Hawksworth: Anniversary dinner
Hawksworth is a Pacific Northwest restaurant located in the heart of downtown Vancouver, right next to the Rosewood Hotel Georgia. Pricewise, it is classified as 4 dollar signs ($$$$) so it is on the more expensive/fancy side when it comes to dining.
We decided to book Hawksworth to celebrate our anniversary. This is because we like to celebrate special days with fancy food. Unfortunately with covid-19, it has been hard to do so. It has been a long time since we dined out in a restaurant so we were slightly nervous to see what the experience would be like.
Interior
We are lead to the front door, where a hostess is waiting with a face mask on. The hostess wishes us a happy anniversary and another server shows us inside to our table. All the servers wear face masks.
As expected, the tables are spaced out appropriately and they left tables around you empty so the next closest table is 2 tables away. We are seated in a corner near wine cellar room. Seating is comfortable, lighting is dim and the ambiance is romantic.
Washrooms are very pretty with marble patterned flooring and walls. Everything feels very clean.
Food & drinks
Hawksworth has a very attractive 3-course lunch menu, but for dinner it is al le carte. We order the starters and mains we want to try.
Drinks
We are presented with 2 glasses of sparkling – this is a gift from the restaurant to celebrate our anniversary. They give this to us right when we sit down (before we even start ordering), which is a very nice surprise and gets us in a giddy mood because we are alcoholics. They also give us a handwritten card from the team, which is also very sweet.
We order a bottle of Gewürztraminer for $58. Side note that their cheapest bottle of white wine is around $48 and they don’t offer half bottles. The Gewürztraminer is smooth and sweet with a nutty smell.
Shares
From the shares menu, we order the seafood platter.
Seafood platter ($26)
The seafood platter comes with oysters, clams, mussels, tuna tartar, mignonnette cocktail sauce and lemon. Now compared to other seafood platters, this one looks much smaller with less items in it.
The oysters and clams all come from Vancouver island and it’s actually my first time eating a raw clam so that is interesting and refreshing (tastes like the ocean!). The oysters are sweet and taste great with the cocktail sauce. The mussels have a yummy sauce on top – tastes like a lemon mayo?
The tuna tartare in the middle is yummy as well. I am surprised to find they have rice under the tuna tartare (so it’s not all tuna!). The rice is seasoned to taste like sushi rice with soy sauce.
Focaccia bread
Focaccia is a flat oven-baked Italian bread product similar in style and texture to pizza dough. We receive some free pieces of bread because we thought bread would be free and our server tried his best to make that happen lol.
Tastes great with the olive oil!
Starters
For starters, we order the steak tartare.
Steak tartare ($25)
We love steak tartare! Hawksworth’s steak tartare is hand cut with crispy garlic, smoke yolk purée, crostini shallot, cornichon and capers. They accompany it with large crispy chips.
I don’t know why I thought the tartare would look really big – maybe it’s because of their Instagram picture. I think I thought the yolks were all egg yolks 😂
The tartare is actually a really good size for 2 people to share. It was savoury and spread nicely and evenly on the chip.
Mains
We order 2 mains, one for each of us.
Beef tenderloin 6oz ($53)
The plating is nice but our eyes are glued to the beef tenderloin because it looks perfectly medium rare. Also, it looks so soft! Very delicious looking. For a side of vegetables, they have asparagus, pommes pont neuf (Partisan fried potatoes) and a watercress salad. The béarnaise sauce goes amazing with the potatoes and the steak – super buttery and yummy.
I love potatoes so I especially enjoyed the partisan fried potatoes. I first thought they were polenta fries, which I don’t enjoy as much. The inside is like fluffy mashed potato.
Sablefish ($43)
Usually, their sablefish dish comes with white beans, but I ask them to replace this with potato, in which they did replace it with a potato gratin. Aside from this, the dish includes shallots, chorizo dry cherry tomato, and a herb salad.
Really enjoyed the jus/sauce that came with this sablefish dish – it complements the fish perfectly. The fish itself is so soft and moist, falls apart with the touch of your fork but the outer skin is still kind of crispy. Very sweet tasting fish.
Albeit, the potatoes don’t go super well with the broth but it is interesting in its own way. They have some sort of minced meat in between the layers so it’s kind of like a potato lasagna.
Dessert
We order 2 desserts and they both come with a chocolate sign that has “Happy Anniversary” written on it – a nice touch.
Caramel cardamom pot de creme ($12)
This dessert is presented in a cup and has vanilla bean breton, soft salted caramel and whipped creme fraiche. The portion size for this dessert is actually quite hefty and the caramel flavours are very strong. The cookies on top are salty too so it actually makes the caramel taste even sweeter.
All in all, this dessert was kind of a miss for me but I have never been a big fan of caramel.
Apple tart ($12)
Hawksworth’s apple tart looks like a deconstructed apple tart with soft almond praline and vanilla bean ice cream.
The apple tart filling is very unique as they cook it in thin layers and each layer is bursting with apple flavour. It goes really well even if you smash it all up and mix everything together. The ice cream, almonds and the chocolate sauce (which is slightly salty!).
Final thoughts
We really enjoyed celebrating our anniversary at Hawksworth. It is our first experience here and we were blown away by their level of service. Even after booking online, I received a personal email thanking me and asked if I had any special requests. I selected anniversary in my booking, which is probably the reason why all the servers were constantly wishing us a happy anniversary (they said it to us at least 12 times). Even as we left, they gave us free pastries to eat with our coffee or tea the next day. We really appreciated all the little things the team did to make our night feel extra special.
Food was delicious and portions were perfect – we left not feeling hungry but also not too full. Presentation was classy and there always seemed to be a unique aspect to each dish.
In total, we spent close to $300 after tax and tip – this is mostly due to the bottle of wine we ordered. For the food and the experience, Hawksworth is worth the money and we are excited to return again for another great experience.
Sincerely, Loewe