It is with regret that one of our Fray family will be moving on this week – a rather large part of that family, at that.
Head chef Antonio Martin, who was brought in to help us establish a new kind of eatery on a stretch of street few visit, at a time of year most people are staying inside and wrapping themselves in Snuggies, has duly delivered what he hoped he could manage in six months – in just half that time.
Fray is surging – the menu is established and evolving, the staff are trained and delivering, the local population is visiting in growing numbers, and spring is just around the corner. With that in mind, and with a hankering to travel back to Asia and work with some big name chefs in emerging areas of cuisine, Antonio has elevated sous chef Benny Cheng to run the kitchen and leaves us in a position we could not have possibly reasonably hoped for when we took over that crumbling, deep purple, wreck of a kitchen we walked into back in August.
Antonio wanted Benny to have the slow months of January and February to find his feet moving into the spring, so he’s cut his stay short and prepared Benny to take the reins.
It’s a sad thing that we lose Antonio, but he was always here with a view to establishing the business and moving on to his next adventure when the job was done, and if there’s one thing we’ve learned about Benny in the time he’s been with us, it’s that he’s far too talented to stay a sous, and has far too much creative energy to be locked to the line. He’s promising a focus on new salads and desserts in the short term, and some tweaks to the rest of the menu to build upon what Antonio has established to date.
If you’ve eaten at Fray over the last few months and loved what you had, chances were you were eating what Benny had cooked, so don’t expect any drop-off in taste, quality and service in the months ahead. If anything, it’ll be an exciting time as we get to see the man Antonio selected as the best talent out there can do with a greater role.
At the same time, we’ve also moved one of our servers into a front-of-house management role: Jaime Kawamoto steps up to a position that will give her the ability to make improvements to the already stellar standard of service that we’ve become known for, and bring about consistency to every aspect of the Fray experience.
We love the people we have working for us and can’t wait to see what will come from giving them a bigger stage to show what they can do. Please feel free to drop in, say hi, and tell them what a great job they’re doing.
NOTE: For the coming month or so, Fray will be closed on Mondays to allow chef Benny a chance to try new things and build up to our spring menu launch. We’ll be taking those days as a chance to make some improvements to the restaurant, with heating in the bathrooms coming in the next few days, wheelchair access on the way, and a summer patio planned.
Thanks for choosing us as a place to nosh, quaff and play, and if there’s anything you’d like to see from us, let us know by emailing chris@fray.me.

This is why.

According to the folks from Red Racer, cask-conditioned beer is “unfiltered and unpasteurised beer which is conditioned and served from a cask without additional nitrogen or carbon dioxide pressure.”

Translated: They make it in the cask, they add sugar and brewers yeast and other goodies during the secondary fermentation process, and then, rather than filtering it, they stick a tap on the side of the cask and serve it pure.

If you love beer, this is where beer truly lives.

We’ll unleash a cask of Red Racer Centennial dry-hopped Pale Ale on Thursday Nov 24 at 6pm.

You can find the Facebook event page right here. Book your table at OpenTable.

Sunday night: Table 5. I’m sitting with my kids, enjoying a meal. As we ate, Jasper, my now 6-year-old, was taking me on in a game of Battleship as Alice coloured.

But Jasper was getting into it a bit much.

“Mike-5? No! You hit me!”

“Jasper,” I said. “You’ve got to keep it down, kiddo. People are trying to enjoy their meal.”

Jasper agreed and we got back to the game.

10 seconds later, I was interrupted by a loud voice behind me, at table 4.

“YES! I got the spare ribs!”

We don’t have spare ribs on the menu, I thought to myself. So I turned around to see what the fuss was about.

It was a young guy and his girlfriend, enjoying a beer and playing Operation.

I love Fray.

If anyone ever tries to tell you that they can open a restaurant of any sort of level of decency without going over budget, you should punch that guy in the face and reprimanded him severely for lying to you.

When we started this thing, we thought we’d throw some paint and tender loving care over a neglected restaurant in a growing area. It was an arbitrage situation, we told ourselves. Buy it cheap, spend a minimal amount of money updating a few things, reopen and rejoice.

What’s that? The toilet is cracked? Replaced.

Hmm? The second vent was ‘home made’ and has at some point suffered a fire? Removed.

Squirrel POS systems won’t work in our set-up? Sold.

Hey? Has anyone seen a hot water tank in this building? There’s gotta be one… right?

