Forage: Dine Out Vancouver 2021
Dine Out Vancouver is a food festival where participating restaurants create 3-course menus for a set price. This year the festival takes place from February 5 – March 7 and instead of having set prices, it is up to the restaurant to decide how much their 3-course menu will be. In previous years, it was set to $25/$35/$45.
Forage is a farm-to-table bistro located in downtown Vancouver. This review is based on an in-dining experience.
Interior
I quite like Forage’s interior – I especially like their front door lol. It has a lot of wooden elements and almost a Japanese-inspired aesthetic. Seats are comfy even though our table was squished right next to the little waiter/waitress station.
Food
Forage’s Dine Out Vancouver menu is $38 per person and includes 4 courses. We also share a bottle of wine for $55.
Course 1: Butternut squash velouté
This is a creamy squash soup with hazelnut and a parmesan crisp. The flavour is light and slightly sweet and the texture is thick and creamy. In general, it is a decent squash soup.
Course 1: BBQ duck chowder (+$6)
You have to pay an additional $6 for this soup but I wanted to try it anyways since they claimed it is “award-winning”. The chowder comes with a dungeness crab and shrimp toast.
I liked the toast actually even though it tasted more like bread with some prawn flavour. I liked dipping it in my chowder and eating it together.
The chowder is pretty decent as well but it tastes like a normal chowder. I was expecting a stronger BBQ duck flavour mixed into it.
Course 2: Seven spice Albacore tuna crudo
This tuna crudo appetizer comes with pickled shallots and a miso-dare sauce. Not gonna lie – we were not impressed upon first impressions because the portion size is too small for our liking (2 pieces). The pieces are thick and tasty, but it was gone in a flash.
Course 2: Duck liver parfait
This appetizer looked more appealing to us. The duck liver parfait block is quite big so we really slathered it on our toasted crostini. I liked the onion relish it came with and the quince jam was a nice touch too.
Course 3: Gelderman Farms Pork Tenderloin
I didn’t eat this so I don’t have much to say about this entree, but here is what the pork entree looks like. Again, it looks small but I think that’s mostly because of the small plate. The dish comes with apple pomme puree, braised red cabbage, chicharron and smoked pork jus.
Course 3: Smoked Gindara sablefish
I chose this entree because I love sablefish. The sablefish sits on a bed of lobster mushroom risotto and some sunchoke chips on top. Again, portion size looks small but since sablefish is the main (and not the risotto), I was ok with the sizing.
The sablefish was soft and had great texture. My friend found it too salty but I felt mine was ok. The lobster and mushroom risotto was creamy but not too much lobster flavour.
Course 3: Bison steak (+$8)
my boyfriend chose to pay an additional $8 to try their bison steak. It is a butcher’s cut Canadian bison steak with potato pavé, roasted carrots, brussels sprouts and bordelaise sauce.
It is a nice steak and we expected it to taste a little gamier than a beef steak. Again, the presentation makes us think the portion size is a little small.
Course 4: Ambrosia apple tarte tatin
I love apple tarts so I choose this dessert. It comes with a pecan citrus cake, caramel custard crème and vanilla chantilly cream.
The actual apple tart is quite big so I was happy since we’ve noticed a trend of small plating so far in the Dine Out menu. I liked the crumble that comes with the apple tart and overall, it is a sweet dish without anything sour or salty. I wish there was more puff pastry surrounding the apple tartin.
Course 4: Caramel chocolate and hazelnut bar
I didn’t try this dessert, but this is what the chocolate dessert looks like. The chocolate bar comes with ginger spiked roasted pear, Earl Grey ice cream, and spiced cookie crumbs.
Overall, my friend said it is a very sweet dessert so it’s more for those with a sweet tooth!
Final thoughts
Loewe’s rating: ⭐⭐⭐
After tax and tip, my boyfriend and I spent $100 on this meal because we put the wine on our tab and had extra add-ons to the menu.
Generally, I wasn’t too blown away by any specific dish in Forage’s Dine Out Vancouver menu. I usually am not a fan of the add-ons in a Dine Out menu because it can feel like we’re being upsold on something.
Usually, Dine Out menus only have 3 courses, but Forage throws in a 4th course so I suppose that makes up for the smaller portion sizes. Note that for the first course, only the squash soup is part of the tasting menu. The other 2 options are additional $.
Even though I mentioned the small portions throughout this blog post, we were full by the time we left the restaurant. I think this is a mixture of having 4 courses but also the longer wait times we experienced. The timing between the 1-2 courses were very fast, but our entrees and desserts took a long time and we had to ask what the status was on our order.
In conclusion, Forage has a decent Dine Out Vancouver menu and it brings bang to your buck if you don’t do any of the add-ons.
Sincerely, Loewe