$$$
Italian-Japanese at Kissa Tanto
Cozy & Intimate
Wine Bar at Is That French
Minimal-intervention BC wine, lamb tartare, and a Gastown alley that does half the romantic heavy lifting.
Cozy & Intimate
Minimal-intervention BC wine, lamb tartare, and a Gastown alley that does half the romantic heavy lifting.
Blood Alley sounds like somewhere you'd end a date, not start one, but Is That French has performed a thorough rebranding. The candlelit wine bar is tucked into Gastown's cobblestoned alley proper, with exposed brick walls, low enough light to feel genuinely conspiratorial, and a hand-picked list of minimal-intervention BC bottles that makes a wine list feel like a recommendation from a friend who actually knows things. The kitchen sends out Pacific-Northwest-meets-French tapas built for sharing: cured scallop aguachile, lamb tartare, oysters, the kind of menu where 'try this' becomes a whole conversational loop. It's intimate without being the kind of precious where nobody laughs. Book ahead if you can. The alley alone does a solid chunk of romantic work before you've touched a glass.
