Opus Bar & Restaurant

Restaurant: Opus Bar & Restaurant

Cuisine: Tapas/Global/Contemporary

Last visited: November 10, 09
Area: Vancouver, BC (Downtown/Yaletown)
350 Davie Street
Price Range: $10-20

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: Tres Excellent!!

Food: 1.5 (for the 2 things I tried)
Service: 3
Ambiance: 5
Overall: 2
Additional comments:

• The Opus Hotel Bar/Lounge
• Offers gourmet bar food/tapas
• Savoury and Sweet small bites
• Trendy
• Very nice, but pretentious atmosphere
• Offers bigger tapas/smaller tapas
• Banks on the name to carry the food
• Go for drinks/atmosphere

**Recommendation: n/a

Opus Bar & Restaurant is more for drinks and atmosphere than food. I came here for one of their parties and we decided to order some small bites. The restaurant is kind of split into thirds - a section for the bar, a smaller and more private room for dining (the restaurant), and then half the space is for their the lounge. I find Opus more of a lounge than anything else though.

It definitely has that Yaletown feel and attracts the yuppies that live in the area. With its impressive interior and upscale decor you would expect the food to match to some degree...but it didn't and I was so disappointed. The food came across as "you don't really order food at Opus Lounge". Does that make sense? I felt like they used the Opus name to carry them and the food did not come up to standards of what they aim for.

On the table:

• Empanadas De Mole 1/6
• Corn tortilla stuffed with chicken, corn and mole served with guacamole and salsa $8
• It was pretty much a battered corn tortilla. They were so small! Maybe the size of a gyoza. Empandas can either be deep-fried or baked...depending on what kind of Empanada you are making. These ones were deep-fried and not authentic at all. They were "American" Empanadas - not Spanish, not Latin, not Chilean, Portuguese or anything.
• Even if Opus was going for a fusion thing rather than an authentic thing they did a poor job. There was barely any stuffing. No chicken, maybe only a couple shreds that were dry and no sauce inside. No mole, nothing. Maybe 2 corn kernels, and I couldn't even taste any sauteed onions, which is a must in any type of Empanada. I was shocked that they would serve these.
• The only good thing was the sauce underneath it. I guess it was their twist on guacamole. It tasted like a thick yogurt dip made with pureed green peas, jalapeno, and avocado. It was really interesting and I would have enjoyed that with a bowl of tortilla chips 100 times more than the Empanadas.
  

• "O" Pizza 2/6
• Daily creation $10
• The positive: thin crust and a decent size, I expected smaller.
• It was a thin crust pizza with housemade marinara sauce, salami, cheddar cheese an chopped fresh basil.
• This was one of the oiliest pizza's I've ever had. No joke. I don't know if the salami made it extra oily. It wasn't even necessarily greasy or heavy, but just oily. Literally oil everywhere. My whole plate was oily, my lips were slippery and that's hard to do with a thin crust pizza. They needed to let the oil absorb on something before plating it. It was really gross.
• They also need to adjust their oven temperature because the pizza crust was and tasted a bit burnt. The marinara was just pureed tomatoes. They didn't flavour it much, but they didn't really need to. At least I could taste the fresh tomatoes.