The Room
Boulevard opened in 2014 inside the Sutton Place Hotel on Burrard Street. Alex Chen, formerly of the original Lumière, the Beverly Hills Hotel and Cafe Boulud New York, runs the kitchen as a Pacific Coast steakhouse with a serious raw-bar programme and a dry-aged BC beef focus. The dining room seats 130 across the main floor, the bar and a private dining room.
Service is brigade-Canadian, formal but warm, and Chen is regularly in the dining room.
The Food
The kitchen runs a serious dry-aged BC ribeye programme alongside Pacific Coast seafood (BC spot prawns, Haida Gwaii halibut, oysters by the dozen) and a French-classical side menu. The seafood tower is the icebreaker; the dry-aged ribeye for two is the closer.
Best Occasion Fit
Close a Deal: Boulevard is the downtown Vancouver deal dinner for the agreement that needs the steakhouse register. The Sutton Place address is the host's quiet credit-builder.
Team Dinner: The private dining room seats 24 and runs a set steakhouse menu that the corporate dinner needs.
