The Ovaltine Cafe is a traditional diner in the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, known for its traditional decor. [2] [3] [4] [5] The cafe was opened in 1942 and has served as a set for movies and television shows that want to film in a restaurant with an old-fashioned appearance. [6]
On September 15, 2018, Craig Moss, a travel writer with the London newspaper The Telegraph , in consultation with a team of experts, published a list of the world's 50 best cafes, which included the Ovaltine. [7] [8] [9]
Keith McKellar devoted a chapter to the cafe in his book Neon Eulogy, calling it "easily Vancouver's most prized antique cafe." [1]
Randall Wong, the first Chinese-Canadian federal judge in Canada, worked at the Ovaltine in his youth. [10] At that time the Ovaltine was near a court and a police station, and Wong attributed his interest in the law to his conversations with patrons who worked in law enforcement.
Gastown is the original settlement that became the core of the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and a national historic site and a neighbourhood in the northwest section of the Downtown Eastside, adjacent to Downtown Vancouver.
The Downtown Eastside (DTES) is a neighbourhood in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. One of the city's oldest neighbourhoods, the DTES is the site of a complex set of social issues, including disproportionately high levels of drug use, homelessness, poverty, crime, mental illness and sex work. It is also known for its strong community resilience, history of social activism, and artistic contributions.
Chinatown is a neighbourhood in Vancouver, British Columbia, and is Canada's largest Chinatown. Centred around Pender Street, it is surrounded by Gastown to the north, the Downtown financial and central business districts to the west, the Georgia Viaduct and the False Creek inlet to the south, the Downtown Eastside and the remnant of old Japantown to the northeast, and the residential neighbourhood of Strathcona to the southeast.
Commercial Drive is a roadway in the city of Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada, that extends from Powell Street at its northern extremity, near the waterfront, south through the heart of the Grandview–Woodland neighbourhood to the Victoria Diversion near Trout Lake. The neighbourhood is so dominated by the businesses, cultural facilities, and residents along Commercial Drive that the area is far better known as "The Drive" than by the civic boundaries. The district is one of Vancouver's Business Improvement Areas (BIA).
Japantown, Little Tokyo or Paueru-gai is an old neighbourhood in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, located east of Gastown and north of Chinatown, that once had a concentration of Japanese immigrants.
The Granville Mall is a transit mall and pedestrian zone in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It comprises the section of Granville Street in Downtown Vancouver between Hastings and Smithe streets. Most routes that service the mall are primarily trolleybuses operated by TransLink; in addition to bus service, the Granville Mall can be accessed by SkyTrain from either Granville and Vancouver City Centre stations of the Expo and Canada lines, respectively.
Strathcona is the oldest residential neighbourhood of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Officially a part of the East Side, it is bordered by Downtown Vancouver's Chinatown neighbourhood and the False Creek inlet to the west, Downtown Eastside to the north, Grandview-Woodland to the east, and Mount Pleasant to the south of Emily Carr University and the Canadian National Railway and Great Northern Railway classification yards.
East Vancouver is a region within the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Geographically, East Vancouver is bordered to the north by Burrard Inlet, to the south by the Fraser River, and to the east by the city of Burnaby. East Vancouver is divided from Vancouver's "West Side" by Ontario Street.
The North Star hotel is a former hotel at the southern edge of Gastown in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Located at 5 West Hastings Street, it is a four-story red brick Victorian Italianate construction completed at an unidentified date, between the 1890s and 1904.
Hastings Street is an east–west traffic corridor in the cities of Vancouver and Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. It used to be a part of the decommissioned Highway 7A. In the central business district of downtown Vancouver, it is known as West Hastings Street; at Carrall Street it becomes East Hastings Street and runs eastwards through East Vancouver and Burnaby. In Burnaby, there is no east-west designation. The street ends in Westridge, a neighbourhood at the foot of Burnaby Mountain where it joins Burnaby Mountain Parkway and diverges from the continuation of the former Highway 7A as the Barnet Highway, to Port Moody, British Columbia.
Centre A (Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art) is a non-profit public art gallery in Vancouver committed to the research, production, presentation and interpretation of contemporary Asian art. It is the only public gallery in Canada dedicated to contemporary Asian and Asian Diasporic visual art practices. Founded in 1999 by Hank Bull (Founding Director), Zheng Shengtian and Stephanie Holmquist, the centre has been led by a board of directors with respected members of the community consisting Milton Wong, Joanne Louie Mah, Joe Wai and Anndraya Luui. Over the years, a number of curators and directors contributed to the success of the gallery, such as Sadira Rodrigues, Alice Ming Wai Jim, Makiko Hara, Haema Sivanesan, Tyler Russell, and Henry Heng Lu. Centre A is a registered charity.
