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Welcome to In The Village on False Creek, a unique project inspired by Live@YVR and 365 Days of Dining. I've moved my family into this community with my mission being to showcase the myriad of things that make it awesome by bringing you a weekly scoop! |
The Daniel Hospitality Group's newest restaurant, Tap & Barrel, is now open in the Village on False Creek! Attached to the Creekside Community Centre at 1 Athletes Way on the seawall, it's two floors of great food, beer, wine, decor and killer patio views.
By "killer" I mean that they're arguably the best views from a patio in all of Vancouver. Seating on the second floor patio as well as the first add up to 280 seats outside. With 200 seats inside that adds up to a pretty grand addition of awesome to our little Village.
Above is a view of the city looking Northwest and if you turn your head slightly and look more North you'll land your eyes on something that the City has given a long term promise of: a direct view of the mountains. Due to view cones that were adopted by the City of Vancouver back in 1989, this view will basically be intact forever, or until some short-sighted council is elected and decides that we don't need to see the mountains to enrich our daily lives as Vancouverites (as in: it will never happen).
The view cones are super interesting and I'm always surprised that not many people are aware of them. If you really want to nerd out and learn more click HERE for all the City of Vancouver info about them. Below is a snapshot of some view cones showing sections G1, H1 and J1 (bottom right) which are all insurance of this and other sweet and everlasting views from the Village of the mountains.
Here's are some of the seats outside on the second floor patio.
And a few of the 77 taps! They've got a total of 25 BC craft beers on top as well as 14 premium BC wines on tap.
Here are some of the wine taps. Each one is chilled specifically to the perfect temperature for the individual wine being poured and all of them are piped up from their high tech cellar in the basement (we'll get to that in a minute).
Something that I always look for are the fine details of a place. Like the side of the downstairs bar being reclaimed siding from an East Van warehouse.
Other details I love are the multitude of creative lighting solutions designed by the founder, Daniel Frankel, himself. These are all metal halide bulbs from old street lamps with a spotlight shining on/through them illuminating the table below. Very cool.
And of course these are repurposed kegs.
And repurposed wine barrels.
Many works by local artists line the walls, including one purchased from Arthur Erickson's estate sale. This Peter Kiss piece was never owned by Vancouver's most iconic architect but it's my personal favourite nonetheless.
And as I'm particularly fond of reading and of community and of libraries I'm incredibly excited about the large lending library located on the second floor. The idea is that people can borrow any of the books from the shelves and bring them back when they're done with them. No need to sign them out, it's strictly honour system. That is so awesome.
Oh! And here's a very quick (4 seconds long!) video of the high tech cellar where the wine and beer is piped up from. GOing from this room all the way up to the second floor are cooling chambers that keep the alcohols at just the perfect temperatures right until the moment they leave the tap and are poured into your glass. And it's not pictured here but another interesting piece of the story of the beer at Tap & Barrel is that instaed of continually having to bring in C02 containers they've bought a Beer Gas producer that essentially turns air into C02 and eliminates the waste associated with traditional carbonation techniques.
http://vimeo.com/46598412
And of course they have food! Lots of delicious food which I'll bring to you at a later date. For now check out their menu along with a list of all of their beers and wines at tapandbarrel.com. They're also on FACEBOOK and TWITTER.
Learn more at TheVillageOnFalseCreek.com and stay tuned each week as I expose other unique qualities of our new community.
