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Meals by Erica Crawford Co-Founder, Kim Crawford Wines I have been lucky enough to have dined in some of the best restaurants in the world during my time as proprietor of Kim Crawford Wines – so many stunning flavours, weird combinations, and sometimes it all clicks into place and a symphony of flavours plays on your plate. My shape and size is testament to my love of flavours. Food is a social event, a thing for sharing, not a substrate only. My Best Meal: Vancouver is one of my most favourite cities in the world. I believe it has the most innovative cuisine on the North American west coast. The produce is fresh and chefs really focus on emphasising the produce, not the process. Granville houses three of my "defaults" in Vancouver, but it is West that is special – we have a little history, you see! I think it epitomises Vancouver food, with seasonal and local produce, seafood, and some Eastern influences. Nuances of flavour lift and dance with each other, not one being big and over-powering. The wine list is designed to make the food taste better, and vice versa. Restaurant service is best practiced in Canada I believe – not like the over bearing, tip working American nor the snooty, haughty, spartan Brits, it's firmly mid-Atlantic. It is their vocation and their passion. They are very well-informed on food and wine, and they just DO nice – nowhere more so than at this restaurant. Mostly for me it was at the long bar where friendship is "practised". People converged, peeling out of their own restaurants to share and drink and catch up, to pay a visit when I was in town, and eat of course, at the bar. Jay Jones was the "mixologist" and Director of Wine then and had the ability to "feel" people". The wine list is stellar and includes famous estates as well as many artisan producers from around the world. Us Kiwi's are very limited in our repertoire, a wine list like this is a treasure trove! So when I head to Vancouver next, West is on my list for sure. I will be gathering old friends and will do it again! P.s: the other two are VJ's just around the corner, and Craft across the road. My Worst Meal: I met a friend for dinner in London. She is a finance person, and accordingly her PA made a reservation at the very famous Mirabelle restaurant on "hedgefund row" in Mayfair. The Mirabelle was a London culinary institution (Winston Churchill, Vivien Leigh, Orson Wells were regular patrons), three Michelin Stars, gorgeous understated décor and later a rock star chef. The menu was solid and timeless, and the wine list extensive, amazing and French-dominant. On this night though there were four other diners, and we weren't in the mood for fussy French food and snooty wait staff, (we talked and did belly laughs) and when I sent a vintage Burgundy back because it was corked we got the "treatment". We were, after all, savage colonials. The rest of the evening was a comedy of errors, thankfully on their part. Botched orders, unsynchronised delivery, out-of-stock menu and wine list items. Yet they remained snooty and unapologetic. The restaurant closed not long after that. I think the care and focus goes when very good chefs have "mini chains" or groups. It is sad because it was a London identity for decades. People remember the majestic disco ball in the latter years mostly, as the service sadly ruined what for most people should have been a glorious experience. Perhaps we should have gone to the local curry house in Clerkenwell that night! memories wit h www.hermagazine.co.nz | 81