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Canwest News Service
Twilight cast members loved the place and it was arguably the busiest restaurant in Vancouver. So why change?
Glowbal Restaurant Group president Emad Yacoub said the immensely popular Glowbal Grill & Satay Bar in Yaletown had to grow up, much like its regular customers have since it opened eight years ago.
So the company shut it down just before Christmas, ripped it apart and spent $600,000 on renovations — reopening this week as Glowbal Grill Steaks & Satay to capitalize on the surge in Olympic business expected next month.
"We were going to renovate after the Olympics but when we realized just how many people will be in Yaletown during the Games, it was too great an opportunity to ignore," Yacoub said in an interview.
The restaurant sits on the main pedestrian corridor between the two Vancouver Olympic live sites and an estimated 10,000 people an hour are expected in the area daily between 2 p.m. and 11 p.m. Another 50,000 or 60,000 could spill into the district late at night after the closure of BC Place, GM Place and the two live sites.
Locals and visitors who patronize the relaunched restaurant will experience a new emphasis on steak.
A $15,000 glass-walled meat cooler remains at a constant 1 C to preserve and showcase a wide variety of prime beef cuts that can be butchered to order.
The restaurant has kept longtime menu favourites like seafood, satays and its signature spaghetti and Kobe meatballs, but beef is the clear focus. It's an interesting strategy, coming just months after the upscale Morton's steak house closed in downtown Vancouver.
"This won't be a traditional steak house with dark rooms and no windows," Yacoub said. "Believe me, there's no steak house in Vancouver like this."
He said the restaurant will charge reasonable prices, noting a steak that might cost $45 at another steak house will cost around $35 at his establishment.
The restaurant redesign features all-new lighting, seating and flooring. A huge $10,000 circular light fixture hangs near the entrance, leopard-designed tiles inspired by a Jimmy Choo ad grace the bathroom floors and Yacoub said the restaurant's Afterglow Lounge has been given a "richer, more exclusive" look.
He said the restaurant's maturation process makes sense, considering the changing behaviour of its longtime customers.
"People who used to sit at the bar and go crazy eight years ago now come for lunch to have business meetings," Yacoub said.
He also noted the shift toward steak complements the diverse offerings at Glowbal Restaurant Group's other five restaurants -Sanafir, Italian Kitchen, Trattoria, Coast and Society Dining Lounge.
Yacoub said Glowbal Grill has likely been the busiest restaurant in Vancouver in recent years, when measured by sales per square foot, as the 3,300-square-foot eatery pulls in about $5 million a year.
It gained worldwide publicity when it become a favoured hangout for the Twilight movie cast while they filmed in Vancouver and Yacoub said it won't lose any of that buzz.
"People go to restaurants to socialize and have fun and we've mastered the art of getting that feel and soul into a place that makes people excited to come," he said. "I can't put my finger on it but it's anything from knowing when to raise the music so people raise their voices a bit to create some energy to knowing when to turn the lights down."
Yacoub said Olympic-related business continues to roll in for his company's six restaurants and estimates that about 50 per cent of the space at the eateries will be taken up by Games participants, with 25 per cent set aside for hotel concierges and 25 per cent for walk-in business.
NBC has booked Society Dining Lounge in Yaletown for lunch every day during the Games while the network has also booked Coast for one entire day. Visa has taken the upstairs portion of Coast for one evening while some Olympic hockey teams have booked the upper level of Italian Kitchen after their games.
bconstantineau@vancouversun.com
