strong trio stands firm behind new Gastown eatery, Boneta. Vancouver Mag's 2006 bartender of the year Mark Brand (after whose mom the resto is named), Neil Ingram (formerly of Lumiere) and Andre McGillivray (also of Lumiere, Chambar and Le Crocodile fame) have created a sophisticated restaurant with style to spare. Although the clientele run the gamut of designer-bag sporting, chic-bobbed women and loud-laughing, tiny-glasses-wearing socialites, the restaurant itself exults a cool, casual comfort.

The restaurant, as it turns out, also has a conscious: the owners have hired local homeless people to stay close to its perimeter at night to prevent break-ins and the chic decor is made from PaperStone - a reused product that looks like granite.

At 25, you might think Chef Jeremine Bastien a bit young to be working amongst such a sophisticated crowd, but Bastien is already a bit of a veteran on the Vancouver restaurant scene, having served as a sous chef at Lumière, a junior sous at Boulevard (one of San Francisco's finest) and a cook in a Michelin-starred restaurant in Burgundy. his cuisine is inventive and exciting, fusing the flavors of France, Italy and Japan under a single menu. Be sure to try his pheasant coq au vin with porcini powder gnocchi, boar bacon lardons, king oyster mushrooms and pearl onions glazed with Marcella wine. One bite and you'll understand how he's accomplished so much at such a young age.

At Boneta, things are certainly done a little differently but now and then it's good to divert from the crowd and take the road less traveled.