Selene Aegean Bistro — Restaurant in Vancouver

It’s always hard to know what to expect from new restaurants. I was particularly anxious visiting Selene for the first time because there were many Google reviews that led me to believe they hadn’t quite perfected their dishes, and struggled with consistency. Although they’ve only been open for just over a month now, they’re part of an established restaurant group which led me to hope the learning curve wouldn’t be as steep.

As everyone else has noted, the vibes and the service are absolutely immaculate here.

I found the food and drinks to be somewhat hit or miss. Two dishes stood out: the koulouri bread with kalamata butter was a great starter. Given our uncertainty about the food consistency, we hesitated to order the octopus. It turned out to be the best decision of the night. It had an ink orzo, and brown butter bread crumbs. One of the best octopus dishes I’ve ever had. Apparently they had been struggling with cooking the octopus, but they nailed it for our visit.

We also had the salmon crudo, which was average, and the lamb ribs, which had amazing flavor but were a bit dry, meatless, and overcharred. Bar Bravo has better former, and Watson has better latter.

I was so happy to learn than Dylan from Published had joined the Selene team. That’s a major green flag for cocktails. I only had two: the counterfeit death was a very good espresso martini (cardomom always works well with these). I didn’t like the kalliste; there was something about a martini having both gin and vodka that didn’t quite work for me.

I’m very excited to see where Selene goes. They clearly have an all-star and dedicated team that is focused on improving. I’ll definitely go back in a few months.

By the way, resos seem funky here. Opentable shows rare availability, but there were several empty tables at 730pm on a Friday night. I suspect the restaurant reserves and releases blocks of resos, and so it’s worth setting up Opentable notifications if you want a table on...

A brand new restaurant (as of October 2024) in East Vancouver. Beautifully renovated with a high end, more, boho-esthetic.

The food is delicious and well presented. In between 5 people, we ordered 2 main dishes, 3 sides and that was enough. We asked for an extra order of pita to come with the dip and they said no problem, and served one up in a flash. Don't skip out on their dessert either, as I felt that those were standout dishes and a great way to end the evening.

Parking is easy. There's a parking lot just outside of their building. No parking fees.

This place is well suited for being a bit better dressed than fully casual. It's a good place for a first date or catching up with friends, while sharing dishes together.

Tables can accommodate up to 8 people if you reserve in advance. Plenty of seating, otherwise.

My one feedback for their menu is to adjust their gin cocktail as I wasn't the biggest fan of the anchovy that comes with it. I made the mistake of dipping it into the cocktail and it gave it a flavor that I felt was definitely acquired 😅

Overall though, I can't wait to go back and highly recommend you check this place out!

*March 2025 Update: Selene serves brunch now! In between 2 people we split the steak and egg, pide and pistachio toast. The flavours and textures are so well balanced. In particular the bread the pide is served on was so light but crunchy. The milk toast on the pistachio toast was also so crunchy and the perfect density you want a dessert like that to be for brunch. Photos...

Good vibes, food and service not so much.

Very nicely designed restaurant down to the tableware but wish they had put as much thought into the food. We ordered the 1 mezze (baba ganoush), 2 'half moons' (harissa fried chicken, lamb ribs), and 2 full moons (short rib and octopus) which was actually too much food but we did order more than the server suggested to try since it was a birthday celebration.

The baba ganoush had the texture of hummus and tasted mainly of garlic and tahini.

Wish I had read the other review before but a large piece in our fried chicken was also burnt and was lacking in flavour when eaten without the accompanying salsa and tzaziki. Mistakes happen but it is disappointing when one piece makes up 1/5th of a $26 dish and doubly disappointing when the server does nothing about it even when informed besides changing out my plate. (As an aside, we requested some additional tzaziki as there was not enough under the fried chicken and were also charged for it).

We did enjoy the lamb ribs with the pomegranate glaze. Some of the ribs were fork tender while others had more chew.

From the menu descriptions, we did not expect the two 'full moons' (Octopus / Short Rib) we ordered to be starches. I enjoyed the squid ink orzo with the Octopus but the octopus itself was both sparse in portion size and also burnt and had an acrid flavour (coming from someone who likes the flavour of char) although my dining partner found the orzo divisive. The short rib pasta was fine but nothing...