Complete Disclosure:
We did not pay for the food in this restaurant as Anton was expecting us.
“Difficult to find. Hard to forget.”
That is how I would sum up this place.
It is the character behind the Fraser Park Restaurant that I find very interesting. It is this interesting character of this place that the a popular TV show from the Food Network is going to feature this nondescript restaurant in the coming spring.
I just don’t know where to begin telling you about Anton and the Fraser Park Restaurant. LOL!
I wish there is a way you could meet Anton … get to know him and see what goes on inside his head and you will know what I mean.
I met Anton in his restaurant over a year ago. He first contacted me because he saw that I had been planning dinners (the 8GTCC dinners) and he thought that it was fun and wanted to talk about doing something like that. At one point, he was thinking of getting people to come together to cook together in a afternoon and the sitting down to enjoy the fruit of the labour. At another time, he was thinking of getting his chef friends together for a cook off and then invite people to come and pay-what-they-want. All for the love of food!
I like Anton. He did not come across to me as someone who would want to do this just for publicity for his restaurant. As a matter of fact, he told me way up front that he did not want me to write about his little restaurant because he has way enough customers already than he can handle.
That was then … one year ago. All that initial brainstorming was not carried through. He got busy and I got busy with other things in life. And I did not blog about the restaurant.
Out of the blue, Anton wrote to me again. He was telling me that the TV show had identified his restaurant and planned to shoot in his restaurant over two days. I can’t tell you what the TV show is but I think some of you can guess which show it is. Don’t ask me because my lips are sealed.
Anton asked me if I could meet him so that he could pick my brains on what he needs to do to prepare for the TV shoot. It is not that I am an expert in this sort of things but I would love to go and catch up with Anton again and bring Suanne along to try his food.
So where is Anton’s restaurant? The Fraser Park Restaurant is not exactly unknown. Many people knows him and loves his simple authentic German food. It is located in an area you will least expect. As a matter of fact, it is one restaurant you will not go into if you saw it by chance.
And that is the beauty of it. Sometimes one should not judge a book by its cover. As I mentioned up front … it is the character that makes this restaurant that I think many people should experience. You might hate it … or you might just love it. I love it.
It is “difficult to find” as I said. Fraser Park is located way down the southern most part of Byrne Road in Burnaby. There is virtually nothing here except for lots of industrial buildings. Oh, I think there is also a correctional facility nearby too! There is also a nice park that I used to walk along after lunch when I was working in the area.
Outside the restaurant and in the general area, don’t be shocked with rusted cars and vans parked haphazardly around.
Anton’s specialty is his German lunches. He is after all a master butcher and a master sausage maker. He studied food science in microbiology. So he knows his stuff. You can see his credentials on the walls inside the restaurant.
He changes his menu every week and serves different things everyday. However, there are days that he will feature something standard because people loves that:
- On Wednesday it is his famous German lunch
- On Thursday it is lamb based
- On Friday it is salmon day
We picked Wednesday to visit Anton because we wanted to eat his German lunch.
See the menu above. Don’t you just love him putting in a smattering of German words on his weekly menu? You can click on it to make it more readable. He emails the menu of the week out to his customers so that they can plan to come in for the specials of the week. It is hard to get bored with his food when he tries to vary it every day, every week.
Anton is a crazy nut if you ask me. He is a perfectionist and he insists on making his food from … (more…)
