Hawksworth Nightingale Restaurant Vancouver

I am back, with our market back to normal I have committed to blogging regularly again. With our website glitches finally fixed, I can feel good about blogging and sharing my experiences as well as tips on just about anything and everything. If you read my blogs in 2012...I wrote one everyday for 365 days of the year or pretty close to it....well I am not sure I can do that but I will average 5 blogs a week for the rest of 2019. I figure put it out there and well I will commit to it. 

So my first real blog back is foodie related. As many of you know my husband and I are self professed foodies. Since we aren't drinkers (well my husband doesn't drink and I only drink once in a while) we tend to enjoy going out to good restaurants and enjoying a meal. We can probably spend what many will spend on food and alcohol on just food alone. To be honest, I do drink once in a while as I mentioned...but I just cannot justify spending money on drinks at a restaurant....the cost alone is ridiculous. (This is where my husband would call me cheap...so be it then I am cheap... :) 

Working downtown Vancouver my husband gets the luxury of frequenting many of the local restaurants with his colleagues and for work functions. Last year he took me to Hawksworth's Nightingale restaurant for the first time and I fell in love with their food and ambiance. So when we were looking for a place to eat last minute we headed downtown for dinner and decided on Nightingale. 

One of the things I like about the restaurant is being able to walk in on a Saturday night and actually get seated...even if we have to wait a bit. It is definitely worth the wait. In order to reserve we would have had to go at 4:30 or 10pm...well neither times we were interested in having dinner. Not many places hold aside a few tables for walk ins....either that or that is all they do which tends to make the wait that much longer.

Nightingale has 2 floors and a ton of staff. We sat downstairs in the main part of the restaurant this time and the service was impeccable. Their food is designed for sharing and would be a much better place to visit with friends so that you can try more of the dishes...as we always order way too much because everything is so delicious and hard to decide. We were attended to by a number of staff, from hostesses to our server and many others throughout the meal. Because of this they give you small plates that are replaced often throughout the meal. Serving utensils are set out on the table for the various dishes that you order and staff are quick to remove the finished dishes to allow room for the next ones to arrive. I was mentioning to my husband the various reasons I enjoy this type of dinner out....the variety of foods to try for one, but it is also a good thing for the restaurant too as they can serve things as they come up instead of having to coordinate dishes. The chance of sitting for long without food is pretty slim. 

A few of the dishes we recommend, we started off with a salad - Apple, walnut, celery, tarragon, avonlea cheddar, lemon vinaigrette...which was delicious...although I was expecting it to have lettuce. I enjoy celery but felt it could have done without the celery. 

Then we enjoyed the fried chicken the last time so had to get it again - Buttermilk fried chicken, spiced maple syrup, sumac, pickles....the chicken was so tender and not greasy at all. You can never go wrong with pickles as an added touch...not sure that I enjoyed the sumac sprinkled over top...I don't believe they served it that way the last time. But still overall we ate every last piece...so it couldn't have been too bad.

Then we had a pasta special - I do like pappardelle pasta....this was done with a pork ragu...delicious...no need to say anything more. This is not a small plate....easily we could have shared with another couple. Needless to say we had some leftover to take home.

Then we had -  Grilled hanger steak, red onion agrodolce, gorgonzola butter, horseradish with Roasted mushrooms, madeira, rosemary butter, pickled red onion...
The steak with so tender we could cut it with our butter knives and even though we aren't fans of gorgonzola we were assured it was a very mild taste and sure enough it was. 

Now I could have done with one or 2 less dishes, my husband's eyes are always bigger than his belly...but one of the main reasons I wanted to have dinner here was the dessert I remembered so fondly. Even though I was full...I couldn't leave without having their -Salted caramel pot de crème, whipped crème fraîche, butterscotch, vanilla breton....I would have been happy with a small bite or 2...but the one thing my husband will not share is his dessert. Ask any of our friends, they think it is hilarious....but dessert is off limits. 

For more details about the restaurant check out the following link: Nightingale