Chef Angus An, seen here with his elevated take on pad Thai, closed his acclaimed Gastropod restaurant earlier this year and replaced it with the Thai-themed, value-driven Maenam.

Credit: Doug Shanks

ON THE PLATE: Maenam takes Thai to a new level

Maenam
1938 West 4th, 604-730-5579, Maenam.ca
Food: 5 stars / Service: 4 stars / Atmosphere: 4 stars / Value: 5 stars

Whatever anonymity I might have enjoyed during my first few visits to Maenam was blown out of the water before I walked through the door. I’d interviewed owner and chef Angus An several times before, and traced the arc of his highly anticipated new restaurant’s evolution since it was but a vague idea. I was so eager to try it that I asked for — and was granted — access to Maenam’s kitchen the night before it opened in order to preview almost every item on the menu. Therefore, what follows is not so much a review as it is an announcement and a declaration: Maenam is here, and it’s the best restaurant to open in Vancouver so far this year.

First, some background. Chef An, you might already know, is one of Vancouver’s young culinary powerhouses. After graduating from UBC with a fine arts degree in 2001, he moved to New York City to apprentice at Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s JoJo while studying at the French Culinary Institute, where he graduated first in his class. The next few years were spent in Montreal, working with chef Norman Laprise at his acclaimed Restaurant Toqué. To round out his education, he toiled at such U.K. giants as the Fat Duck, Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons, and Nahm, Europe’s only Michelin-starred Thai restaurant.

It was at Nahm that An met Kate Auewattanakorn, a young Bangkok-born woman working the front-of-house. The two would soon marry and return to Vancouver to open Gastropod, the restaurant that, together with next-door neighbour Fuel, would lead the charge in rejuvenating Kitsilano’s dining scene. At just 29 years old, An had become one of the most exciting chefs in the city.

Fast-forward to the fall of 2008. The economy is in crisis, and Gastropod, which had won the Best New Fine Dining prize in the previous year’s Vancouver Magazine Restaurant Awards, is beginning to suffer the effects of the recession. Vancouverites are eating out less, and aiming for cheap and cheerful rather than refined and pricey. To meet the challenge, An could have dumbed down Gastropod’s cuisine and started sourcing cheaper ingredients of questionable providence and quality. Instead, the solution lay in retooling his long-term plan to eventually open a second restaurant: an authentic and affordable eatery that would draw on Auewattanakorn’s heritage and An’s experience in the kitchen at Nahm, where he worked with David Thompson, one of the world’s foremost authorities on Thai cuisine. Instead of looking for a second location in which to house that second restaurant, An and Auewattanakorn decided to close Gastropod and shelve its name for the time being (although it’s still being used for a sideline catering enterprise), transplant the Thai concept into the Gastropod space, and warm the room with new tabletops, cool pink hues, bamboo frontage, a livelier soundtrack, and a rejuvenated bar program. After a month-long renovation chrysalis, Maenam was born.

Just over a month after opening, it hasn’t been the look or the feel of Maenam that’s gotten people aflutter. It’s the food. This is Thai unlike any I’ve tried before. The four palate pillars of sweet, salty, sour, and spicy are exquisitely balanced, and the presentations are colourful and meticulously thought out. There are no shortcuts taken with any of the dishes, and genuine attention is being paid to the wine and cocktail programs, too (thanks to manager Tara Tom and barman Ben de Champlain). As such, Maenam can’t be compared to other Thai restaurants in Vancouver, much like Vij’s can’t be compared to other Indian restaurants. It’s simply in a league of its own.

I’ve eaten just about everything on a menu that is free of duds, so rather than describe everything, I’ll just recite my favourites:

Tom yum gung, a “cloudy” hot-and-sour prawn soup ($14), is presented in pots for two, and is a masterful exercise in subtlety, with gentle chili spicing countered with pakchi farang (cilantro) and layered with complex, super-intense flavours. Nahm dotk neua ($13) sees slices of hangar steak given a kicky treatment of chili powder and ground toasted rice in a cooling salad of mint and cilantro. Geng panaeng neua ($16), a complicatedly rich, sweet, salty, nutty, and highly aromatic beef curry comes highlighted with nutmeg and enough Thai basil to start a garden. Geng gwio warn ($16) is an uncharacteristically thin green curry of halibut, resplendent with nuanced heat that is well met by clove-noted holy basil and gingery grachai. There are also the requisite satays (pork and chicken; four for $8, and served with a superb peanut sauce) and a pad Thai ($13) that easily puts every other pad Thai that my taste buds can remember to shame.

The almost ridiculously low prices are a reminder that Maenam was borne in the midst of a restaurant-killing recession, and with both lunch and dinner service (not to mention a special late-night menu, all the better to get the most from a 2 a.m. liquor license), it’s clear that An isn’t leaving much to chance. And he shouldn’t. Closing a successful brand in order to open another in its place is rarely advisable, but An has navigated the transformation exceedingly well. His pre-emptive strike will more than likely be remembered as a stroke of genius.

If you’ve been holding your dining dollars in reserve, it’s time to let them out to play.