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To restaurant patrons of a certain age (and here I mean myself and my Generation X peers), there are few sights in a restaurant as unexpected — and as immediately nostalgia-inducing — as carpet.
Throughout the 1970s and well into the ’80s, carpet was the default floor covering of almost any restaurant whose parking lot wasn’t bathed in the neon glow of an illustrated hamburger. Pizza Hut was carpeted, and literally every Chinese joint, and so was “the good steakhouse” where your parents celebrated special occasions without you. But then, for whatever reason, carpet fell sharply out of favour — in both commercial and residential interiors — to be replaced with hardwood, laminate or poured concrete. And restaurants were never quiet again.
Meo, in Vancouver’s Chinatown, is filled with carpet, from the raised dining section at the back of the room to the entire width of the staircase leading downstairs to the toilets. The carpet’s dominant crimson hue is marbled with beige, like a premium ribeye served at that same steakhouse your parents knew was too sophisticated for your loud, obnoxious, prepubescent mouth. This may seem too minor a detail to be occupying the first three paragraphs of a restaurant review, but it telegraphs Meo’s concept as clearly as anything else about it.
Like its upstairs neighbour, Kissa Tanto (both of which are under the ownership of restaurateur Tannis Ling, and chefs Joël Watanabe and Alain Chow; they also co-own Bao Bei), Meo is serious about its food, drink and atmosphere, but playful about it, too; as exacting about what it serves as the time and place it means to evoke. The cocktail list includes an irreverent version of a Grasshopper, for God’s sake — a cocktail that hasn’t been popular since cars came factory-equipped with an 8-track player.
“Irreverent” is a key word here, which is why Meo’s proprietors clearly spent a fortune to make it look like a perfectly preserved adults-only lounge from the era when the Mr. Trudeau governing Canada was the one who has now been dead for almost a quarter century. (It came as no surprise that it’s the work of Ste. Marie, Vancouver’s cleverest and, it often seems, most ubiquitous interior-design firm.) A new restaurant would never purposely look like this in 2024 unless it meant to make you laugh in disbelief.
And laugh we did. But we also smiled contentedly, and exclaimed enthusiastically about a succession of drinks and shareable plates that straddle past and present like Bruce Springsteen’s setlist.
Mind you, we laughed (amusedly, not derisively) at some of the food, too. How else is anyone meant to react to croquetas filled with Caesar salad? And not authentic, fine-dining-calibre Caesar salad, but chicken Caesar salad, which most of us tend to associate with a sad office lunch in a plastic clamshell bought hastily at Safeway. But they were great, their crisp breaded exterior stuffed also with an incongruous Béchamel sauce. I wanted another order.
But there were too many other dishes to try, including the ethnic collision that was a Japanese-style milk bun filled with curried potato, which we were instructed to tear into pieces and spread with dabs of apple butter. Sure, why not?
Yukhoe, the Korean equivalent of tartare, was also highly memorable. Neither Kley nor I can ever get enough of a tartare, and this one — garnished with Nashi pear and nori alongside the expected cornichons, capers and egg yolk — looked as if it had too many elements to cohere, but somehow it was a success. The shards of semolina cracker we scooped the beef onto were both shatteringly crisp and appealingly dense. Our only criticism is there weren’t enough of them.
But the evening’s showstopper — and this seems to be happening more and more recently — was a burger. Specifically, what the menu describes as a beef bourguignon burger. Frankly, I couldn’t detect an obvious similarity to the eponymous French stew (and I’d have preferred half as much salt, although Kley’s Indonesian taste buds had zero complaints), but I still devoured it like the highbrow trash it means to be.
Cocktails are similarly mischievous in terms of how they defy expectation. I was forewarned that the Old Fashioned I ordered has proved divisive among customers because it doesn’t taste much like an Old Fashioned. And it doesn’t, but this is exactly why I enjoyed it; its chocolate bitters, splash of rum and — wait for it! — “duck fat wash” cancelled out the inherent sweetness of the conventional version, which I’ve always thought excessive. Kley opted for one of Meo’s own creations, called Sinful Blossom, which comes in a stubby bottle and somehow makes gin, port, rosé, salted plum and Osmanthus tea seem like they were always meant to be together.
Among the many ways Meo harks back to a long-gone point in history — it even has a vintage jukebox, albeit purely decorative (please do something about this!) — it feels reminiscent of the post-war period when adults who took themselves out for a night on the town actually acted like adults. Between its dim lighting, plush seats, and casual yet deferential service, Meo, above all else, feels very civilized, which can’t be said about most things in the 21st century. Must be the carpeting.
Meo
265 E. Pender St.
604-559-6181
meochinatown.com / Instagram: @meochinatown
(Photo: Kley Klemens)
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