Elem, a sister restaurant to Zarak, offers great cocktails and food with global influences
Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page.
Elem
Recommended Videos
The unique experiences of Elem owners — Afghan, Indian and Chinese — raises the revulsion of food waste to the power of three. So at this scene-y new restaurant, the complete use of ingredients and, sometimes, the reuse of them, is often the muse for inventive and delicious dishes.
The ethos is particularly dug in with the cocktails. Beverage director Winnie Sun’s next-level cocktail magic includes infusions, stocks, syrups, tinctures and fat washes, made from scraps and even cooked foods like duck, kimchi and fried rice.
“I go after his scraps,” she says of chef/co-owner Vish Mayekar.
I have tested her wacky-sounding cocktails, such as Duck Fried Rice, to see if she pulls it off. She does. Wonderfully.
“I have a concern for the planet,” she says. “And I grew up watching my grandmother meticulously sort through kitchen scraps, ensuring every grain of rice and vegetable peel was repurposed.”
If she left rice uneaten, she’d have to recite ‘Every grain of rice is hard-earned.’
“I honour my grandmother’s legacy and every parent, grandparent who lived through the Cultural Revolution in China by implementing zero-waste practices that seep through in my life,” says the self-taught bartender and former lawyer.
As for co-owner Mayekar, childhood in Mumbai was his forever lesson in food thrift: “There are people who don’t have enough to eat. It’s not just about saving money for us here. It’s about getting as close to zero waste as we can. We’ve even used the leftover copper from our (pickup) pass, turning it into an artifact in the room. They’re gentle reminders.”
“My mother didn’t speak to me for a week when I suggested she cut back her hours when she developed arthritis in her knees,” Sarwari laughs. (He and Sun operate Zarak.)
Restaurants like Zarak and Elem are more than elegance and food allure. I appreciate the depth of care and generosity. Like Zarak, Elem’s warmth is palpable. And while Zarak elevates Afghan food, Elem’s menu is a Venn diagram of chef Mayekar’s life experiences.
“It’s global inspiration from my travels, my childhood, from street foods and most of the flavours are very nostalgic to me. Every dish has some sort of story of inspiration,” he says.
Elem is his dreamed-of debut as restaurant owner.
“I’ve always wanted to be a chef. There wasn’t a single day I didn’t know that,” he says.
Previously, he’s been the chef at Pepino’s and Caffe La Tana in Vancouver, and executive chef at the Cannes Film Festival, three times, cooking for Hollywood glitterati at the American Pavilion. He was also a contender for Top Chef Canada in 2022.
“I love it,” he says of the high pressure. “It’s my fuel, the thrill and adrenalin.”
He’s inspired, too, by his parents in Mumbai, who supported him throughout. He talks to them twice a day, morning and night.
On the plate, his cooking is confident, varied and colourful. Yellowfin tuna bhel ($25) is triggered by nostalgia for bhel puri, a Mumbai street food with puffed rice, chutneys and crumbled puri. This is a designer version, with a nod to the West Coast.
When I visited, I swooned over bread-and-butter brioche with truffle honey and fresh truffles ($12). It has since changed to a rye bread with caramelized shallot jam. I expected crab toast ($36) would be a Cantonese shrimp toast knock-off but it was not.
“It’s a take on what I like to eat,” Mayekar says.
And he loves Dungeness crab salad. The crab is fresh, fluffed, naturally sweet and floats on milk bread toast — delicate but with backbone from a coconut milk and lemon grass sauce with crab and lobster shell broth.
There’s always a pasta dish or two on the menu and, for me, his tenure as chef at Caffe La Tana was a passport to pasta cred. I had a heavenly striped squash caramelle (think wrapped candy shape, $32) with chanterelle mushrooms, miso beurre blanc and pumpkin seeds. It has since been retired and replaced with beet and goat cheese agnolotti with fresh herbs and Sicilian pistachios ($34).
Grilled lamb skewers ($38) with medjool date glaze, ginger labneh and buckwheat has, by popular demand, become the signature dish. Lamb belly, cured overnight, is slow cooked in its own fat, pressed for 24 hours, skewered, glazed, then grilled to order. It’s a flavour bomb!
For dessert, kulfi popsicle made with Hornby Island huckleberries and salal berries found my happy place. Huckleberries are my elusive love. (Currently, the kulfi is currently made with mulberries.)
For drinks, cocktails outsell wines by far but that’s no diss on the serious wine list with bottles from every major wine region in the world, priced for a wide range of budgets. But when you’re staring down a cocktail list that double-dares you with drinks like My Favorite Things, mixing peanut butter fat-washed in whiskey, unfiltered sake, popcorn milk, bird’s eye chili and bag of popcorn, you can’t back down.
“Gorgeous,” I thought upon sipping it.
Ditto, the Tokyo with matcha vodka, banana, shiro shoyu, tonic water, served with a yuzu mochi ball.
My husband, upon tasting The Chef’s Negroni with dark chocolate gin, spent mulberry campari, Stoney Paradise tomato vine, vermouth, finished with apple wood and cedar smoke, declared: “A revelation!” The cocktails, like the food, nimbly enters and exits the menu, with the seasons.
“With cocktails to match,” adds Sun.
A cocktail lab is all set up for mad scientist R&D and maybe a table for a guest to watch this cocktail sorcerer at work.