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Born in the U.S. and raised in Toronto, Claire Livia Lassam moved to Vancouver in 2007 and, upon discovering the neighbourhood on and around Commercial Drive, found the community she never knew she needed.
After more than a decade working in local restaurants, she and husband/business partner Jordan Pires opened the Italian-themed Livia (also known, variously, as Livia Sweets and Livia Forno e Vino) in January 2019. Beginning as a bakery and café, it was an instant hit. After surviving the pandemic by repurposing a side window for walk-up takeout service, Claire and Jordan gradually introduced brunch/lunch menus, weekend dinners, and wine and cocktail programs (including an expansive variety of Negronis).
At the time of this writing, Livia has just celebrated its fifth anniversary and is more popular than ever.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
What’s your earliest memory of being taken to a restaurant?
The first good restaurant was Millie’s, which was owned by my godmother’s friend’s husband. We’re not close, but he did get me my first restaurant job. It was just a nice, simple Italian restaurant on Avenue Road in Toronto — it wasn’t fancy, but it felt special when we went there. Also, when I was really little, my dad worked at the University of Toronto, and nearby there was a mussels restaurant. It was very industrial — very low chairs, a very high ceiling — and my dad and I would sometimes go for lunch and eat mussels. I didn’t get a lot of one-on-one time with my dad, so it felt really special to do that.
How old would you have been then?
Probably six or seven.
And you liked mussels! That’s very advanced!
My two-year-old hammers clams; I think they’re his very favourite food. But also, I just wanted my dad to be impressed by me. I think even if I hadn’t liked [mussels], I would’ve eaten them so he’d think that I liked them, to make the time we had together feel more special.
Also, my family would do these huge road trips every summer from Toronto, to visit one set of grandparents in Nova Scotia and the others in Connecticut, and we would go into little lobster-shack kind of places on the coast, which were wonderful. Those were probably my happiest, earliest restaurant memories.
Do you think you had an uncommonly sophisticated palate as a child?
No. I think I just really wanted my dad to love me. (laughs) Which he did! But I just wanted to impress him. My sister was very picky about food, so I think I tried to be the opposite and try everything. Our whole lives revolved around the kitchen; that was really the crux of our lives growing up. I’m very lucky for that.
Who was the better cook?
My mom, by a landslide. My dad was a scientist, so he was very good at following recipes but not very good at time management on recipes, so he tried on occasion. But they were usually spectacular failures where people ended up eating at midnight and I ate Kraft Dinner and went to bed earlier.
When did you move to Vancouver?
2007. I came here for culinary school. I finished high school, I was working in a restaurant and I injured my back, so I wasn’t able to work full-time, and I was just sort of a depressed teenager. I needed a change. And I really hated school — I was very much the black sheep of my family in that way. I didn’t like sitting still for very long. So, the program at Northwest Culinary [Academy of Vancouver] was four months, and I thought, “I can commit to that.” I applied, and then they called me a week before the semester started and said, “Somebody just dropped out. Do you think you could show up next week?” I had literally nothing going on, so I did.
While I was still in school, I worked at Chill Winston [a long-running Gastown restaurant now occupied by Local Public Eatery]. Not a great restaurant, but it’s crucial to my life because that’s where I met Jordan, and now we’re married. I have very fond memories of working there. And then I worked at Nu, and Cioppino’s after that.
You’ve both lived and worked on and around Commercial Drive virtually the entire time you’ve lived in Vancouver, starting with Little Nest. (Editor’s note: Little Nest was a beloved daytime café, at Commercial and Charles, that was designed to accommodate parents with their young children. It closed after six years due to serial rent increases.)
I lived upstairs from there, and so I was there all the time. I was totally broke, and my best friend also lived in the building, and we would go down as often as we could for breakfast. And then, when we were really broke, we would make Little Nest-style breakfasts at home. So, I felt like I had three years of training — of trying to make their breakfast — and then when I finally worked there, I felt like I was very well prepped for that job. That was definitely my favourite job I’ve ever had. I’d worked at a lot of restaurants that didn’t offer great examples of leadership, which I think is fairly typical, and Mary [MacIntyre, owner] was the first person who showed me that you could lead with compassion and you could put your staff first. I think about it a lot here [at Livia], in how I try to lead and to build community. Little Nest was the first place where I worked that really took the neighbourhood into account.
What was it that drew you to this neighbourhood?
There’s a warmth here that doesn’t exist in most other places in Vancouver. Vancouver is a very cold city, and Commercial Drive feels warm. People talk to each other, they hang out. To be a neighbourhood, you need to be able to buy your groceries there. If you have to drive to do that, you don’t live in a community. And there are so many greengrocers here, so you talk to neighbours while you’re grabbing apples and some bok choy.
Vancouver has never been lacking for cafés, especially in recent years. Was Livia your way of redressing what you perceived to be a lack in other cafés.
Absolutely. I really love, when you’re travelling, you find those little places where you can get your coffee and pastry in the morning, but then you can stay and the experience changes throughout the day, or you can go back [later in the day] and it feels different. Those sorts of places don’t exist here a lot. Also, this is changing now, but there was a long stretch [when it came to the interior design of Vancouver cafés] of white walls, pale furniture, sort of Scandinavian. I wanted a place that felt a bit worn-in, a little comfier. It had to be painted by hand. I love those little worn textures; they’re so important. I do think most people, when they walk in here, their shoulders drop a little and they feel relaxed. That’s the goal. Whether or not they understand why they feel that way, I don’t really care. I just want them to be happy.
What came first with Livia: the concept or the availability of the right space?
We waited a long time [a year and a half] to find it. I was willing to adapt things for the right space. My dream was to do everything that we’re doing here now, but if we’d found a perfect space that was smaller, maybe we would have just done the bakery. Bakery equipment is very large, so even for a small bakery, the kitchen has to be huge.
Other than the introduction of dinner service, what do you think has been the most significant evolution of Livia since it opened?
Probably the takeout window. That window was already there [when Livia first opened], but we had a shelf in front of it. And then during the pandemic, we thought, “We have this sliding window. People don’t have to come inside.” That saved us! We wouldn’t have survived COVID without it. And Vancouverites love brunch and they love baked goods.
How do you think you and Jordan complement each other in terms of what you bring to this place?
We get asked that a lot. He and I have very different skill sets. I wouldn’t want to work with someone who was my equal in baking or had the same creative vision I have for the food side of things. Jordan understands business in a way that I don’t. I would never have got through the pandemic without him. I wasn’t adaptable to that extent, and he was very good at seeing the bigger picture and navigating through.
Which Vancouver restaurant do you think more people need to know about?
Can I give a two-part answer?
Elephant gets accolades, as it should, but I still think a lot of people don’t know about it. Justin [Song-Ell, chef]’s food is so weird and extraordinary; every single thing he cooks, I think, “Man, I would never have done that!” I love the lens through which he looks at food, because it’s just so different from mine. I hate going out for a meal that I could just cook at home, and I’ve never made anything like anything Justin has made.
I also really love Delara; I think Bardia [Ilbeiggi, chef] makes such beautiful Persian food, and he’s also just such a sweet soul. And I don’t cook Persian food at home, so every time I go there, I’m like, “Whoo! That’s exciting!” I just really appreciate places that buy the same quality of ingredients that we buy and do things to them that I would never do.
I hate it when people call chefs artists. We’re tradespeople, but there is a wonderful creativity to what we do, and there’s a true joy in having your horizons opened up by food.
Jewkarta 