Hip Acme Cafe is a diner novelty on Hastings
It’s Tuesday morning at Acme Cafe, and a middle-aged SFU film instructor is clearly enthralled by his dining companion. She, a 20-something student, dwarfs him in stature and hipness. The pair are, seemingly, the epitome of the new Woodward’s-inspired eclecticism.
“I love your hair,” Professor Geeky declares. Then, they talk about art.
I know this because I can hear them, two booths away, at this diner on West Hastings near Abbott. The reason their conversation is audible is that the restaurant’s background noise is nearly nil. Because Acme doesn’t have a deep fryer or a grill, there’s no whirring fan noise, no banging of pots. With just low-volume jazz, it means this is a near-mythical entity: a Vancouver diner that’s quiet enough for conversation. Eureka.
“I’m getting to be an old lady, apparently,” co-owner Peggy Hoffman told the Straight by phone, explaining why she created the peaceful vibe. Later, the former Teahouse in Stanley Park and Bishop’s server noted, “Anyone who opens a restaurant, what you see is an extension of themselves and the ultimate place they’d like to eat.”
What you see is gorgeous. This is a 21st-century take on art deco—no authentic Hastings lunch counter ever looked like this. Cream walls; warm, brown booths and floor; ceiling fans languidly rotating over plants and a pantheon of tall, happy, mature servers and cooks.
Among them is a cofounder of the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts, chef Walter Messiah. After selling his restaurant in Provence, he returned to B.C. looking for a small, family-style kitchen. He found it at Acme, and Hoffman is thrilled.
One Saturday night, Messiah was turning out a fresh, French-inspired take on diner fare.
I ordered the chicken soup, which was a gem of diced breast meat, lemony broth, noodles, kidney beans, and perfectly tender celery and carrots. The quiche, with its fragrant caramelized onions, baby shrimp, and sliced Portobello mushrooms trumps any I’ve made at home. My husband’s club sandwich distinguished itself with a dense layer of crisp, smoky bacon. My surly toddler rejected the house-made kids’ macaroni and cheese, but to my taste it was sophisticatedly al dente.
A word about Acme’s quiches and pies: they’re fabulously crusty. Even the bottom of the quiche was crispy. Hoffman calls Acme’s pies her babies, and she displays several each day in a tiered “cradle” in the centre of the horseshoe-shaped counter to lure diners. The trick to making perfect crust, she explained, is the correct oven temperature and a mix of butter and shortening. At $4.75 a slice, the pies are a steal.
Alas, the low-noise kitchen setup has a cost. No deep fryer means no French fries; the potato chips that fill in are from a bag. There is also a certain reliance on premade, heated-to-order food.
When I was in for breakfast, I asked if the French crepe (which contains chicken breast, Swiss cheese, béchamel sauce) could be made vegetarian. The server explained that because the crepes are premade, that would mean picking out the chicken. No thanks.
Instead, I went for the Baked Egg Scramble: a small dish of flavourful potatoes nicely roasted and topped with free-range eggs, fresh green onion, feta, sun-dried tomatoes, and meaty strips of Portobello mushroom. It came with three half-slices of multigrain bread and a fruit cup (three grapes, two razor-thin slices of apple, and half a strawberry). The dish was nice but a bit skimpy, so the $10.50 price tag felt steep.
Perhaps this is HST shock, but breakfast—including drip coffee, tax, and tip—was $15.72 for this lone diner. For two adults and a toddler for dinner, with one Pop Shoppe pop and three slices of pie, it was $55.
Maybe this is Vancouver’s new mid-income reality: brown-bagging it at lunchtime and treating yourself to upscale fare on Fridays. One trip to Acme—including pie—is worth skipping days of nasty takeout elsewhere.
Acme’s greatest impediment is its location. The restaurant is sandwiched between Model Express, a store that sells mile-high hooker heels, and a construction site that’s soon to be a swank condo. Two nearby overgrown lots, surrounded by chainlink, are the backdrop for a thriving marketplace of crack, meth, and heroin.
That is to say, the presence of the Woodward’s development hasn’t led to the gentrification of this street. Instead, there’s a détente between the demographics. For example, on the Saturday night, a bearded man wearing a scruffy jacket lurched into the restaurant and hovered in a corner. A server discreetly approached him, and the man left. On his way out, the server gave him a warm wave—no fuss, no rudeness on either side. A perfect handling of what must be a common Hastings Street encounter.
Comments
15 Comments
Organ Morgan
Jul 28, 2010 at 11:14am
A pox on the Acme Cafe. May it die a slow, cash-draining death for its blunt displacement of a community of people with real lives and problems beyond choosing how their coffee is prepared in the morning. It obviously seeks to capitalize on some edgy slumming hipster vibe, so may that fly in its face. There's a neighbourhood for this kind of enterprise-- it's called Kitsilano.
unknown sample
Jul 28, 2010 at 1:42pm
Good for them. I hope their business is successful. Will check it out.
