Had the pleasure and privilege today of a working lunch at Voya, a swank new eatery worthy of Audrey Hepburn’s Holly Golightly, next to the Loden Hotel at Melville and Thurlow in downtown Vancouver.

The lunch menu is a smart two-course prix fixe: $26 buys your choice of any two plates from the small and carefully crafted menu. My organic beet-and-chevre salad was as good or better than the nearly perfect one I enjoyed at L’Express in Montreal recently (high praise indeed), and the poached wild salmon that followed was faultlessly prepared and presented.

This place is a natural to participate in Tourism Vancouver’s Dine Out Vancouver event happening January 14 to February 1–except that they missed the registration deadline. That’s the bad news. The good news: marketing director Barbara Hicks says they’ll go it alone with their own cheekily named Wine Out Vancouver prom0tion–$38 will buy you a three-course dinner, but even better, you can sample any bottle from their sophisticated wine list for just the retail price plus 15 bucks. Heck, you might even want to sample two…

Call or e-mail for details & resos: 604.639.VOYA or info@voyarestaurant.com

(And ps: yes, that was Fresco chef Rod Butters sitting at the bar today…)