WHAT to do with an extra hour in the day?
Some people might have picked sleep as the best way to spend that gift of 3,600 seconds, but for me an extra hour on a Sunday meant more time to seek out good food.
Not long ago, a reader told me I should check out Sharky's Chophouse in Lonsdale Quay, a butcher shop that also sells readymade meals: pulled pork, glazed ham, beef stew, barbecued chicken, plus fixings like potatoes and veg.
A cold and drizzly Sunday seemed like the perfect backdrop for rib-sticking food like that, so I headed for the waterfront.
Sharky's is lined up against the west wall of the market, a tidy operation with a long cooler full of fat steaks, trimmed and ready for seasoning; kebabs marinating in flavour baths; sausages; stuffed chicken breasts, pork ribs and loins . . . the options for home-cooking are almost unlimited. But I was most interested in the hot case squatting at the business end of the counter; and, so it seemed, were most of the other market visitors passing by.
"Hi Rob!" they called out as they checked what was being sliced up for the day's specials and took their spots in line. In the two years it's been under the ownership of butcher Rob Jang, Sharky's has clearly built a following for its ready-to-eat meals: $7.95 for your choice of meat and sides.
"Having the fresh meats allows us to offer the hot meals to our customers at quite a reasonable price," he explained as he dished it up. And although the breakdown is about 65 per cent fresh meats to 35 per cent hot food, Jang said he serves about 140 meals a day from the hot case.
I took a bit of everything. Jang sliced up sweet chili-glazed ham, meatloaf and barbecued beef brisket and loaded it into takeout containers, as well as mashed potatoes and a hefty slug of thick gravy - enough for my family (two adults, two children with smaller appetites), and all of it for just $34.88.
Back home I unloaded my fragrant, meaty treasure.
Shiny with glaze and studded with flecks of chili, the ham was pink and succulent. Unlike so many iterations of it, Sharky's meatloaf was juicy, and got a flavour boost from diced veggies mixed in and a layer of gravy slicked on top.
My favourite, though, was the brisket. This beef cut is taken from the breast section beneath the first five ribs, behind the foreshank. It needs long, slow cooking to break down the collagen in the connective muscle tissues. When you buy it at the grocery store, it's usually been trimmed, but the best-cooked briskets still have the fat (called the deckel) attached.
Sharky's brisket was marbled and still had the fat on. It was smoky, salty and fell apart at the touch of fork tines. It didn't really need the gravy to add moisture, but we drizzled some of it on, and on the mashed potatoes, thick-chunked and with their red skins crushed in.
This is good eating, and about as close to a hearty, home-cooked meal as you're likely to pick up from a retail counter.
Sharky's Chophouse is in Lonsdale Quay, 123 Carrie Cates Ct., North Vancouver; 604-980-9870.
Deana Lancaster has been writing about food and wine since 2000, and worked in restaurants for more than a decade before that. She is passionate about good food. Follow her on twitter at Twitter: @deanal, or send her an email to [email protected].
