Lee's Candies fire closes historic sweetshop

by John Burns on January 20th, 2007 at 9:43 PM

Updated March 7

Back in January, we ran the following post about the number of fires closing food shops around the city. With last night's fire in Point Grey, we've now lost Lee's Candies, one of the oldest shops in the frantically gentrifying PG Village. There are still holdouts in the city for those seeking an indie bonbon, but their number is shrinking faster than our waistlines are swelling. Pity...

January 21

Walking by Benny's Bagels, at Broadway and Larch, this afternoon in search of coffee and a squealer, I was dumbstruck to find the windows papered over. Turns out there's been an oven fire - closed till further notice.

I went to the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority's Public Health Protection - Environmental Health [pdf] page - which is always a nailbiter for me - to see the official order to close, but they're only updated to January 5. I scrolled the Vancouver restaurants, but given how often I eat out, I decided to stick to the ignorance-is-bliss side of the street and quickly closed it.

Benny's joins a list of restaurants that have closed for fire in recent years, including:

Kitto Japanese Restaurant (1995)

the Macaroni Grill (1998)

Bud's Halibut and Chips (1999)

South Hill Candy Shop (1999)

May Sum Place Seafood Restaurant, Bee Kim Heug Beef & Pork Jerky Ltd, Soma, and Monsoon (2001)

Fred's Uptown Tavern (2001)

the Coquitlam Keg (2003)

Java Xpress coffee shop, Natural Garden, and Brick Oven Pizza (2005)

Moderne Burger and Dan Japanese Restaurant (2005 - next door to Benny's)

DV8 (2005)

Normandy Restaurant (2005)

Le Gavroche (2006).

And then there's this report from the Western Report. Aug 23, 1993.Vol.8, Iss. 30; pg. 24, which begins:

On a slow Tuesday night two weeks ago, Palminder Sangha and his son, Satnaur Singh Sangha, closed up their Pizza King restaurant in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey at 11:00 p.m. and headed home. About six hours later a passerby saw smoke streaming from the building and called 911. Fire fighters arrived, located the source of the blaze in a pizza oven and quickly put it out. The sight that greeted them as the smoke cleared turned the stomachs of even veteran police officers. Stacked neatly on four metal trays were the charred, dismembered remains of a human being.

Can you think of more restaurants that have closed for fire in the last decade or so? Send in a note. Thanks to Amanda for four of the above.