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When was the last time a small side dish in a local hotel restaurant made you tremble with ecstasy?

Think back, way back.

It was probably, oh, around the same time you last said to your friends, "Hey, let's go for a crazy night of cocktails at that tiny bar burrowed into a dark corner of the Four Seasons Vancouver Hotel."

As in, never.

Times have changed. With Yew restaurant + bar, the Four Seasons Vancouver has finally unveiled a sophisticated dining, sipping and mingling destination worthy of its luxury brand.

The spacious new room, slicked with soaring ceilings, clean lines and stacked layers of stone, steel and gleaming wood, replaces the old Garden Terrace café, the grotto-like lobby bar and the charmingly quaint Chartwell Restaurant (now being used for banquets).

Since opening in early December, Yew has quickly captivated the city's cognoscenti with its sexy lounge, fresh raw bar and stunningly impressive wine list.

But it was the chef's seared bone marrow - so simple, sinful and brilliantly original - that seduced and haunts me still.

When the fiancé and I first visited Yew, in mid-December, the lounge was hopping with dapper men in expensive suits and long-limbed women in sky-high heels.

We sat at a high-top table in the bar and sipped champagne while downing a dozen raw oysters and a plate of calamari, the latter barely pan-seared with oregano and lime. Then we had a glance at a wine list and ended up nearly blowing the engagement-ring reserve fund.

The cellar is stocked with 200 labels. At least 150 of those are available by the glass (provided you order two). But there is hardly any need to dig deeply, since the wine list conveniently includes a wide selection of rarities by the glass and half-litre.

Having heard so many rave reviews about Le Vieux Pin, the south Okanagan's new super-premium boutique winery, we couldn't resist a taste of the elusive Aurore Sauvignon Blanc ($17 a glass).

We followed it by a few glasses of the winery's splendid Epoque Merlot ($19 a glass). On and on we splurged.

As pricey as it seemed, the opportunities to sample British Columbia's most coveted, low-yield vintages are few and far between. Outside of wine festivals, it doesn't get better than this.

On that first visit, I wasn't so sure about the room's urban-forest motif. Yes, the room is lofty and modern, and positively screamed "international big city." Yet it all felt a bit busy and chaotic.

It wasn't until my second visit (for dinner last Friday) that I came to appreciate the subtle East-West echoes in the design. Or at least that's what it looked like to me.

Beyond the sandstone fireplace and conventional dining area, there is a glassed-in dining area that sits under a massive, cedar-trellised skylight. On the first visit, the yawning arc seemed cold. But on a second take, it warmed into a surreal resemblance of a Japanese pagoda, while the glass mobile hanging from the roof took on the shapes of the gently curved crossbars atop a Japanese Torii gate.

Designer Jennifer Johannson, from EDG Design in San Francisco, says the mobile is actually meant to symbolize the "native Canadian dialogue" between fire and ice, earth and sky. Any reference to Japan, she says, was unintentional.

Hmm, I didn't consume any sake or even much Western wine that night, but I swear, surrounded by rows of square wooden pillars, it felt like I was caught in the entrance of a modern Shinto shrine.

Whoa. Who's that stylish young woman bouncing into the dining room under an outrageously high British Bobby helmet?

We obviously aren't in provincial Vancouver any more. So why should we eat that way?

Executive chef Rafael Gonzalez is respectful of the local seasons, but not slavishly so. Diehard locavores might gasp at the fact that he imports mackerel, snapper and black cod from Japan - receiving it swimmingly fresh three times a week.

But Mr. Gonzalez cut his teeth at New York's four-star Le Bernardin, arguably the best seafood restaurant in North America. He then went on to work in Jean-Georges Restaurant, another one of New York's finest, before being scouted for The Pierre, New York.

With his broad interpretation of Northwest Pacific cuisine, he persuasively points out that fresh Japanese fish beats frozen B.C. halibut any day of the week. Hard to argue with that. It's winter. Get over your regional obsessions.

The chef's cedar-smoked pike mackerel ($15) is a gorgeously oily pint-sized appetizer sliced down the middle. The sliver of wood on which it's lightly broiled is more about aesthetics than flavour, but maple-roasted onion and sweet mustard purée add nicely pointed tangs.

Seared Japanese red snapper ($35) is cut with just enough skin left intact to crunch through the milky flake. The dish is served with braised chard and creamy chowder made from sweet potato and smoked savoury clams.

Before you label him a complete pagan, Mr. Gonzalez is actually paying very close attention to our local dietary needs and wants. The menu includes a plethora of vegetarian options and lighter fish dishes simply prepared (i.e. salmon glazed with miso and black cod splashed with aged sherry vinegar).

"We're catering to women with lighter fare," he explains, "because let's face it, men go wherever our wives want to eat."

I guess I'm an anomaly. While the fiancé orders fish, I chow down on braised veal cheeks with fat torchiette pasta, walnuts and dried barberries ($16 for appetizer, $28 for a main).

For an entrée, I select beef ($35). Not, mind you, for the grilled 16-ounce Black Angus bone-in strip loin, braised spinach or (disappointingly mild) horseradish potato puree. I order this dish primarily for the seared bone marrow.

And never, ever, has a lowly side dish impressed me so.

Sure, I've had marrow roasted, melted into stew, topped with truffles and poached into a jiggly pot of grease. But when you extract the rich, fatty substance from the bone and sauté it ever so slightly, it appears that this molten sludge of offal transcends into a buttery, beef-infused slice of heaven.

More!

I don't need port, cognac, cheese, apple-spiced doughnuts or a gargantuan martini glass filled with brownies and house-churned ice cream.

A little more marrow. That's all, please.

Yew restaurant + bar: The Four Seasons Hotel, 791 West Georgia St., 604-692-4939.