Block Kitchen + Bar brings a bit of everything to each dish

Image: Ryan Hook/ Tasting Victoria

The first thing you notice when you open the doors to Block Kitchen + Bar is the extensive wine rack, the red-brick walls, and the brightly-coloured mural painted by Victoria-born artist Jason Siloh.Since taking possession of the space in August, the trio of owners (executive chef Stéphane Prévost, Andy Burke, and Jay Ahn) were hard at work transforming a space in time for its opening on Jan. 13, and only received the business license an hour and a half before opening.

“It was all down to the wire,” Burke tells Tasting Victoria, greeting us on a more relaxed Tuesday night.As Burke walks past the mix of two-top, four-top, and bar seating, with high-top chairs down the centre and upholstered leather bench seating in the front, I can still see the barcode stickers on some of the PVC pipes running up the red-brick walls.

Burke seats us near the open kitchen, setting the cocktail and food menus down. “Come up with a game plan,” he instructs us.Block is Izakaya-inspired—which is a style of Japanese pub that serves small plates intended for sharing and served as they’re ready to go. So, figuring out what to eat is like telling a story: you need an introduction, climax, and denouement.

But first, Toryufu Sour: a savoury-leaning cocktail created by Ryan Simpson, formerly of Clarke & Co., who has crafted Block’s entire cocktail menu to be paired with its food.This whisky sour covers all the bases: it’s made with lemon, egg whites, and bourbon whisky, but introduces mushroom, truffle, roasted rice, and umami bitters for a more complex flavour profile. It starts with a rich umami sensation that gives way for the sour to settle in snugly. It’s the best of both worlds in one glass.

To complement the cocktail, and ease into our appetite, we start simple, ordering Block fries with sumac, nori flakes, and a spicy mayo side. It’s no surprise the fries tie us over, but really, the spicy mayo steals the show.From there, we move on to the larger fare and read the menu with a fine-toothed comb.

Reading the menu is like listening to Prévost’s culinary story all over again.

The way even his business partners refer to him as “chef” makes it sound as if Prévost was born in the kitchen. The Quebecois chef has three decades of experience in kitchens across the world, so he’s earned the distinction—now, with Block Kitchen + Bar on Yates Street, he’s brought it to Victoria.

Rising through the ranks from dishwasher and busser to maître d’ and restaurant manager, Prévost earned his chef jacket in kitchens across Montreal, Tokyo, and Banff. In the late ‘80s, he studied under his mentor, Philippe Laloux, a French-Belgian chef and author living in Montreal.

“I learned a lot from trying and failing, and from him,” he told Tasting Victoria the week before Block opened.After learning all he could from Laloux, Prévost was itching to sharpen his knives elsewhere, and spent the last six years of the 1990s in Tokyo, picking up Japanese cutting techniques and new forms of cooking (he also met his wife there). His appreciation for not just Japanese cuisine, but also Southeast Asian, Chinese, and Korean food grew, and it motivated him to bring those styles back to Canada.

In the early 2000s, Prévost moved to Banff, compelled to combine his passions, experiences, and story into one kitchen. Close to a decade later, he got the opportunity, and Block Kitchen + Bar was born. With the help of Burke and Ahn, the quaint thirty-seat operation has operated successfully in downtown Banff since 2014.“Block is a reflection of my style,” Prévost said. “It starts with French cuisine, and gradually expands into Asian—and sources locally.”

Now, Block Kitchen + Bar has landed at 578 Yates Street, in a space double the Banff location’s size, and a spot in desperate need of a change.

The former space of Chuck’s Burger Bar, which underwent a brief rebranding as Lumber Jack’s, was the subject of sexual assault allegations against an employee named Jesse Chiavaroli. Chiavaroli has since been charged with multiple counts of sexual assault and assault with a weapon, some of which allegedly began in the bar itself. As accusations came to light and charges were laid, the entire Victoria restaurant industry faced a reckoning over the poor treatment of its workforce.

