mega-farming in those days, among the first in France to do the large factory-style operation. ... 175,000 chickens, maybe 25,000 pigs.” It gave him a firsthand, on-the-ground look at mass-farmed meats and he doesn’t recall it with any great fondness. There was an air about the family, and it wasn’t Chanel. “When we went to church on Sundays, they always knew ‘here come the Ferreiras’” Manuel recalls wryly.

His parents abandoned the mega-farm concept and came to Canada, near Montreal, where they got into tobacco farming. “Tobacco didn’t do anything for me,” so he hopped the GoTrain to Toronto and went to work in the business that would occupy the next few decades of his life, the one he’s still in: restaurants. He came west on a vacation, in the spring of 1978. That year, in April, Le Gavroche opened its doors to begin its marathon run as the city’s pre-eminent French restaurant. Ferreira stayed, finding work: Mulvaney’s, The Cannery, the Harbour Centre revolver, Grouse Mountain and the late, not very lamented Maximilian’s Symphony Hall. “I changed jobs four or five times in as many months! What was there? The Napoleon, William Tell, Umberto’s Le Cote d’Azur. That was about it in Vancouver then.”

Eventually The Gav’s founder Bertrand called him and said, come and join me. Bertrand would retire in 1993 and died in 1995. Manuel Ferreira became sole proprietor. And set about expanding the cellar again, in a bigger way.

Ferreira’s love of food developed from direct contact – growing, cultivating, working on the farm. Even the shelling of 20 pounds of peas after school was part of the process of getting into hands-on working with food. It’s what led to the current manifesto: “If you start with good ingredients, you end up with good food. You can be the best cook going but you need to know your basics and where the food comes from. And how it’s grown. And eventually cooked and served.”

And who has passed through his kitchen over the years? Pierre Dubrulle was one of the first chefs; Scott Kidd and Dino Renaerts, various others, some still cooking around town, others elsewhere in Canada and the U.S. And the front of house staff has always been attuned to the feel and the ambience of the place itself. Manager Adam Rennick “just does a remarkable job,” says Ferreira with pride. And the current cook? “Stefan Pimenta has been here five years. He was sous-chef before being exec.”

Pimenta is of that old-style breed of chef who can cook anything instead of having just a narrow focus. His background is Indian; Goan, actually. You’ve eaten his food in the past at the likes of Circolo and at Herve Martin’s famous Hermitage. His training is French. His creativity is all over the map. And his basics are grounded. He’ll do you a traditional sauce grand veneur or a proper omelette fines herbes if you like, or something tomorrow-new and West Coast such as Seared Diver Scallops with Corn Fritters and Sevruga Caviar (Ferreira will pair it with a glass of Chateau Baret ’02), or a Venison Flank Chop with Strawberry Ketchup and Chocolate-port-fig sauce (and he’s got some Mission Hill Syrah Reserve ’01 as a companion).

But Ferreira himself presides over the cellar. All those wines, all those vintages. The cellar has won an arm’s-length list of awards from anyone who counts. All those new things. How do customers respond to his carte? “People here are a lot more open-minded about what they drink with dinner. It was his predecessor, Bertrand, who really started the ball rolling with regards to recommending wines for dinner – tell me what you want to eat, what you want to spend, what you like or don’t like and I’ll make a couple of choices for you. These days, 75 per cent of customers never look at the wine list, according to Ferreira. “The wine list, any wine list, is only a guide as to what’s there; at the end of the day it’s just pages of paper; a road map to what’s down there.”

And just what is down there? Maybe 25-, 30-thousand bottles, with vintages dating back to 1916. And where’s the cellar? Ferreira is understandably cagey about that: “Oh, they’re safely stored in various locations.”

Has he tasted everything in the cellar? “How could I? Most of it, though. Not the one-offs. Otherwise they’d be no-offs now.” But when it comes to something different or special or new or just curious, Manny’s your man. I have never known him to fail in a recommendation. “I love recommending wines. But it’s like anything else, you need to get to know the recommender in order to trust him.”

What’s it like running two restaurants at once? As well as the downtown Gav, there’s the upper Kerrisdale Senova, off The Boulevard, specializing in his own native Portuguese and other Iberian cuisine. Ferreira admits that it is a challenge. Will he do a third? It’s all the rage in Vancouver right now – Andrey Durbach, Wayne Martin, Jack Evrensel’s Top Tables, the Glowbal Group all have ended up with three, even more restaurants.

