VanFoodies.com

For a going-away party, Mr. and I went to St. Regis Bar and Grill near Pacific Centre. Because it’s connected to the hotel and judging by its exterior, I’ve always thought this is a high end bar; to my surprise, it’s just a fancier sports bar and the menu is quite reasonable. We were seated in the downstairs area, which is a huge open space for parties. In addition to the 12-15 of us, there was another group of 20+ guys. And there’s still tons of space left.

Food

I ordered the Sirloin Beef Dip and paid an extra $1 for yam fries and chipotle mayo. The menu says garlic baguette but what I got was toasted brioche, soft and pillowy, not hard and crunchy like baguette. I don’t mind that since I’m a sucker for brioche bread. There was a decent amount of meat, pretty tender and had good flavour. What made this a tasty sandwich was the dipping jus. The bun and meat just sucked up all the flavours from the jus and then you just can’t help but keep eating it. The yam fries was crispy on the outside and sweet and soft inside. The chipotle mayo was rather oily so I opted for some ketchup instead. All this, was only for $13 (including the extra $1 for yam fries) – I say a pretty good deal.

Sirloin Beef Dip - Thinly shaved sirloin on garlic baguette with rich red wine au jus, served with yam fries and chipotle mayonnaise

Mr.‘s Halibut and Chips, on the other hand, was a hit and miss. We were already a bit skeptical about getting halibut because if it’s not done properly, it could be tough and dry. It turned out to be quite good. The batter was light and not overly oily. The halibut was flaky and moist, although for $17, I’d probably expect the fish pieces to be a bit bigger. The disappointing part was the fries, the easier part of the dish. It was stale and hard, with no flavour at all. Mr. would rather help me finish my plate of yam fries than tackling his regular fries. Interesting enough, though, another person at the table ordered fries with her sandwich, and her fries were much better than Mr.‘s. Still not that great but at least they were crispy and had flavours. We had guessed that she got a fresh batch whereas Mr. was the unlucky individual with the old, stale batch.

Halibut & Chips - Three flaky "Ocean Wise" halibut pieces in our light beer batter served with fries and homemade tartar sauce

Service

It was a Saturday night and with two big parties in this room downstairs, I was surprised to only see a couple of servers working the floor. In fact, one of them finished her shift halfway through our dinner so really, there was only one server for a room of 30-40 people. It took awhile for the food to arrive, especially later on when we placed some drink orders. I would’ve been happier with the service if they had one or two more servers around.

Final Thoughts

Overall our experience there was not too bad. Given its location, I thought St. Regis is pretty reasonable, and would make a great hangout spot for students nearby, or even for work lunches and dinners.

St. Regis Bar and Grill
608 Dunsmuir Street, Vancouver
604-696-5558
stregisbargrill.com