This Week in History: 1979: At Vie's, everyone got equal treatment and great food
Credit to Author: Kevin Griffin| Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2019 21:00:24 +0000
If you worked late at night in Vancouver in the late 1940s through to the early 1970s, one of the most popular places to get a meal was Vie’s Chicken and Steak House.
It was operated for most of its 31 years by Vie and Bob Moore. Born on Saltspring Island, Vie was from a pioneering B.C. family who were descendants of free blacks from California. Bob was from Alabama and never lost his accent.
Vie’s Chicken and Steak House closed 40 years ago this month.
It was a favourite haunt of Alex MacGillivray, the former restaurant critic for The Vancouver Sun.
On the 29th anniversary of his column, MacGillivray wrote that Vie’s was on the “bottom floor of a small, old house with red, blue and yellow walls and furnishings — a dozen oil-cloth-covered tables — that were, well, tacky. We loved it.
“It was the kind of place where late-nighters, mostly cops, lawyers, newspapermen and the odd rounder dropped in from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. for pan-fried steaks, baking-soda biscuits, oil-and-vinegar-dressed salads, bowls of green peas, raw Spanish onions marinated in oil and vinegar, and great golden fries.”
Vie and Bob fried the steaks on a black, oil-fired stove that threw so much heat it warmed the three-room restaurant even in the coldest weather.
Music was from a jukebox. Vie’s had no liquor licence, but nobody minded drinks hidden in brown paper bags under the table.
Vie was famous for never burning a steak or forgetting an order, even as she talked with customers about sports, politics and horse racing.
“For some of us who worked on the overnight Sun city and news desks,” MacGillivray wrote, “it was a relaxing and filling end to an evening.”
Many hungry entertainers who performed in nightclubs such The Cave and Isy’s showed up at Vie’s after their show. They included Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, Mitzi Gaynor, and Sammy Davis Jr.
A half-block off Main, Vie’s was part of the city’s black community known as Hogan’s Alley.
A March 1, 1963, Vancouver Sun article about Vie’s Chicken and Steakhouse at 209 Union Street.
In 1963, MacGillivray wrote about Vie’s for his first restaurant column. Near the end, he wrote this sentence: “Bob is boss, but Vie is the personality.”
Postmedia was able to get in contact with Randy Clark, Vie’s grandson, to ask him whether that sounded accurate.
“I would say that my grandmother was the personality and my grandmother was the boss,” Clark said. “Other than the food, which was absolutely fantastic, she was the main attraction.”
Clark, 66, is a retired high school principal living in New Westminster. He worked in the restaurant as a teenager.
After Vie could no longer work in the restaurant, it was taken over for the last few years by Clark’s mother, Adelene Ellen Alexander Clark.
Clark said his grandmother loved talking with MacGillivray, who also went to lawn parties held at the couple’s Vancouver home.
Clark said he still runs into people today who remember Vie’s.
“It didn’t mater what anyone’s walk in life was or status,” he said. “Everyone in the restaurant was treated the same — with respect. I think that’s what made the restaurant such a great place to go to. The only thing my grandmother expected was to be respectful to one another and everyone in the restaurant.”
— research assistance by PNG librarian Carolyn Soltau