Nice to see someone working towards making things better rather than moaning about the socioeconomic disparities and other far left class warfare rhetoric bunk.
East Ender
Jul 28, 2010 at 2:12pm
really^? so its better that its an abandon or derelict building>? the community needs a mix of people to help normalize as much as possible.
We need more places like this to go to in my community not less.
DTE Sir
Jul 28, 2010 at 6:39pm
Organ, having lived in the neighbourhood for 25 years I welcome a business that isn't dealing death or selling people's souls. So, not a lot of people will eat there because of the prices, still give it a chance and stop hoping for the worst for our beloved neighbourhood.
East is Least
Jul 29, 2010 at 11:29am
I've lived in the neighbourhood since the early 90's and I have to say seeing life, not death come back into the heart of our city is refreshing. Saying that I think that businesses moving into the DTES have to be price aware. $15 for a breakfest is a stretch for most, even me. Despite the new condo-crowd moving into the hood there are still lots of broke artists and struggling people living in the cracks. I think if they want to hit it with the locals they need to be more affordable.
Organ, do you need another pawn shop or over-priced corner store to make you happy? The party is OVER.
Bubba
Jul 29, 2010 at 5:52pm
I guess the best way of handling a situation like the DTES is to segregate eh Organ? That usually works! keep the poor with the poor, rich with the rich, gay with the gay, blacks with the blacks and the drug addicts with the drug addicts. Use you head! You actually think a cafe selling good pie is the enemy? what about the crack dealers and the homeless hating cops? pick your battles better and enjoy a nice piece of home made pie.
Eat the rich
Jul 30, 2010 at 11:22am
Waiting for a Starbucks to open on East Hastings. That will be the turning point of no return.
Organ Morgan
Jul 30, 2010 at 12:23pm
Everyone understandably espouses a healthy mix of people and classes in the DTES. That would be great. But check back in a few years when there are several more Acme Cafes operating in the same area and see if there is a healthy mix of people and classes then. Poor folk need places to live their lives, socialize, shop and feel comfortable, and as things are "progressing" there are fewer and fewer such places in Vancouver. Shooing away homeless folk so that yuppies can enjoy a blight-free backdrop to their eggs benedict does not mesh with the proud (albeit hard-knock) community spirit of the neighbourhood. These businesses need to show more respect to the community and not make an edgy buck in spite of it.
Minus 30 rating. Wicked.
Acme Cafe
Jul 31, 2010 at 9:54am
Thank you everybody for your input into this discussion. We feel the troubles in the DTES are complicated and "gentrification" isn't necessarily a term that accurately describes what is happening in the area. Yes, there are condos and higher income people moving into the area, but there is also low-income housing that is there to stay. I've never worked in a restaurant with such a wide range of customers - from elderly West Van folks to the "Poor Folk" you talk about, Organ. Anybody who comes through our door is treated with respect and welcomed, and we have many low-income regulars who are very happy to see us in the neighbourhood. That being said, we don't have a $15 breakfast. $10.50 is the most expensive thing on our breakfast menu (free-range eggs are not cheap!), and we have many breakfast items and baked goods less than that. Having a boarded-up ghetto isn't going to help anybody in this neighbourhood. Having places where everybody is welcome to come and enjoy some food and feel at home, no matter what their walk of life is, WILL help to make this a neighbourhood again. Maybe you should drop in sometime and have some pie and see what is going on before you decide that any new business in the area is evil. This area is starting to feel like a neighbourhood again, and it's the mix of people that's making it feel interesting and alive.
Ray I
Jul 31, 2010 at 2:40pm
I like the idea of mixing different types of people in that neighbourhood. I lived down there for 5 years during the late 90's. I drank in the dive bars, ate breakfast at the Ovaltine and shopped at burgers at Save-on-Meats (please bring it back) and bought my staples at Army and Navy. I made a good living and could afford to go elsewhere but I grew up in East Van (not DTES) and always loved the unique character.
It saddens me that those who need help down there are being held chemically captive by the drug dealers and those who our tax dollars are paid to help them (the povertarian industry). Keep the good and get rid of the bad. And by good I don't mean the expensive, I mean that which adds positively to the community.
I can't see why the prices at The Acme should be so high? It isn't the high rents I can tell you that. For the same price as they are charging I can eat in Yaletown or Kits or the Alibi Room. What's wrong with this situation?
But it is a business (and one presumably not another front for selling crack and heroin) so we should let the market decide it's fate. I will probably not eat there but if enough people do then best of luck to the Acme.