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.
