It’s Always Aperitivo Hour at Meo, Vancouver’s New Cocktail and Snack Bar

A seductive escape in the city's Chinatown, designed by Ste Marie Studio.

Writer Alyssa Hirose

Meo just opened this past February, but the team behind it has been around the block—literally. The cocktail bar’s owners (Tannis Ling, Joël Watanabe, and Alain Chow) are known for award-winning Chinatown restaurants Bao Bei (about a four-minute walk southwest of Meo) and Kissa Tanto (the Michelin-starred space right above the new spot). Ste Marie Studio, which designed both, was also on board.

“It’s always really cool to do something that is super neighbourhood-specific and where the team is deeply aligned,” says Ste Marie founder Craig Stanghetta. The vision for Meo came, in part, from a 60-year-old chicken restaurant Ling visited in Taipei. “The decor was wild—it was so retro,” she recalls. That restaurant was all wood panelling and pink and red marble, materials heavily featured in Meo’s design.

The long, narrow space is articulated with plush furniture that nods to ’70s and ’80s living rooms. A statement-making curved banquette is inspired by an old photo of a similarly scalloped headboard. The bar area stands out with laminated bamboo panelling. And the entire space is cast in a warm glow thanks to low-level LEDs that add an instant moodiness. Ling defines the overall effect as cozy, dark, and intimate: “a place where you can, you know, get into trouble,” she adds with a laugh.

A large, luminescent jukebox is the shining star. “I feel like it grounds the space and just makes it completely unique to anything else,” Ling says. An image of a Hong Kong café by Canadian photographer Greg Girard sparked her obsession with the jukebox, and “it ended up being a touchstone,” Stanghetta explains. “It helped unlock the whole project, and we could sort of build the vibe backwards.”

Meo’s design helped unlock the restaurant’s menu, too. When it opened, the kitchen focused on globally inspired snacks, but the food is now an ode to popular ingredients, techniques, and presentation styles of the ’70s and ’80s. Dishes like pan-seared duck, foie gras, and tartare: “Things that you saw on menus way back, like 20 or 30 years ago,” Ling says. Drinks-wise, Meo reinvents the classics—the spicy margarita, for example, is clarified with melon milk and offered at six different heat levels.

Stanghetta calls Meo “remarkable and completely singular.” It’s a buzzy little hole-in-the-wall haunt that you might miss while dodging the raindrops as you walk down East Pender. But once inside, cuddled into a plush banquette and sipping a duck-fat old fashioned in that mellow lamplit glow, it’s hard not to stay awhile—maybe even get into a little trouble.