Dine the Couve celebrates growing restaurant scene

Let’s see, we have a triple-threat Brewfest — “Spring Edition,” August main event and October “Fresh Hop Edition.” We’ve got a Craft Beer & Winefest, a Wine & Jazz Festival and “Drink This! Vancouver,” a downtown crawl. Washougal has Weird Beers on the River in July. Shorty’s Garden and Home still hosts its own Brewfest. Sip and Stroll benefits the Hough Foundation. Right now we’re midway through the new, locally focused North Bank Beer Week; as soon as that’s over, on Oct. 1, a global craft-beer world-tour taste-off will stop by downtown Vancouver.

That’s a goodly amount of celebration of local libations. But it may leave you still hungry for solid food.

Now, here comes the latest addition: Dine the Couve, a whole month of special menus and special prices at original downtown Vancouver restaurants. The era when people shrugged off downtown as a grab-bag of diners, bars and that McDonald’s at the corner of Evergreen and Main is long gone; these days, Vancouver’s growing foodie scene keeps earning slightly astonished appreciations in Portland publications that used to be way too hip for us.

“Portland’s food and drink culture has started wobbling into Vancouver” like a cyclist coming over the Interstate 5 Bridge, The Oregonian wrote in 2015.

We tend to dismiss the idea that we owe Portland anything for our growing scene — but we’re glad to see those southerners catching up with our cool.

“Vancouver’s restaurant and brewery scene continues to grow at a rapid pace,” said Kim Bennett, the CEO of Visit Vancouver USA. “Dine the Couve is a celebration of what makes our local culinary and brew scene stand out — quality, affordability and a collaborative spirit.”

Tastiest stuff

Here’s what Dine The Couve is all about. Fourteen homegrown Vancouver restaurants will offer special fixed-price, three-course menus for $23 during the month of October. The three parts of the menu will be some combination of soup, salad, appetizer, entree, and dessert or craft beverage. (They’ll also have their regular menus and offerings.) Six breweries and tasting rooms will offer $3 drink specials for the whole month as well. In all, that’s 20 downtown establishments getting ready to show off their best — tastiest — stuff.

“It’s designed to be flexible. Each location will be able to promote what makes them really unique,” said Jacob Schmidt, director of marketing and communicatinos for Visit Vancouver USA.

For example, restaurateur and Beaches owner Mark Matthias’ new WareHouse ’23, which has opened in the former Red Lion Hotel Vancouver at the Quay on the waterfront, will offer:

• First course: Seared slab bacon, spinach salad, bacon flashed sprouts and flowers or soup of the day;

• Second course: Whiskey cherry steelhead, Devine Swine pizza; the Stack Burger, or house smoked eight-piece baby back ribs; and,

• Third course: Skillet monkey bread or vanilla bean panna cotta

And, the Frontier Public House at the foot of Hazel Dell Avenue will offer:

• First course: Chicharron (house made, seasoned pork rinds) or Virginia roasted and salted peanuts;

• Second course: Homemade soup or salad; and,

• Third course: Chicken and garlic-black pepper dumpling soup; or “Macfredo” (mac and cheese meets Alfredo); or smoked salmon and thick-cut bacon BLT.

And, the new Veraison Wine & Events — which opened this summer in historic former Sparks furniture store — will offer two glasses of wine and a charcuterie (meat) board as its three-for-23 offering.

“Every week we’ll offer a different option for wine — a specific wine and meat board pairing,” Co-owner Courtney Barker said.

Merlot month, too

Did you know that October is International Merlot Month? Now you do. It was thus named because of the bad reputation that cheap merlots earned, justifiably, a decade or so ago, back when merlot was all the rage, Barker said.

Remember the California wine-tourism movie hit “Sideways,” from 2004? “If anybody orders merlot, I’m leaving,” wine snob Paul Giamatti screamed. “I’m not drinking merlot!” The industry has blamed a supposed decline in merlot sales on that movie and that line — calling it “the ‘Sideways’ Effect” — but data doesn’t actually support that there ever was such a trend.

And anyway, any kind of wine can be made badly or beautifully, Barker said. She is onboard with the effort to rescue merlot via International Merlot Month and a social media campaign called #MerlotMe, and will be emphasizing “a lot of merlots and blends with merlot in them, a lot of Bordeaux-style blends. It can be a very delicious wine — if you know what you’re looking for.”

That’s what Barker wants to accomplish at Veraison, she said: “We want to give people opportunities to get out of their wine rut.”

(But there will be white wine options too.)

And, Barker is totally onboard with Dine the Couve.

“There is so much happening in downtown Vancouver. It’s such a developing scene,” she said. “It’s great to see events like this starting up here.”

Sponsors encourage you to post your dining experience on social media using the hashtag #DineTheCouve.