agoodwinsmith | The Irish Heather, in Gastown, Vancouver BC.

This is a follow-up to Colcannon Reprise, where Ruthi offered to find me places in Vancouver where colcannon is served.

I would like to endorse this as a place well worth your investigation. Here is a link to the website for the whole organization: http://www.irishheather.com/ . Strangely enough, it comes up as Zulu House, and talks about their plans for future expansion, but all the links are there for everything they do. I went with a party of women from work to celebrate the 65th birthday of one of them. This location was chosen because it is participating in Dine Out Vancover: http://www.tourismvancouver.com/visitors/dining/dineout.php . The restaurant sets aside the 5:00 pm until 7:00 pm time slot and then offers a limited version of their menu for your sampling. The Irish Heather offered a three-course meal for $15.00 (which is AMAZING). The courses were (1) appetizer, (2) entree, (3) dessert. There were four items in each category, and the diner could pick and choose. I had the charcuterie plate (normally $12.00), the pork chop entree (not on their posted menu, but I'd guess $14.00 to $16.00), and the Farmhouse Cheese Plate (normally $7.00).

Everything was so good. The charcuterie plate was from their Salt Tasting Room location, which, from the web site, seems to fancy itself a bit, but the selection of meat and the pate was so good, I'd be willing to put up with some pretense to get at that food again. It's half a block away from the Irish Heather, in Blood Alley, so you won't be able to find it by google maps, because google maps doesn't confess that Blood Alley exists. Anyway, I suspect that the pork chop was also from the Salt Tasting Room because they pride themselves on their local and hand crafted smoked meats and whatnot. That was like no pork chop I have ever tasted, and I want more. It was like a beautiful piece of ham from your mother in law's New Year's Day Ham. Slow cooked, succulent, moist, oh so good. It had a tidibt of braised cabbage on top, and it was placed lovingly on a bed of mashed potatoes with green onions in, but once you tasted the pork chop, there was no going back. The cheese plate was good. I do not know the type of cheese; it was a creamy solid with a thin line of blue in the middle. There were thin apple slices and dried slices of bagguette and a onion mustard pickle. All very nice.

I drank Killkenny with it all, and had an excellent meal.