RAY'S

Yaletown gets a lot of sushi rooms that mistake price for ambition.

Blue Water Cafe is the restaurant Vancouver's culinary reputation leans on when the city wants to show off its relationship with the Pacific, and from everything on record, the room holds up its end of the bargain.

There are 290 seats here, and the design wants you to feel every one of them as a gift: walnut millwork, copper countertops, a Murano glass chandelier tucked into the private room.

Coal Harbour has a habit of producing rooms that look like ambition and feel like airports — all glass and waterfront light doing the emotional work nobody behind the design bothered to do.

Elisa occupies a particular niche in Yaletown that the neighbourhood actually needs: a grown-up room built around wood-fired grilling and a serious BC seafood program, without the self-congratulation that tends to follow both.