Elephant and Castle

I have not been to an Elephant and Castle in years. As I recall, there was one at Guildford and one in Bellingham (and others, I am sure) but it seems like this is the only one now , at least locally. It felt unique and interesting at the time. Of course that was long before Cactus Club, Milestones, Earls, Browns Social House and others became omnipresent. It still seems a little unique and British pub-like, here in the beautiful Marine Building at the foot of Burrard.

I was in Vancouver with my boss for a meeting which is usually followed by a free lunch and fodder for this blog. Of course, I only volunteer to go to the meeting for the good of the company and not for the food! How dare you suggest otherwise! So, E&C was not my choice but it was not a bad choice.

For me, it was the Lamb Tacos that caught my eye. Not bad. Flour tortillas, which I would never choose, but tasty lamb. Served with Sambal Oelek which turned out to be a decent choice of accompaniment.  A nice side salad with goat cheese and dried cranberries (all of our lunches had this) which was decent.

My boss had The Reuben, which I would expect to be much more Reuben and much less salad but hey, this is not a Jewish deli! I received no negative feedback so there you go!

Our guest, chose the Shepherd's Pie, a British pub classic, which looked very good.

The restaurant is located in a beautiful, high ceiling space with lots of dark wood and impressive light fixtures. Being a British pub themed place, the bar was impressive also and offered a nice range of libations. Service was friendly and very professional and are food arrived reasonably quickly. The only drawback here is that this place is noisy! I guess that you expect that in a pub!

For what it's worth, we give this place a 3 1/2 out of 5.