Prima Taste
570 Robson Street, Vancouver
Map
604-685-7881.
Hours: 11:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. daily
www.primataste.com
If you like to grocery shop at the
H Mart or maybe plan to hit the pre-boxing day sales at
Future Shop or
Winners, you might want to fuel up at this new little place that opened about two weeks ago, just steps from the Robson and Granville Streets intersection.
From the outside it’s not obvious what the restaurant is all about. The name,
Prima Taste, sounds vaguely Latin, the logo, until you squint at it, looks like a coffee shop sign, and the smart, designer modern interior could lend itself to any number of urban chic styled menus.
But it is, in fact, a restaurant of "authentic" Singapore cuisine, and actually a chain franchise at that – part of the Singapore-based international group of
Prima Limited (the same people who make the brand of ready-to-cook pastes and pre-mixed spices). The company's Canadian franchise is
Koka Restaurant Group Inc.
Prima Taste the restaurants, were actually created to showcase Prima Taste the prepared food products, and outside Singapore they can be found in Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, Jakarta, Bandung, Manila and San Jose.
The Robson Street outlet is the company’s second restaurant in North America and they expect to open 10 more in Canada within the next five years.
Kenneth Ou of Koka, who manages the Vancouver Prima Taste, says that the company got interested in opening their first Canadian restaurant here because they saw a gap that needed to be filled. “There are restaurants that serve Malaysian and Thai food but no genuine Singapore restaurants in Vancouver.�
Some restaurants in the city may beg to differ that point, but there is no doubt that for the customers, the richly robust fare is going to bring back memories of trips to Asia. If only because so much of the native Singaporean population falls back on the convenience of pre-mixed packaged foods as we do here in the west with our own familiar household brands.
And actually they aren't bad. Prima Taste’s three most popular dishes from their selection of 66 items are
Laksa (a noodle dish in a spicy, aromatic, coconut-based sauce), Hainanese Chicken Rice (chicken served over rice with pandan leaves and an assortment of condiments), and a Singapore-style Satay of meat threaded onto bamboo skewers, grilled and then served with a peanut dipping sauce). Other signature dishes are the Singapore Chili Crab, the Crispy Fish Filet Indonesia and the Calamansi Prawns. Despite the tony looks of the
Situ Design room, prices stay within a very reasonable range of $4.75 to $7.50 per plate.
On a past couple of visits the room has been pretty quiet. Which we think is more due to the fact that the foodies haven’t found it yet than because the food isn’t credible. Christmas is probably a bit of a distraction right now, and for a restaurant with a corporate backing and game plan, Prima Taste has been very low key with its marketing.
Mr. Ou informed us that he had tried to organize a media dinner last week but couldn’t find an evening that was free for enough people juggling busy schedules at this time of year. So he’s moved it to January 15th, which is unfortunately also the night that
Tourism Vancouver has designs on the media for its
Dine Out Vancouver previews.
Mr. Ou may have to pick yet another night. Or perhaps not, if the word on the street has picked up the slack by then.
