For several years, anyone who ate regularly in Edgemont Village watched the same slow drama unfold. Construction fencing lined Edgemont Boulevard. Scaffolding blocked storefronts. The Grosvenor Group's Connaught development consumed what felt like an indefinite stretch of the village's commercial core, and the restaurants nearby bore the cost.
Chef Scott Kidd of The Canyon, long one of North Vancouver's few genuinely fine-dining destinations, spoke openly to North Shore News about what prolonged construction does to a small neighbourhood restaurant: it doesn't kill foot traffic in one blow, it bleeds it. Kidd had a specific argument about what Edgemont was missing — a competitive dining cluster, not isolated standouts. "All ships rise with the tide," he told the paper, borrowing a line from the craft brewing world to describe restaurant density. Without it, the village couldn't pull people out on a weeknight. The Canyon served its last meal before the Connaught building was finished.
What opened inside that building proved him right, in the most ironic possible way.
What the Connaught Development Actually Delivered
The building at 3280 Edgemont Boulevard — the one whose construction disrupted the village for what felt like forever — is now the address that changed Edgemont's dining character.
Edgemont Bufala
Gooseneck Hospitality co-founder James Iranzad had been watching Edgemont Village since roughly 2017, when his team started scouting for a second Bufala location. He told North Shore News he sensed in the village "an approachable, community-minded, anti big box vibe that was not unlike Kerrisdale." Grosvenor informed him in the fall of 2017 that possession wouldn't happen until 2019. His response: fine. The team used the time, and Iranzad's own hard-won rule — "people aren't automatically going to love what you do just because you do it" — guided how they adapted the Bufala concept for the neighbourhood rather than simply transplanting it. The Neapolitan pizza and by-the-glass wine program landed well, drawing consistent praise from the paper's critic.
Nicli Antica
Within two blocks of Bufala, Nicli Antica, a second location of a well-regarded Vancouver original, took nearly a year to open after its signage first appeared. When it did, North Shore News noted it was attracting significant volumes of patrons daily and nightly. Kidd had specifically named Nicli as an example of how slowly new businesses get traction on the North Shore; watching it succeed was, by his own logic, the rising tide he had argued for.
Two Italian-leaning restaurants within two blocks, competing for the same mid-week dinner customer — that is the density The Canyon never had around it.
Cantina Norte
Cantina Norte on Connaught Crescent is the most direct line back to the village's dining past. The family behind Cafe Norte, which North Shore News identified as Vancouver's most award-winning Mexican restaurant during its 1998 to 2009 run, returned with a fully licensed, food-primary concept that has since been voted the North Shore's favourite new restaurant. Lunch runs daily from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., happy hour from 2 to 5 p.m., dinner Monday through Sunday. The loyalty program, where every tenth margarita is on the house, signals a business built for repeat neighbourhood visits rather than one-time tourism.
The Places That Held the Village Together
Before Bufala, before Nicli Antica, before Cantina Norte, a different set of businesses kept Edgemont functioning as a daily destination.
Delanys Coffee House has been at the corner of Edgemont Boulevard and Highland Boulevard, adjacent to the village clock, for more than 25 years. It is the kind of anchor that makes every other opening possible: a reliable morning draw that brings the same people back to the same block until eating and drinking in Edgemont becomes habit rather than decision.
The Juiceryco occupies the other end of the day. A family-run operation sourcing ingredients from its own family farm in Pemberton, it handles cold-pressed juices and post-hike smoothies for a village sitting this close to Grouse Mountain and the Capilano trail network. It is not a concept imported from somewhere else; it grew from someone who lives here knowing what people who live here want after a Saturday morning on the trails.
Bjorn Bar, now approaching its fourth year of operation, has become a fixture that regulars no longer describe as new. Consistent business, year after year, in a village where The Canyon's closure reminded everyone that consistent is considerably harder to achieve than an opening-night crowd. Nobu Sushi, family-run and long-established, falls into the same category: the kind of neighbourhood staple that stops being a recommendation and becomes an assumption.
Red Tori, the ramen and fried chicken eatery that now occupies The Canyon's former space, completes a before-and-after picture that chef Kidd himself would find telling.
How a Weekend Actually Flows Here
The village is surrounded on three sides by forested parks, connecting directly to trails, a duck pond, pickle and tennis courts, and several creeks. Grouse Mountain, the Capilano Suspension Bridge, the Capilano Salmon Hatchery, and Cleveland Dam are all within easy reach, close enough that stopping for lunch on Edgemont Boulevard on the way back feels like a natural endpoint rather than a detour.
The seasonal calendar layers on top of all of this:
- Summer: The Live & Local concert series brings free music to Edgemont Village as part of a 17-concert season that also plays at Lynn Valley Village and Panorama Park in Deep Cove, running evenings through the warmer months.
- August: The Wild Lights Lantern Festival, presented by the North Vancouver Community Arts Council alongside the Public Dreams Society, takes over the village.
- September: The annual harvest festival returns the village to its local-market roots for a weekend.
- Year-round: The Vancouver Mural Festival has placed murals on village streets, giving the walk between restaurants something to look at beyond storefronts.
Vancouver's North Shore Tourism describes the village as offering "regular events, seasonal markets" aimed at the community that lives here. That description undersells it. The programming calendar is dense enough that a resident can fill a weekend here without planning past Thursday.
The Same Story, Two Different Endings
The Canyon's closing and the Connaught development's opening are the same story from opposite ends. Construction created the conditions that cost the village one of its best restaurants. The building that replaced that construction delivered enough dining depth to do exactly what chef Kidd argued Edgemont had always lacked: enough options within a short walk to make eating locally the obvious choice several nights a week, rather than a compromise.
The post-Connaught village has Bufala and Nicli Antica on the same block, competing for the same table. It has Cantina Norte reclaiming a beloved family legacy. It has Delanys anchoring the morning, The Juiceryco covering the afternoon, Bjorn Bar holding the evening, and Red Tori occupying the very space where the argument for all of this was first made.
Kidd's logic was correct. The development that disrupted his restaurant ultimately proved it.
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