Bartholomew Bar Review: Small Table, Big Flavours

Join me to see if these overhyped Vancouver restaurants are actually worth it. If you’re on social media at all then, like me, you’re probably sick of these overused hooks. “Come with me to one of Vancouver’s most [insert enticing descriptive word] bars!” It’s right up there with “you’ll never believe this hidden gem” and “top five secret bars” (which are rarely very secretive). 

The power of suggestion is everywhere and, as someone who loves food, I can't help but buy into the promotional enthusiasm. So I’m going to try these restaurants for myself, with my own money, and see if they’re actually good recommendations, or just good for the algorithm. 

Bartholomew Bar

1026 Mainland St, Vancouver, BC V6B 2T4

https://www.bartholomewbar.com/

$21 CAD per item on average

Best for: cocktails, small sharing plates, intimate setting

I am surprised that I haven’t seen a restaurant as aesthetic as this featured in more instagram reels. The sister restaurant to The Watson on Main street, Bartholomew blends into its Yaletown location perfectly with its stone bar, dark wood chairs and black leather cushions. I loved the textile wallpaper behind the bar, and there was a back-lit wine rack made from metal rims that ran up the wall and curved over the ceiling to add volume to the room.

They have really maximized the small, narrow space, even squeezing in three narrow tables with bench-style seating for couples instead of two-person seating. This was where we were sitting, and at first I was very skeptical. 

This table is half a foot wide and maybe two feet long. It already has to accommodate a water jar, the menu, two water glasses, a candle, two salad plates and cutlery. While this was cleverly space efficient, the design had not been accounted for in the service, which I’ll talk about in the dining section. 

For now let’s kick things off with a cocktail because, arguably, that is why you go to Bartholomew Bar in the first place.

Daring Drinks

Given the cocktails are all between $19 to $24, we had high expectations for the drinks. The menu is themed after suspicions, quirks and mysterious forces in the world. It’s split into the good omens, which means cocktails such as Fortune Cookie and Red Envelope, and bad omens such as Snake Eyes and Crows Caw. 

One Way Ticket cocktail

In addition to the creative naming, each cocktail tells you the style of glass it will come in, and is labeled with a descriptor such as unexpected, fruity, luxurious, deceptive etc., to set the expectation. I think that is a great addition to the menu, and something we definitely wanted to put to the test. 

My approach to choosing drinks was, admittedly, safe. I stuck to gin-based cocktails I assumed I would like, with citrus, herby and fruity notes. My picks were:

• One Way Ticket: yuzu and kiwi made it fruity sweet without being sickly, with a hint of citrus. In other words, delicious. However, I question the choice of glassware, because the ice cube in the Collins glass was as tall as the rim, which meant I had to kiss it every time I took a sip. That, plus the condensation was dripping on my lap before I was halfway through the drink, made for an awkward experience that distracted from the drink.

• Gold Flower: at first sip I thought “tangerine!”, but then it mellowed into a kind of orange lemonade flavour but without any sour. A nice summer sipper. 

• Una Limpia: this was a great recommendation by our server. It was another easy to drink cocktail that had a full-bodied texture, with smooth lemon and herb flavour. 

The Evil Eye cocktail

• Evil Eye: a creamy, espresso martini-style drink that went well with dessert.

My partner Andrew was much more bold with his choices. While I love how adventurous and curious he can be with his selections, considering I am the foodie in the family, this definitely came with some mixed results. He tried:

• Mirror Mirror: it listed green apple in the ingredients and it definitely tasted like green apple. Perfect for the theme of the cocktail, but didn’t provide anything unexpected as it’s descriptor word suggested it should.

• The Night Whistler: Andrew just kept saying, “I don’t know how to describe this one.” It tasted great, but putting it into words proved challenging for the both of us. We decided that it tasted like a sake cocktail, despite being whiskey based, and that toasty was an apt descriptor, though it was more unexpected than Mirror Mirror. 

The Day Walker cocktail

• The Day Walker: this cocktail was labelled as weird in the menu. It was basically a manhattan that came with a garnish of cherry and goat cheese (which Andrew said tasted like vomit, but he doesn’t really like strong cheese, so take that as you will). The drink on its own was good, but the server said it was meant to be a garlic martini and we didn’t get the garlic flavour. Weird in idea, but not so much in execution. If you like manhattans, maybe your experience will be different.

• Burrowing Owl: redeemed the cocktails following that last one. It was a minty, pineapple cocktail that tasted tiki-adjacent. Lovely. 

I can’t say they were the most mind blowing drinks I’ve had but, other than the misstep with the manhattan, they were consistently satisfying. It’s hard to say whether the price tag was worth it, but I wasn’t mad about it either. If you’re choosing to go to a cocktail bar then you know that the tab is going to add-up and, with that out of the way, we really enjoyed what Bartholomew Bar offered. 

Not many restaurants can pull off this kind of creativity in its cocktails — more often than not they lean too heavily into presentation and the drink gets lost in the performance. But Batholomew’s presentation is no fuss, so there is nothing distracting you from the quality of the cocktail. Overall, they delivered a great selection of satisfying drinks. Though, it was really the food that wowed us the most. 