The R5 Hastings St is an express bus service with bus rapid transit elements in Metro Vancouver, Canada. Part of TransLink's RapidBus network, it travels along Hastings Street, a major east–west route, and connects Simon Fraser University to the SkyTrain system's Burrard station on the Expo Line in Downtown Vancouver. It replaced the 95 B-Line route on January 6, 2020.
Railway Stage & Beer Café is Vancouver’s longest continually operating nightclub, occupying the same premises uninterrupted from 1931 to 2016. Three rooms made up the second floor space at the corner of Seymour and Dunsmuir Street. The first was a small room that hosted music seven nights a week. The second was a pub-style space, and the third retained its 1930s look, with brass fittings and a large wooden bar.
Randall Wong is a Canadian lawyer. He was the first Chinese-Canadian lawyer to be appointed to a Federal court. He is the longest serving judge on British Columbia's Supreme Court.
Kissa Tanto is an Italian-Japanese fusion restaurant in the Chinatown neighborhood of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The 80-seat restaurant, which opened in June 2016, is on the second floor of 263 E Pender St. Its name comes from the Japanese word kissa, referring to the "jazz kissa" or jazz cafes of 1960s Tokyo, and the Italian word tanto, meaning "a lot" or "so much". Kissa Tanto is co-owned by restaurateur Tannis Ling, executive chef Joël Watanabe, and sous chef Alain Chow, who collectively envisioned it as an escapist, anachronistic concept.
The Roxy was a diner serving American cuisine in Portland, Oregon. Located on downtown Portland's Southwest Harvey Milk Street, the restaurant was established in 1994. The Roxy was popular as a late-night food destination and had a diverse clientele. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the diner operated 24 hours a day, except on Mondays. The Roxy has been described as "iconic" and a "landmark", and was known for being an LGBTQ-friendly establishment because of its employees' community involvement and its location within the historic hub of LGBT culture and nightlife. Following a forced six-month closure due to the pandemic, the diner opened under new public health and safety guidelines in November 2020. The diner closed in March 2022.
Fuller's Coffee Shop is a diner serving standard American cuisine in Portland, Oregon's Pearl District, in the United States. Established in 1947, the restaurant has operated from its location in downtown Portland since 1960. It serves breakfast all day, and the menu features a cheeseburger with a recipe that has not changed since the diner's establishment. Described as a greasy spoon, Fuller's has received a generally positive reception, and appeared in an episode of the television series Grimm in 2017. Founded by Jack Fuller, the diner was later owned by his son John then by Urban Restaurant Group.
The Nite Hawk Cafe and Lounge is a restaurant in Portland, Oregon.
Cup & Saucer Cafe was a restaurant with multiple locations in Portland, Oregon.
The Astoria Hotel is a historic hotel turned into single-room occupancy accommodations located at 769 East Hastings Street in the Downtown Eastside neighborhood of Vancouver, Canada. The hotel was opened in 1913 as the Toronto House Apartments before becoming the Astoria Hotel in 1950. The main floor of the hotel serves as a bar and events space. The hotel is currently owned by the Sahota family.
In fact, the aesthetic is so striking that the cafe has been featured in a variety of film and TV productions, including the X-Files, Supernatural and I, Robot.
On nearby Hastings Street, a quick succession of marvels then spreads farther east, including signs such as those at Save On Meats, The Balmoral and The Pennsylvania (hotels turned social housing projects) and Ovaltine Cafe, a city fixture dating to the early 1940s.
The legendary Ovaltine Cafe on East Hastings Street has been used "oodles and oodles of times", Dayal says, because of its distinctive old-time-diner feel. Da Vinci's Inquest used to film there weekly, and Dayal used it in I, Robot as a coffee hangout for Will Smith's Det. Del Spooner.
With that said, it was rewarding to see that Vancouver's famous Ovaltine Cafe made the list, one of only two Canadian cafes to make his global ranking (the other is Montreal's Cafe Olimpico).
The Telegraph newspaper of London lauded the Ovaltine Cafe at 251 East Hastings as remarkable for its vintage furnishings.
'They came from the back of the police station to the alleyway and through the kitchen and I think I was influenced a lot by these people to go into law,' Wong told host Rick Cluff on The Early Edition.
49°16′53″N123°05′54″W / 49.28149°N 123.09836°W