As good to the eye as it was on the palate, a dusting of duck-fat powder frosted a dish of duck prosciutto, citrus, crí¨me fraí®che, and sunflower seeds—a combination that, when paired with Joie’s Rosé at a recent wine dinner at Gastropod, will be in my top half-dozen food memories of this year.

Duck-fat powder? Now there’s a thought. One day as chef Angus An was searing duck, he sampled the oil it released, and found it tasted of the sunflower seeds that Virginia Jacobsen feeds her ducks at Polderside Farms.

“We cured the duck breast and made the duck fat into a powder,” says An. He echoed the flavour with whole sunflower seeds. The powder dissolves on your tongue and, mixed with the citrus juice on the plate, this deliberate deconstruction of a traditional salad dressing reassembles in your mouth to create the classic blend of oil plus acidity.

Gastropod
1938 West 4th Avenue
604-730-5579.
Open daily 5:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.

An says that when he opened Gastropod 18 months ago with long-time friend and business partner, artist Ken Lum, “We were labelled ”˜molecular’,” which misled a lot of customers who envisaged, well, weird stuff. But arcane techniques are only justifiable, An feels, if they enhance flavour. Take the Nicola Valley venison leg also served at the wine dinner.

“Typically you roast it, and it’s not very attractive,” he says, adding that certain cuts are better than others. So he removed the meat, recombined it with “meat glue”, and created “almost a mosaic” that let every diner experience the five cuts that make up a venison leg.

Born in Taiwan, An, who is 27, moved to Canada when he was 11. His parents were avid cooks. “My whole life, I’ve been eating well. The first thing I ever learned was how to fry an egg in second grade. I could barely see over the wok.” Even then, he was experimenting. In Mandarin, the words for “fried egg” and “bomb” sound the same, he explains, “so I put a whole egg in the shell in the oil.”

His fantasy about owning a restaurant eventually swerved him off a fine arts and architectural path and into culinary training in New York, followed by a cooking stint in Montreal. But it was Australian David Thompson, chef of London restaurant Nahm—the first Thai restaurant to earn a Michelin star, and the place where An met his wife, Kate, who also works at Gastropod—who most inspired him.

“My senses were lifted by him,” says An, who credits Thompson’s teaching with inspiring the oyster dish he feels defines his restaurant. Briny oysters, the sweetness of a Sauternes jelly, the piquancy of a shallot reduction, and the contrast of fiery horseradish made into “snow””¦ Salt, sweet, sourness, heat—here are all the traditional Asian elements, but in nontraditional formats.

“There’s always a component there for a reason,” An says. “With all the dishes, it’s ingredients first. We don’t try to mask anything.” When designing a dish, he will often begin by sketching it. His arts background also comes through in elegantly simple plates and décor that is minimal without being austere.

May is swing-shift time for chefs as they segue from root vegetables to the fresh ingredients coming into season. Soon fava beans and ramps will join An’s pea-and-ricotta tortellini. Local spot prawns will be on his new menu too, served with halibut, and sablefish with clams will be cooked Spanish style al pil pil.

Sloping Hill’s organic pork will be served three ways, this riffing on a single ingredient inspired by An’s time with Thompson. Last year An made a salad of shaved cucumber, cucumber snow, and a cucumber dressing with crí¨me fraí®che and the herbs he grows in a nearby garden.

This is modern West Coast cuisine—gorgeous and sensual, but with a brain. Sometime soon, swing by for the $35 “early bird” three-course dinner, Sunday to Thursday till 7 p.m., or get your name in for what promises to be a memorable seven-course sake dinner ($125) on June 1. It launches with oysters, this time served with “snow” made from wasabi.