In a bold statement on Tuesday afternoon, Earls Kitchen and Bar president Mo Jessa said, “We invented casual dining,” during a press conference for their launch of the new Test Kitchen in downtown Vancouver.
Jessa was talking about what the new second-floor facility, part of a $1.2 million renovation of their Hornby Street restaurant, meant for the company that has seen a lot of change and growth in its 30+ year existence.
“How do people want to eat in the future?” He asked people in the audience. “We want to take casual dining to a new level.”
The Test Kitchen is home to what Earls calls their “Chef Collective,” a group of independent consultant culinary artists from different backgrounds who are constantly working on new ideas and dishes that may one day make their way to the menu.
The collective was previously stationed in North Vancouver and was solely an internal operation. Now in their more mainstream space, for the first time they can let the general public taste items they’re experimenting on and receive feedback on the fly.
“We can bring the food down now and that’s the beautiful thing,” says Earls product development chef David Wong, who also worked as the executive chef at the Fairmont Pacific Rim. “Before, we operated in a vacuum but now we’re going to put it on a fresh sheet menu, bring it down and we’ll test the new item for a week as a sample.
Not only can customers taste the food, they can see chefs in action as well via a cutting-edge audio-visual setup in the kitchen that live-streams everything to screens downstairs in the restaurant, and also onto the Internet to showcase cooking and craft cocktail demonstrations.
The Earls Test Kitchen officially opened on June 24 and is located upstairs of the main restaurant at 905 Hornby St.
