Nick Devine created the new drinks program at the recently reopened Habit Lounge, which includes do-it-yourself ‘bento box’ cocktails.

Credit: Doug Shanks

ON THE PLATE: Habit Lounge rises triumphant from the flames

On the morning of December 8, 2008, I was looking forward to trying the new food menu and cocktail list at Main Street’s much-loved Habit Lounge when the bad news came in. Serious smoke damage from a kitchen fire had devastated the restaurant’s interior, forcing indefinite closure and a complete makeover. And what a gorgeous interior it had been! Habit was the prettiest, most sharply designed room on Main, looking to me like a futurist’s vision of a high-school cafeteria. It sucked to suddenly be robbed of it.

Happily, after nine months of mourning, reconstruction, and waiting, it has returned.

Two of Habit’s owners are David Nicolay and Rob Edmonds, the duo behind local design house Evoke ID, which has set the aesthetic tone at some of Vancouver’s best-looking restaurants, including the Irish Heather and Habit’s next-door neighbour, the Cascade Room. For them, if there was any sort of silver lining to the Habit disaster, it would be the opportunity to fiddle with the space one more time. And so, rather than restore the restaurant to its original teen-dream glory, the Evoke team went for post-adolescent, giving it a darker, sleeker, and much sexier look, without surrendering the dollop of quirk that saves the room from looking forced.

Remember the reddish-orange banquettes, gunmetal-grey tables, patterned cardboard walls, and painted deer trophies? Gone. Remembrances of things past come in motif: an illuminated wall sconce shaped like a 12-point buck trophy, chairs with the same reddish-orange hue as the departed banquettes (now in a more butt-hugging tulip shape), and the same thin mirror running the length of the room.

The rest is new. Four big, horseshoe-shaped banquettes upholstered in buttoned brown leather have been installed along one wall. Facing them is a line-up of tables under tall, vertical stripes of shag carpet. A squat bar with a brassy mirrored ceiling caps the rear, while the front is all glass, looking out onto Main Street going busily about its business. The soulful soundtrack is decidedly funkier than in the past (I’d be surprised if it blew a note past 1980), and the feel is more homey and mature.

These changes extend beyond the design and playlist to include the food and drink menus. But if the individual items have evolved, the previous Canadian-comfort-food theme hasn’t. Now the province of former Cascade Room sous chef Tristan Burley (Habit’s former chef, Greg Armstrong, has gone on to the Alibi Room), the food menu is a refined collection of old-school Mom dishes reimagined for 21st-century tastes and wallets. Think meatloaf ($17) made with lamb; veggie shepherd’s pie ($14) finished with potato-parsnip mash; and Parmesan-panko-encrusted, Ocean Wise-approved albacore tuna casserole ($15).

The perogies ($11) are the only item resurrected from the old menu. These come three to a plate, glistening and stuffed with a sweet, buttery-smooth and super-filling coagulate of brie and carrot, served with a dollop of chive-flecked sour cream next to ropes of caramelized onion. Even better are the breaded, deep-fried pork croquettes ($11), which retain their crunch and take on new flavour dimensions when paired with the accompanying chutney of braised fennel and smoky tomato.

Avoid the messy beet-and-mixed-greens salad with goat-feta smears and crunchy bits of pistachio ($11); the beets are cut into a too-small medium dice, the cheese barely registers, and the “spiced” dressing is hardly spiced at all. Nearly every chef in town plates a version of this salad (scathingly nicknamed the “BC Caesar”), and most of them are better.

A perfectly prepared filet of wild sockeye ($17) needed little in the way of seasoning or saucing (barely discernible sorrel butter did the trick). Paired with a pile of Puy lentils mixed with red-pepper brunoise and a modest hillock of whipped butternut squash, it was teasingly delicious and subtle.

Award-winning bartender Nick Devine, longtime bar manager at the Cascade Room, was hired on at Habit before the fire (his cocktail list was due to officially launch the morning after the blaze struck). It’s a lengthy card, anchored by several drinks made with Canadian whisky, but the sure-fire stars are the do-it-yourself ‘bento box’ cocktails. Devine has taken a handful of kitschy old standards that have traditionally been made with poor ingredients (Blue Hawaiian, Tequila Sunrise, etc.) and deconstructed them, separating the ingredients in exacting measures and placing the lot in a compartmentalized box. Also included in the box are the requisite glass, a shaker full of ice, appropriate garnishes, and a cute instruction card.

I loved my first visits to the new Habit — mostly because it was fun (and it’s open until 2:00 a.m. six nights of the week). The service was up-front and eager, and the food is just as quirkily overconsidered as the look and feel of the room. I’m usually ruthless with customer-participation gimmicks, but I thought it was cool too see neighbouring tables happily shaking tequila, freshly squeezed juices, and real pomegranate grenadine over their shoulders (at $9-$10 a pop, though, some might think Devine needs to be doing the shaking himself). Those who enjoyed the atmosphere of the original Habit will appreciate this much-improved 2.0, and those diners who are new to the place should be just as drawn. It’s a good day for Main Street.

Habit Lounge
2610 Main, 604-877-8582, HabitLounge.ca
Food: 3 stars / Service: 4 stars / Atmosphere: 4 stars / Value: 3 stars (out of 5)