Beef Tenderloin Carpaccio

Delicious Dining

We didn’t realize that the bar doubled as the kitchen until about halfway through the meal, which makes the food they are able to produce all the more impressive. We started with the beef carpaccio, which was described as spicy on the menu. It was delicious! Not as thin as other carpaccios we’ve had but the sauce was delicious and the nori rice crackers added the perfect level of texture. And the spice level was at the level of chipotle mayo — not spicy, even for us (and I am so weak that sriracha is the perfect level of spicy for me).

Here is where the issue with service comes in that I mentioned before. Remember that our table is two feet long, half a foot wide. At maximum, there is room for two plates beyond what is already on the table, which created an awkward problem when the service brought out our next two dishes before we had finished the carpaccio. 

In this case because there was so little carpaccio left we could just transfer it to one of our side plates to clear room for the next dish. However, had we been slower eaters there wouldn’t have been room for the additional food at all. And this was already after we had relegated our water jug and menu to the back of the booth next to me. I don’t think the divider was meant to double as a counter, but it was the only option.

If you’re going to design tables that only have space for one to two plates, then don’t give customers more than one to two plates to deal with at a time. A stronger service would time the next dishes to come out only after the first dish was done, or even cleared, so that customers aren’t awkwardly juggling dishes. 

Porchetta and the Duck Lollipops

With that aside, I think where Bartholomew really shines is in its food. We enjoyed the duck lollipops, which came off the bone with a fork and a great Vietnamese flavor and spice-level to it. Our favourite dish of the night was the porchetta. It cut like pork belly, and the fregola had such a nice subtle lemon-flavour that it complimented the meat perfectly.

Originally the porchetta came with snap peas, which we asked them to remove because I’m allergic. Without prompting they offered to swap them for mushrooms, so the fregola came with tiny mushrooms mixed into it. Andrew doesn’t like mushrooms — he often finds they’re too slimy — but he really enjoyed these and thought it was actually a great addition.

You know the food is good when you decide to throw the budget to the wind and order another dish. 

We chose the meatballs and added the focaccia bread. DO NOT miss out on the bread! This is the freshest, fluffiest, softest focaccia I think I’ve ever tasted, and it’s no surprise that they make it fresh each morning. 

Andrew loved the meatballs. I was less impressed, as the texture was more like frozen Swedish meatballs than homemade, ground beef meatballs, but soaking up that tomato-based sauce with the bread made it worth it. 

And, since everything else was so delicious and intriguing, we decided to order dessert. 

Debated Dessert

The bone-marrow  crème brûlée is the dish that Andrew and I have debated the most during any dining experience so far, because we could not agree on whether or not it had a right to that name. 

The very shallow crème brûlée

The dish was maybe half an inch thick, and that was easily my biggest complaint because it means the crystalized sugar is getting stuck in my teeth with every single bite and doesn’t give much room for appreciating the flavour of the custard. I believe this dish design and inability to really taste a full mouth of custard on its own is why we were so divided. 

Andrew thought that there was not enough bone marrow flavour and, had it not been in the name, we never would have known it was there. His argument was that, “It would be better suited in the descriptor, to say it was made with bone marrow, but it is not marrow-enough to name it a bone marrow crème brûlée.” 

My argument is that firstly, you probably don’t want your dessert tasting too much like bone marrow, secondly, the bone marrow came through in the silky texture of the custard, which was smoother than your average crème brûlée, and thirdly, it’s smart marketing because it catches people's attention and not everyone reads the description. 

We agreed that it tasted delicious and was a fabulous crème brûlée. The jury is still out on whether the name was appropriate or not. 

Final Thoughts

Dessert marketing debate aside, we thoroughly enjoyed our experience at the Bartholomew Bar. While there were a few things that could have been improved in the service, there was nothing we didn’t like (except for that cheese and cherry garnish), and the quality of their meat dishes and the design of the bar really elevated the whole experience. 

One of Bartholomew’s big selling points is actually their charcuterie offerings, where you can either build your own board or choose one of their set offerings. I have not personally had success with restaurant charcuterie experiences (often finding them overpriced for the volume provided), however the chefs at Bartholomew clearly know how to handle their meat, so I would trust they would at least have a good selection.

Key Takeaways:

• If you can, sit at the bar. It would be so much fun to watch the chef’s work while sipping on the fancy cocktails

• This would probably be a great place to start off a night. Have a cocktail, maybe an appetizer and then head off to eat dinner elsewhere. But you are going to have dinner at Bartholomew, you won’t be disappointed

• Be prepared to be adventurous with the cocktails. Unless you’re super well-versed in alcohol, there are plenty of things on the menu you may not recognize. 

We had eight cocktails, four dishes and dessert, and our bill, before tip, came out to about $300 CAD. For the quality we got and the experience it provided us, I think it was worth the price. That is, of course, entirely subjective.

That is my overall review of Bartholomew Bar. In terms of a rating, I would say it's a eight and a half out of ten, or a solid four out of five. Both Andrew and I agree this is a great recommendation for a boogie date night with great vibes, an intimate city setting and some fun eats. 

As for whether or not I would go again: yes, if they updated the cocktail menu. I feel like we tried a really good spread of drinks and so if they decide to update the theme and provide some new concoctions, then you would definitely find me making a reservation again.