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Sweet Spot: Sweetness in suburbia

Vancouver’s outer limits a treat for sweet tooths

Vancouver gets all the praise for its food scene, but let’s be honest — there’s plenty to taste north of Burrard Inlet and east of Boundary Road. If you needed a reason to visit West Vancouver or Burnaby Heights, here are three spots to whet your appetite.

Dundarave Village gets a Temper
If you haven’t heard of Steven Hodge before, that’s OK. Chances are you’re already familiar with his work. Before opening Temper Pastry this January, Hodge spent nearly five years with Thomas Haas; before that, three years in some of London’s top kitchens (including Gordon Ramsay’s three-Michelin-starred Royal Hospital Road) and eight years in California.

But there’s no place like home. “It’s funny,” says Hodge, who grew up in Dundarave Village. “When I first announced it, there were skeptics that said ‘Oh, Dundarave, it’s slow and old. Are you sure you don’t want to go downtown?’” Hodge was, and is, sure. In fact, the shop has already outgrown its kitchen and he’s looking for production space elsewhere.

There’s a story behind everything on the Temper menu. Charlie Bites, named after his daughter, started as a way to use up croissant scraps but are so popular they merit their own dough. A bourbon-vanilla confection comes from Hodge using a vanilla pod as a swizzle stick in an after-work drink — and the resulting chocolate explodes with an extravagance of vanilla beans that I’ve never encountered in this city.

This summer, Dundaravians can look forward to Temper’s liquor license — and a patio.

Temper Pastry (2409 Marine Dr., West Vancouver)

Sweet Heights in Burnaby
In Burnaby Heights, Hastings Street feels like a calmer, friendlier Vancouver. Short buildings, hand-lettered signs, family-run shops. In other words, a neighbourhood.

That’s exactly why Christophe Bonzon moved here. “For me, it reminds me of Switzerland,” he says. “When you go to small businesses, you know the owner, they know their customers.”

The Swiss-born Bonzon has worked in boutique pastry shops in France, Switzerland and Australia for 16 of his 31 years. Most recently, he was the pastry chef at CinCin. In 2013, he and his wife, Jess, opened Chez Christophe Patisserie Chocolaterie; he runs the kitchen and she runs the café. Bonzon makes everything in-house, including the exceptional puff pastry in the tonka-coffee millefeuille. And it’s worth a visit just for the flutes; they look like breadsticks, taste like butter, and shatter into flaky fireworks. “In Switzerland it’s a common snack with a glass of wine,” he explains.

Given the extensive menu — vienoisseries, cakes, chocolates, flutes — I ask if he plans to do ice creams this summer. He says no. “There’s a great soda place just a few blocks down from us.”

Chez Christophe Patisserie Chocolaterie (4712 Hastings St., Burnaby)

Soda Jerks on Hastings Street
Bonzon is referring, of course, to Glenburn Soda Fountain and Confectionery. Walking into the shop, you feel like you’ve stepped back in time. Soda jerk and owner Ron LaQuaglia strides from vintage soda machine to counter, delivering ice cream sundaes and handmade sodas with a grin.

All the toppings and syrups are made in-house from local fruit and, where possible, local nuts. Pie comes from The Pie Hole in Vancouver, ice cream from Birchwood Dairy in Abbotsford and sorbet from Rocky Point Ice Cream in Port Moody.

Ron and his wife Roberta (operations manager for the Vancouver Farmers Market society) have lived in Burnaby Heights since 2006. “We wanted to bring something that would be a benefit to the community,” he says. “People are bringing in their kids, young kids. Twenty years from now we may be gone but that kid’s 25, 26 and they’ll say, ‘Remember when we used to go to Glenburn?’ To be able to provide those memories for people is really important for us.”

Glenburn Soda Fountain and Confectionery (4090 Hastings St., Burnaby)

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