New Vancouver restaurant’s menu is so hyperlocal, it might change while you’re dining
Sourcing local ingredients and building community
Latte said one of the great things about BC is its extra-long growing season. Having lived in Montreal for seven years, he said the growing season was much shorter than you’d find here in BC, and you’d only get six months.
With Nero Tondo, the duo is gunning to get anywhere from 90 to 95% of its ingredients from BC, both to support local farmers but also, in small part, due to the current political climate.
“With Trump coming into the states, we’re looking at potential tariffs. We’re also looking at what the pandemic did to food prices, especially on imports coming into the country,” said Latte.
“That’s not even why we’re doing it, but we think that’s going to be the future of restaurants and of how people are going to have to eat. At some point, our carbon footprint is going to have to be cut down drastically, and part of that cut is going to be all the shipping and utilization of ingredients that we don’t grow here,” he added.
Johnston added that the great thing about shopping locally is building a community with the people around you.
View this post on Instagram
“Having relationships with farmers and purveyors, knowing them, and visiting their farms, showing us where everything grows. It’s just nice when somebody walks in, and you recognize them because you’ve been using them for so long and just having a little chat. It’s kind of like a social outing for us,” said Johnston.
This focus on knowing the people behind your food doesn’t just stop with the farmers; it’s also being passed down to the guests with the restaurant’s open kitchen.
The tiny space, which will seat around 18 to 20 people, features a kitchen with seating all around it so people can watch everything the chefs are cooking.
“It’s a really intimate space because we’re cooking on the one side, and our patrons are right there on the other side, and they get to watch you,” said Johnston.
He also added that one of his favourite parts of this was just being able to chat with the guests while cooking.
This focus on local goods even goes as far as sourcing their plates locally by using plates from Latte’s grandmother.
“We’re not afraid to use old retro stuff and make our food special with that connection,” said Latte.
The menu
Since Nero Tondo plans to use whatever is fresh and in season, that means a constantly evolving menu.
“Now that we’re opening this spot, we feel like we’re doing everything in reverse,” joked Johnston. “Normally, the first thing we do is make a menu, and now we’re ordering a bunch of stuff without a menu, but we’re confident in what we do. We have our dishes that we rely on, specifically our sauces.”
“We’re very saucy cooks,” added Latte.
“But the menu is always going to be seasonally driven, so it’s kind of whatever there is to order you’ll see on the menu that week,” said Johnston.
Having both worked at The Acorn, a question on our mind was whether Nero Tondo would also be a vegetarian restaurant. However, both chefs said they would be offering local seafood like mussels, clams, and Albacore tuna, just to name a few.
Latte also went on to say that the menu could change every day, or even in the middle of service.
“Our printer is above our dishwasher, so we’ve got easy access to quick menu changes. I kind of love and hate the idea of doing it in the middle of service, but it sounds like something we would do.”
Both chefs seemed excited to present the best of what BC has to offer in whatever shape or form they see fit, including its drink program, which will feature an extensive list of BC wines.
“One thing that we should always touch on is the fact that we are going to be all BC, and we really want to see a connection between our food and what people are drinking, whether that’s a mocktail, a bottle of wine, mixed cocktail, beer, or cider. We want what grows together to go together to become a cohesive program. We haven’t seen that at a restaurant in full cohesion of going all in on that concept because it’s not easy.”
Nero Tondo will open its doors on February 6 and operate from 5:30 to 10:30 pm, Tuesday to Friday, and 5:30 pm to midnight on Saturday.
Nero Tondo
Address: 1879 Powell Street, Vancouver
Still hungry? Discover Dished Vancouver on TikTok