lub kids, mobsters, dolled-up suburbanites, and the poster-children for young professionals need a place to play together. Glowbal, located in the meat of Yaletown, is the designer sandbox where they all get along. Against a bright minimalist dÈcor, open kitchen, and massive sidewalk patio, everyone and everything is on display.

Chef Sean Riley’s culinary wet dreams are realized. The menu plays nice so that both dainty palates, and more carnivorous ones alike can find something to grill. His real successes, which gave Glowbal the nod as Vancouver’s Best New Restaurant in 2002, are his Satay bar, and his crafty wine list. You can get lost in both like a kid with their Halloween candy. Mix and match prawns to short ribs, oysters to Ahi tuna, or give them all, and others a whirl with the sampler of sauces. Then cruise the planet’s best grapes.

Where the menu has given room for cultures and taste buds to collide, the ambiance, however, draws strong lines in said happy sandbox.

Glowbal shares bathrooms with a room called Afterglow, which tends to mumble like the Quebecois. It wants badly to be separate, but it can’t manage much on its own. It is beaucoup cramped, so if you don’t mind a possible wait, make it for a Glowbal seat.

On this Saturday, their hip-hoppiest evening, segregation was in the air. Behind the cover of two feet of angelic white mica are the bartenders and the cooks. Both groups are fresh out of school, but only one crew looked happy to be there (a grumpy bartender pours a short martini). The thirty-something professional gals struck poses in the corner. Muscle guys in tight shirts checked their reflections in passing wine glasses. Office parties aplenty quibbled over the size of the house tab in the dining area. And the bunnies made rounds to and from the bathroom in their fishnets, teasing the older men drinking Scotch between cigarette breaks.