Gastown’s new Acme Cafe drew line-ups during its first week of business with a menu full of elevated versions of comfort-food classics.

Credit: Doug Shanks

ON THE PLATE: A new twist on an old thing

While Gastown’s rise in the ranks as one of our top dining destinations continues, it should be noted that some of the neighbourhood’s blocks are getting all the new restaurants while others remain largely unchanged. The majority of openings have been concentrated around Maple Tree Square, the central hub where Carrall, Alexander, Water, and Powell streets meet. These connecting arteries boast over a dozen relative newcomers that can count their respective years of service on a single hand, all within staggering distance of the Gassy Jack statue. There are some geographical exceptions, like Two Chefs and a Table to the east (305 Alexander) and Pourhouse to the west (162 Water), but the trend is undeniable: Gassy Jack is a beacon to which restaurateurs and their customers are drawn.

But that doesn’t mean that other, as-yet-undeveloped blocks would be less of a draw. With the Crosstown/Chinatown micro-’hoods offering up success stories like Wild Rice, Chambar, and Bao Bei, the stretches of Cordova and Hastings dividing them from Gastown won’t remain bereft of new establishments for long. These are the next strips to be brought into the gentrifying fold. 

Acme Cafe, which opened a couple of weeks ago at 51 West Hastings, is one of the first of this newest new wave. That it experienced line-ups in its first few days is a pretty good indication that there’s a market for more in these parts. That it happens to be good only raises the bar for whomever and whatever comes next.

Make no mistake, there’s nothing all that fancy about Acme. The name itself — especially for those raised on old Road Runner cartoons — suggests a level of frills-free, utilitarian uniformity that is at once predictable, dependable, and entirely without pretense. How fitting, then, as that’s exactly what you get there.

The chef is the wonderfully named 25-year kitchen veteran Walter Messiah, a co-founder of the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts. He’s doing comfort food here, but not the artery-clogging sort that comes on a typical diner menu (which often reads like a suicide note). He doesn’t seem to employ a deep fryer in his economically appointed kitchen, and that’s fine by me. Think steaming, golden-crusted, overloaded chicken pot pie ($12.50); massive spinach salad, piled high with goat cheese, chopped bacon, and sun-dried Okanagan cherries, and dressed in raspberry vinaigrette ($9.50); crock-pot features, like a complex and aromatic stew crowded with huge chunks of fall-apart-tender beef ($12.50); breakfasts of Béchamel-soaked Gruyère-and-chicken crêpes ($9.50), or sunny-side-up eggs baked with hearty sausage, peppers, scallions, and potatoes ($10.50); daily specials like a hot and delicate feuillette pastry brimming with bacon and onion ($8.50); and dense but moist meatloaf, either sliced and stuffed inside a hoagie bun with Swiss cheese and sparky tomato sauce, or simply plated with garlic-licked potatoes and abundant salad ($11.50 either way).

These — and just about everything else — are all neatly composed, as if arranged by a doting mother who wants her kids to grow into soldiers who will defend gastronomy from its fanciest flights. It’s not fine food, just good food, and several of the portions my party received were enormous. The value-for-dollar quotient is inarguable, and though it’s not as cheap as the storied Ovaltine Cafe a few blocks east, the quality of ingredients and preparation is noticeably elevated. You don’t feel like you’re getting anything less than your absolute money’s worth.

Affordable and savoury wholesomeness aside, you can’t leave until you try one of the rich milkshakes on offer ($4.50) or a slice of apple pie ($4.75). We had both, and I strongly advise you to indulge just as fiendishly. It’s possible that my mother — an expert hand with the apple tree in her yard — is on par with owner Peggy Hoffman’s pie-making abilities, which is to say that I love my mother dearly. If Acme ever has a pie-eating contest, I’ll enter with the intention of being the slowest contestant.

Hoffman, a server at Bishop’s for six years, and her husband Alan, a successful photographer, run the front of house at Acme with that rare kind of amiable owner-operator charm you always hope for, and the service is honest and earnest. But here’s the real kicker: The place is drop dead gorgeous, too — a well-conjured Rockwellian fantasy of a 1930s Hollywood diner, with white walls, lofty ceilings, chocolate floors and booths, and a horseshoe-shaped lunch counter (with anchored stools that spin) jutting out from the small open-line kitchen. And the place gets downright ethereal around lunchtime, when loads of natural light (on the north side of an east-west axis) beams in to impart an almost church-like atmosphere. Honestly, I think it’s in the running for the best-looking room to have opened so far this year.

The words of Billie Holiday — crooning silkily over the Acme’s sound system as we happily filled our faces, fighting over the last forkfuls of pie — nailed a thought for me: I’ll be seeing you. Again and again and again.

Acme Cafe
51 West Hastings, 604-569-1022, AcmeCafe.ca