Wildebeest: Dine Out 2019

Dine Out Vancouver is a food festival with over 200 participating restaurants that offer 3-course menus at different price points: $15/$25/$35/$45. It’s a fun way to try different restaurants in Vancouver that you may not normally go to.

The third Dine Out I went to was at Wildebeest, a hipster Gastown restaurant featuring simple country cooking. The interior of Wildebeest focus on a lot of wooden furniture, high table tops and brick walls.

Wildebeest’s Dine Out 2019 $45 menu is as follows (you choose one of the following for each category):

Appetizers

For appetizers, we ordered the tuna tartare and the wagyu beef carpaccio.

The tuna tartare was delicious, comprised of line-caught pacific yellowfin tuna and paired with kimchi mayo, hakurei turnips and wonton crackers. The tartare had an almost smoky tuna taste and the portion size was generous.

The wagyu beef carpaccio was also yummy, but I actually preferred the tuna tartare better. The carpaccio came with iberico cheese, long peppercorn, arugula, olive oil and smoked yarrow salt. For the most part, I wouldn’t have been able to tell it was wagyu beef.

Entrees

For entrees, we ordered the duck leg and the steak.

The confit duck leg came with herb polenta, celeriac slaw, sauce gribiche, granberry and krispy kale. I was hesitant about ordering the duck leg as I don’t usually prefer duck. I also wasn’t a big fan of polenta when I tried it in Italy 2 years ago, but I am glad I ordered it because it tasted very different from what I expected.

The duck had lots of flavour, maybe because of the sauce and it was easy to pull the meat off the bone with a fork. The polenta was creamy and almost tasted like mashed potatoes, very different from the bland polenta I had tasted before.

The steak was a grilled flat iron and came with smoked buttermilk mash potatoes, squash puree and huckleberry jus. The cut of steak was not the best, but the squash puree definitely made up for it. We originally thought the portion was small but as we continued to eat we realized it was enough.

Desserts

For dessert, we both chose the milk & lemon, which is a milk & lemon mousse combined with hazelnut sponge cake, lemon meringue and hazelnut tuile for different textures.

The mousse was similar to a pannacotta and was nice and light no matter what you combine it with. I wonder if a small scoop of ice cream would have made the dessert even better. The sponge cake was pretty average to me.

Final thoughts

Wildebeest’s menu also had other recommendations, including sharables and add-ons to showcase some of their usual menu items, which I thought was a smart move. We would’ve ordered some off their al le carte menu if we weren’t alcoholics (we decided to spend our money on cocktails instead).

The service was great, perhaps even almost too great. Our server was super attentive and explained everything on the menu and all of our food. We joked about how we wanted our server to leave so we can finally talk shit.

Good food, good company is always what I hope for and Wildebeest certainly helped deliver that in this experience. I am looking forward to returning and trying their regular menu.

In total, we spent $149 for two people, including two cocktails, tax and 18% gratuity.

Sincerely, Loewe