Ferreira admits that a real down-home Iberian-style eatery might work some time. Some place. “Everything in the food industry is cyclical,” he observes. “It’s all about fashion and trends in so many ways. Right now the Spanish-Portuguese thing is pretty trendy.” He is quiet, perhaps just sensibly cautious, about plans to open a restaurant attached to the Tinhorn Creek Winery near Oliver, in the South Okanagan.

I have to ask: what about Daniel Boulud coming to Vancouver? “I think it will be very good for our restaurant industry.” But is Vancouver ready for New York style, and more important, New York prices? “We’re a funny city in some ways – the consumers are very knowledgeable about food and wine but also very spoiled in terms of pricing.”

I always like to ask about comfort food, favourite chefs and restaurants. Manuel Ferreira likes barbecues at home on the back deck. And a platter of his house-mad – and house-sized – Portuguese pork and clams with a bunch of bread to sop up the sauce. A little iced vinho verde.

“I go to see people when I go out to eat, but of course the food has to be good. But to say one chef is better than another makes me a bit uncomfortable. Like, according to what? Whose criteria? Restaurants are really all about the whole package, the total experience.”

But he does admit to a fondness for Osteria Napoli, and their once-in-a-while roast suckling pig dinners; Tapastree off Denman at the bottom of Alberni for sheer convenience and their delicious small-plates-to-share; Simba on Denman (“He never gives you a menu, just asks ‘how much food do you want’?”) “And a handful of others, depending on the mood.”

Of course, stellar and award-winning wine cellars are now the norm in Vancouver, rather than something rare. Consider those of Fuel (the Riesling shrine), or Joe Fortes, the good buys at Al Porto, the discoveries in Umberto’s Il Giardino cellar (you come for the rare Italians and stay for the fabulous French). Raincity Grill has it sewn up for by-the-glass choices, and CinCin as well as West can do you high-end surprises that’ll delight your guests and cause flutters in the wallet.

Fine finds at beyond at Century Plaza too, and lavish La Terrazza and the cozy Parkside; John Bishop’s personal picks in his personal restaurant to be sure. And dozens more. When the Wine Spectator’s Awards of Excellence are handed out, there’s a special shipment earmarked for Vancouver.

These are the owners, sommeliers and superchefs who’d readily give a nod to The Gav’s pioneering wine list. Did Manuel Ferreira get it all started hereabouts? He certainly had both hands in it. And a great head for the world of wine.

Let’s stock a mini-cellar with Ferreira’s desert-island wines. He’s a big B.C. booster so unsurprisingly there are lots of Okanagan wines on his list: Black Widow, the Black Hills Carmenere, Quinta Ferreira (no relation) who do a “terrific, serious rose.” Mission Hill pretty much across the board. CedarCreek Pinots. The emerging portfolio from the Similkameen Valley’s Seven Stones and “for dollar value, it’s pretty hard to beat Tinhorn Creek.”

And for that let’s-keep-it-apocryphal-for-now last meal? Ferreira gets a little philosophical: “Well, as we get older, health issues start to loom.” So he thinks a minute and calls for “blood sausage with orange and mint” and a good bottle.” I press a little more: “If it’s summer, vinho verde, in winter a big, robust red.”

Earlier this year, Le Gavroche did a Big Bottle wine dinner, with a half-dozen serious – and expensive – vintages from the darkest depths of the cellar. It was an experiment and, yes, the demand is there for another. Stay tuned. Save up.

“But you know, it’s not a one-man show,” he says. “There are a lot of people here, and many more who’ve come and gone, who have helped make The Gav a success over the last 30 years. They get a lot of the credit.”

We toast them all with the last few drops of “just something from the cellar.” Ferreira didn’t show me the label, but I know it’s not of this decade, or even the last one. Nor is it from this continent. But it’s definitely from his cellar. And it sure went down good.

Cheers, everybody – past, present, future; kitchen, servers, front end, suppliers – on the occasion of the 30th. Thirty, eh? It’s a great time to be alive and cooking.

Lunch and dinner are served at 1616 Alberni Street downtown. Lunch Monday thru Friday, dinner every night. And there’s that special room downstairs. Full of history, and not too far from some of those amazing wines. It’s always been about the wines.