I've long subscribed to the belief that life is about the journey, not the destination.
When we recall a particularly fond moment, the story of how we arrived at that moment is invariably more interesting than the moment itself.
In the scheme of my experience with food, for example, I feel like I have amassed an inventory of very specific interactions that give me license to call myself a foodie: an oyster plucked from a boat in the Arcachon Basin near Bordeaux, sushi from the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, spicy goat kebabs eaten street-side in the sweltering heat of Delhi in the late afternoon.
I wouldn't trade any of those experiences, but when I think about them closely, it is the broader context of those moments that define me as a person. Largely, this broader context is marked by challenges: the challenge of learning about these foods in the first place, the challenge of seeking them out and travelling to them, the challenge of understanding their significance, cultural, economic, or otherwise.
It is a rare phenomenon these days for a meal to present me with the sort of profound challenges that make my interaction with the food itself seem trifling in a larger context. However, my recent visit to the newly relocated Café by Tao in North Vancouver presented me with a host of fascinating, mentally invigorating philosophical challenges that have been on my mind for days.
The Café by Tao has been a mainstay of vegan and raw cuisine for Greater Vancouver for years. In mid-April, they moved to a larger, fully renovated space facing Esplanade Avenue. Their service is friendly and knowledgeable and the considerable care that is put into the preparation of their food is obvious in every painstakingly assembled, decorative dish.
Now, I'm not vegan. However, it seems to me that there is absolutely no reason why I ought not to enjoy vegan cuisine. I eat everything, after all. And herein lies the first challenge presented to me by Café by Tao: vegan cuisine is not just another culinary style, it is part of a much broader perspective on the world and the rights of all of its inhabitants to a self-defined existence free from both harm and the whims of the human appetite. I respect the discipline required of vegans and, on a certain level, I agree with some of their principles. Nevertheless, I could not escape feeling a sense of culinary voyeurism as I partook of Tao's vegan fare, as if I was some sort of interloper, a spy from the barbecue camp sent to gain intelligence on the other team.
Tao's new space is welcoming, bright and spacious with alluring scents of herbs and spices and the warm chatter of patrons who seem right at home in the updated digs. I found the menu fascinating, filled with items that sounded familiar to me, like lasagna, falafel, pizza, and burgers. This familiarity, however, turned out to be in name only and presented me with the second major challenge of my meal: forcing myself to consider my pre-conceptions about what constitutes foods that bear familiar names.
The falafel, the first item in my meal, was a flavourful, artfully crafted dish, comprised of house-made falafel, nut cheese, tomato, cucumber and sprouts, all wrapped in a supple, ruffled lettuce leaf. The dish was a success overall, but so dramatically departed from my understanding of falafel, with its traditional tzatziki, hot sauce and pita bread conventions, that it left me considering how powerful language can be in setting false expectations.
Next up was a bowl of borscht, served here cold and presented without the usual dollop of sour cream.
The soup was fantastically colourful, the bright beet pinkness preserved with a splash of vinegar, an essential ingredient in conventional
borscht that added a welcome acidity to Tao's earthy rendition. After the soup came lasagna, for me the biggest head trip of the meal. While I tend to build lasagna with layers of ricotta, fior di latte, broad noodles, and sometimes even béchamel sauce, Café
by Tao fashions theirs with thin strips of zucchini in place of pasta, interspersed with nut cheese, marinara, marinated mushrooms, and spinach. The raw vegetable lasagna is served cold and the ingredients retain their natural crunch and flavours. In retrospect, I think this lasagna was a touch too ambitious for someone like me. Firmly rooted as I am in the conventions surrounding that dish, its rawness challenged my threshold for innovation. While the lasagna was clearly well thought out and delicately executed, my palate was ultimately frustrated by the paucity of dairy richness and unfamiliar temperature. It is worth noting, however, that upon completion of my meal, I didn't suffer a feeling of overindulgence, which is so often associated with these items when prepared by more traditional methods.
Café by Tao is located at 131 West Esplanade in North Vancouver. taoorganics.com
Chris Dagenais served as a manager for several restaurants downtown and on the North Shore. Contact: hungryontheshore@gmail.com.