Death by a thousand purchases, but the other side of that is, when we do get this thing reopened, it’s going to be far better than just an old place with a coat of paint. We’re updating everything from paint to table-tops to kitchen equipment to menu to concept.

Realistically, it’s what we should have done in the first place. When a restaurant has been closed for six months, prettying it up and reopening it as it was isn’t exactly a way to inspire the neighbourhood. So plans have duly changed, experts have been summoned, the building will be up to code like it hasn’t been ever before, and when you walk in the door you’ll be getting your long-awaited taste of the new Fraser.

Not the new Main Street, but the new Fraser.

Restaurant Makeover’s got nothing on us.

Hells to the yes, at least if a cursory Google search is to be believed.

“Within the last six months, there have been sales well over $1-million in that area,” says Ms. Steele.

As for whether she thinks Fraser is the new Main Street, she doesn’t have to think long.

“I just wonder whether you’re too late to even say that. It’s already happened.”

Source: Globe and Mail:

In the time since we first looked at Fraser as a potential spot for our restaurant, we’ve noticed a crazy change taking place. Just on our own block, the Outpost Cafe has arisen, an organic grocery store has followed, an the Beehive hair salon has migrated from Main Street to arrive just a few doors up.

A few blocks away, the big guys are already throwing elbows: Shopper’s Drug Mart is open, as is No Frills supermarket and the requisite Starbucks and Subway. One might wonder how they feel about sharing a block with the medical marijuana dispensary, but hey, it’s that kind of hood.

More from the Globe:

There is evidence that young families and first-time buyers already fill the neighbourhood. The area’s pristine parks are filled with mothers and strollers. The tired old character homes have undergone loving renovations and restorations. Front yard and boulevard gardens have sprouted up. Block parties are being held in the summer. There are regular line-ups to get into Les Faux Bourgeois, a French upscale bistro in the area that saw a niche and is now routinely filled to capacity. At Fraser and 30th, there is a major condo development called Century under way, complete with city views for around $400,000, and retail stores at street level.

Others agree. VanCityBuzz posted in June last year that Fraser was coming up big in the rear view mirror: “As we continue our look at gentrification in Vancouver we look at the one street that I believe is poised to benefit most from the next boom, Fraser Street.”

Others still are concerned that the Main-ification of Fraser may potentially be a bad thing. See Hummingbird604:

The addition of “Les Faux Burgeois” (a new upscale, French restaurant, although not nearly as pricey as other French restaurants in Vancouver) to the 15th and Fraser area (almost next door to The Lion’s Den) is also a signal of this transformative process. At any rate, while I am glad to see a transformation of the neighbourhood (Mount Pleasant), I am slightly worried about it losing its character. I hope it doesn’t.

Local business owners don’t seem too concerned (we’re certainly not). From the Vancouver Observer:

Business owners in the area had mixed reactions to the neighbourhood’s changes. Melda Rivera, owner of the Filipino grocery store Aling Pining on Fraser and 27th Ave., doesn’t see the new developments on Fraser Street as a problem. “The more stores we have,” she said, “the more people come because they have a lot of choices.”

So where does all this leave us, the proud owners of (hopefully) a new anchor business on the ‘new Main Street’?

We’re stoked. Not just because we see a healthy financial future for the area, but because we understand what made Main Street great wasn’t dollar signs and franchises, but grungy little neighbourhood hangs where the uniforms were recycled clothing and the beer was ‘anything but Molson.’ We get it that mismatched tables doesn’t mean the sandwiches taste bad, and that simply offering pulled pork in a sandwich doesn’t mean it’ll be good.

We get it that Fraser, like Main before it and Cambie before that (and Granville and Commercial before that, if you wanna get old school) were popular not because someone decided they would be, but because various groups of creative people decided to break from form and offer something new, something real, something that people wanted but weren’t getting from corporate marketing teams.

At Fray, we’re going to bring you good food done right. Local. Fresh. Home-made. Organic. Comfortable. Fusion without the confusion. We want any food that comes out of our kitchen to be so fresh you can taste the farm it came from, and if we can make it organic and reasonably-priced, we’ll do that.

We want the surroundings to be somewhere you come to relax. We’ve got 80 seats, so we won’t be rushing you to the door – and if we get too full, there’s another 2000 square feet available to us upstairs.

so crack open your laptop, play a game of Ms Pacman, camp out at the bar, spend some time browsing our walls and, most of all, EAT.

Is Fraser the new Main? Maybe it is. But maybe, just maybe, it’s the new Fra’.