Ever wonder how a new dish makes its way onto the menu of a chain restaurant?
Quite often the company operates one of its locations as a "test kitchen" where they try out new items to see what customers think.
While sometimes the restaurant doesn't overtly label the location as its testing zone, Earls' 905 Hornby St outpost is the chain's official "Test Kitchen" location, and that space has just emerged from a significant redesign.
Earls has injected a breath of fresh air into the large downtown restaurant, which still has a large bar area with TV screens and a massive curving staircase ascending to the "test kitchen" proper. However, they've cleared the air quite a bit, eliminating partitions and opening up the space overall, allowing tons of light to flow through the corner window walls. Gone is the dim, dark overall tone of the room, replaced with white tile, greenery and vibrant artwork. Some high tables have been swapped with low ones, and the banquettes are in an off-white fabric, adding to the brighter feel.
What dishes are on the Earls 'test kitchen' menu?
The Earls menu – which began 40 years ago as one based on burgers and beer – is suited to the more modern space. There's plenty of seafood, salads and approachable dishes that a chain of its calibre builds its reputation on. The happy hour pricing can't be beat, and there's even a full section of the menu that clearly denotes vegan dishes.
As the Test Kitchen, what this Earls offers is a selection of dishes that are in development. A manager explains that a "roll-out" of items being worked on will often consist of five dishes in varying stages of development, of which maybe two will wind up on the permanent menu across the chain. Staff here have Google forms on their iPads through which they can log customer feedback; sometimes, a dish may stay on the test kitchen menu, but with ingredient swaps or other tweaks based on that feedback.
For its post-renovation debut, the test kitchen dishes at Earls on Hornby are a cheese tortellini with truffle and steak; yuzu tuna tataki; a seafood platter; a Bangkok rice and salad bowl; a pulled chicken Clubhouse sandwich; grilled achiote chicken; a chicken biryani; bumble berry and apple pie; and "angry" chicken lettuce wraps.
The relaunch of Earls' downtown Test Kitchen location seems to be kicking off what could be a big year for the 40-year-old Vancouver chain. The company is about to open its sleek new Brentwood location in Burnaby (Feb. 16) and recently revealed plans to spin off its former Lougheed Highway branch into a new California-casual concept called Birdies.
