The ginger-crusted ahi tuna was perfectly seared around the juicy, purple flesh, although the napa cabbage and green-bean salad that came with it was a letdown.John Lehmann/The Globe and Mail
It's a beautiful spring day. The birds are chirping, the cherry trees are blooming, everything's coming up roses – until you head to the shopping mall to buy a new sundress.
Whoa. Is there anything more depressing than baring your pale, blotchy, saggy skin under the harsh lights of a fitting room after a long winter hibernation?
Actually, there is. Try eating at Bistro Verde in Nordstrom Pacific Centre after the spring shopping spree.
Take a seat, peruse the menu and notice how quickly your appetite wanes:
- Crispy kale and apple salad: 480 calories
- Fried calamari: 520 calories
- Wild salmon and maple-glazed bacon sandwich: 1,370 calories
At the bottom of the menu, the small print reads: "2,000 calories a day is used for general nutritional advice, but calorie needs vary. Additional nutritional information available upon request."
Who cares that Bistro Verde "is committed to bringing you fresh, sustainable, natural and organic ingredients from many local farms and ranches, when available."
Do you even notice that several of the menu items are "recommended by the Vancouver Aquarium as an ocean-friendly seafood choice"?
No, now you are obsessed with that darn calorie count. You realize that one measly sandwich and a glass of wine will gobble up three-quarters of the recommended caloric intake for the entire day.
Hello, Nordstrom. Calling all marketing executives. What were you thinking?
Bistro Verde is one of several restaurant concepts developed by the Seattle-based luxury department store chain. There are two other Verde restaurants in California, where they are called Bar Verde and have similar menus, including calorie counts.
In some ways, Nordstrom is ahead of the curve. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will soon require all restaurants, coffee shops and convenience stores to post nutritional information on their menus. The regulation rollout has been delayed until Dec. 1, 2016.
For now, only a few trailblazers, including Nordstrom and Subway (the fast-food, foot-long-sandwich purveyor), have jumped the gun on calorie counts in the name of nutritional transparency.
You can't argue with the wisdom of the FDA's decision, especially when you consider that we now live in a world in which more people are obese than underweight, according to a recent study published in the Lancet.
But as Chip Wilson and Lululemon learned the hard way, nobody wants transparency – nutritional or otherwise – when they're shopping for clothing.
The calorie counts haven't stopped shoppers and the downtown business crowd from flocking to the third-floor restaurant since the department store opened in September. Bright and airy, with a long expanse of tall windows overlooking the Vancouver Art Gallery and Robson Square, it is a pleasant enough space to decompress after giving your credit card a gruelling workout.
Open past the store's normal hours, Bistro Verde appears to be busy enough in the evenings with young, well-heeled shoppers and their stashes of designer bags.
By day, it does a roaring lunch trade with diners who are presumably looking for a familiar alternative to Earls and the Glowbal Restaurant Group. The opening executive chef, Jonathan Fraser (who recently departed), hails from the former. The restaurant managers, Sarah Weir and Randy Chafe, were hired from the latter.
The menu offers a similar assortment of the usual suspects: pizzas, burgers, salads, pastas and steaks.
The Neopolitan flatbread (only 500 calories, 700 if you add salami) comes on a nice, crispy, cracker-like crust. Perfect for dainty snacking.
Smoked Wild Salmon with Johnny Cakes (480 calories) is a new recipe, original to Vancouver, served in big dollops lightly churned with horseradish-dill crème fraîche on three small, fluffy pancakes. Tart pickled onions and crispy capers add nicely contrasting texture and flavour.
Sautéed chicken with angel-hair pasta (890 calories) is apparently the best-selling dish in all three Verde restaurants. A rosemary beurre blanc pulls the roasted-garlic tomato sauce together with creamy consistency and tart acidity, adding a moderately interesting component to an otherwise deathly boring dish.
This is the type of food you might find at any chain restaurant. The kitchen execution, alas, is also typically inconsistent. During one visit, the grill cook was firing on all cylinders. Skirt steak, cleanly cut against the grain, was bright ruby-red. We had to assure our alarmed server, however, that it was cooked perfectly medium-rare and quite agreeable.
Ginger-crusted ahi tuna was also perfectly seared, with a thin, charred exterior wrapped around its juicy, purple flesh. It's too bad the tuna's napa cabbage and green-bean salad was a limp, murky mess. As were the mushy potatoes, overcooked asparagus and watery, brackish salsa verde with the steak. The garde manger was obviously having a bad day.
The service at Bistro Verde is more efficient than most chain restaurants, although it's hard to identify any one server given that most tables are attended by several people all pitching in as one team.
The wine list is decent. The cocktails are very well balanced. And the drinks – thank God – don't list calorie counts. Does that mean they are all calorie-free?
I asked a woman sitting beside me at the bar what she thought of the calorie counts. "I actually started a diet yesterday," she replied, staring forlornly at the menu. "I don't know what to order."
I was tempted to order a slice of chocolate paradise cake, tiered high on frosted layers and served in a sticky pool of caramel sauce. I saw two orders go by.
I guess some diners don't read the fine print. Me? I almost gagged when the bartender put the menu down in front of me: 1,170 calories. Are you kidding? That would take two hours of running to burn off.
Calorie counts are going to change the way diners eat and restaurants prepare food. This is the future – and it doesn't look pretty.
Alexandra Gill