After walking past the languishing space on Yates Street nearly everyday, Burke said he knew what the space needed. “I call and say, ‘Chef, what do you think about opening up a [Block Kitchen + Bar] in Victoria?,” he says.

Taking over the 538 Yates St. location will likely be a challenge; Burke knows there’s a lot of work to be done. “I’m fully aware of what happened with [Chuck’s Burger Bar], and I know the space needs a change,” Burke said.

But he assures Tasting Victoria that the team has no affiliation with Chuck’s Burger Bar or Chiavaroli. “We’ve overturned basically every square inch of the place to make it our own,” he said. “We’ve undertaken the burden of transforming the space, so it’s a completely fresh start.”

Staff at Block will soon be training with Good Night Out Vancouver—a non-profit providing workshops on sexual violence prevention and tools to help keep patrons and workers safe.

Changing the space felt like a challenge worth undertaking, and the owners felt all of the pieces were in place to make it a success.

While Prévost has helped open the restaurant (and the menu at the Victoria will virtually be the same) he leaves the kitchen in the capable hands of chef de cuisine, Tyler Thompson—a former sous chef at Block in Banff. “[Thompson] was always our guy,” Burke said. “He knows the area, the culture, and he knows the menu.”

From his work at Eigensinn Farm in Ontario, a small farm-to-table restaurant that grows and raises its own vegetables and livestock, to his work at remote resort villages in Turks and Caicos, Thompson has always been at the cutting edge of exquisite dining experiences. “It was getting to the point [at Eigensinn Farm] where we were running out to the garden, picking carrots, and wiping them off on our aprons for service,” he said. “It was a mind-blowing experience.”

He first met Prévost working at Block in the mid-2010s, and in the final month of a contract at Safari Ranch in interior BC this past summer, he got a phone call from Prévost and Burke, asking him to run the Block Kitchen on Yates. “I couldn’t really say no,” he said. “I’ve been itching to get back to a team like that.” Thompson said he has good relationships with farmers around Vancouver Island, and it’s a big part of why Prévost said he trusts him to run the kitchen. He’s even spent some time working with Foragers Galley, which picks and produces gourmet mushrooms around BC.

True to his own past, Thompson says some dishes, like the charcuterie board, will reflect local agriculture—and the same goes for its weekly features, which Thompson has creative control over.

The philosophy is always the same, though: “Refinement in the simplest way,” Prévost says. And that philosophy is evident as I devour the Japabao dog—a rich and juicy double-smoked farmer’s sausage with house-made kimchi, takoyaki sauce, kewpie mayo, and bonito shavings. Together with the steamed bao bun—a delicious, warm, fluffy treat of stuffing wrapped inside a sweet, white dough—the Japaobao dog still lives in my dreams.

Next, we order the feature dish from Thompson: a succulent Korean-style short rib with kimchi, wakame, microgreens, daikon, and rice cooked to perfection. It’s a testament to the menu that Thompson describes as “international cuisine with an Asian flare.”

Adding to the experience is the heavy American-made Japanese cutlery, which makes dining at Block feel like painting. Burke joked to us that the two chefs spent an “ungodly” amount of time shopping for the ceramic dishware from Utsuwa-No-Yakata.

Throughout the course, the staff were incredibly accommodating to any allergies—gluten, and otherwise—and would go into detail about how “prep-intensive” the kitchen is, and how they prepare some of its food—like the “unorthodox” housemade kimchi.

Next, we try the Asian lettuce wraps with pulled pork, which the kitchen tells us was marinated for an entire day and slow-cooked for four hours. It shows, and the pulled pork is a perfect balance between crispy and fatty.

To top off the night, I slowly enjoy the matcha cheesecake with fresh raspberries and Yuzu honey sauce: a light, not-too-sweet dessert with a cookie crumble.

The entire evening was a demonstration of how so often, change is a good thing, and well-crafted food can come from all around the world and live on the same dish—you just have to try, try, and try again.

This is likely why I’ll be returning to Block Kitchen + Bar as soon as I can.

@yyjblockblockvictoria.ca578 Yates St.