{"id":173365,"date":"2026-08-19T00:25:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T00:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/173365\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T00:25:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T00:25:15","slug":"pax-romana-wasnt-built-in-a-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/173365\/","title":{"rendered":"Pax Romana wasn’t built in a day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday.\u00a0Sign up for our free newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For anyone who has settled in at one of Pax Romana<\/a>\u2019s cozy tables over the past two-and-a-half years, news that the restaurant is closing its current location naturally raised a question: what happens to everything that made it special?<\/p>\n

The good news is that Pax Romana will live on in a new space, to be located nearby.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to largely remain the same\u2014the same heart, the same spirit,\u201d says Janine Spartano, Pax Romana\u2019s interior designer and brand manager. The new spot will feature a better-equipped kitchen, she says, to give its team more freedom without requiring it to abandon the intimate character it has spent the past few years building.<\/p>\n

Pax Romana has never needed much room to make an impression. Inside its narrow home at 1670 Commercial Drive, dinner could begin with a few small bites and somehow stretch into an evening of charcuterie, sherry, and cocktails. The room was intimate enough that the person making your martini might also explain the wine, recommend another plate, and return later to see whether you needed more bread.<\/p>\n

That closeness was not incidental. It shaped the way the restaurant looked, the way its team worked, and the kind of night it offered.<\/p>\n

General manager Prateek Balraj was drawn to Pax Romana for many of the same reasons its regulars were.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a nice, small, intimate restaurant that is trying to do really good things with great-quality product and great-quality produce, using just simple techniques,\u201d he says. \u201cNot trying to overcomplicate things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Its size also allowed Balraj to remain behind the bar, work the floor, and shape each guest\u2019s experience personally rather than manage the room from a distance.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not a guy to do a lot of pretentious service,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ve always been kind of laid-back, kind of chill, a little bit more personable, a little bit more casual.\u201d<\/p>\n

That philosophy runs through the menu, too. Pax\u2019s charcuterie boards are filled with cheeses, cured meats, pickles, and preserves. The en papillote\u2014a dish where fish is wrapped in a parchment paper and baked\u2014has become a favourite, while the Iberico sandwich\u2014once just for staff\u2014proved too delicious to keep away from the public.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have people who come in just for the sandwich nowadays,\u201d Balraj says. \u201cIt used to be our staff meal, and we were like, \u2018It\u2019s way too good to not be on the menu.\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n

The cocktail list follows the same pattern: recognizable classics made distinct through careful tweaks. The Espresso Martini swaps vodka for dark rum fat-washed with brown butter, while the Pax Martini blends gin, ros\u00e9 vermouth, and fino sherry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re dangerously easy to drink,\u201d Balraj says of them.<\/p>\n

The restaurant opened in late 2023 as part of Ionian Hospitality, the group behind Loula\u2019s Taverna, Sopra Sotto Pizzeria, and Claudio\u2019s Ristorante, but quickly developed an identity of its own. Pax is smaller, more moody, and more idiosyncratic\u2014a place built as much around the rhythm of drinking and grazing as around dinner itself.<\/p>\n

Its design helped establish that identity from the beginning. Before becoming Pax Romana, the space was The Drive Coffee Bar, a bright, white caf\u00e9 that Spartano had also designed. Transforming it into Pax meant pushing in almost the opposite direction: darker, warmer, and more lived-in.<\/p>\n

The inspiration came partly from the bars and caf\u00e9s Spartano encountered while travelling in Europe\u2014places tucked into former homes, passed down through families, and shaped over time rather than built all at once.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember we went to Greece, and my husband and I were with our friends, and I was like, \u2018Oh my God, that\u2019s such a cool fireplace,\u2019\u200a\u201d she recalls. \u201cSomebody was like, \u2018That was so-and-so\u2019s great-grandmother\u2019s house.\u2019 I was like, \u2018What? That\u2019s amazing.\u2019\u200a\u201d<\/p>\n

That sense of inheritance became central to Pax\u2019s design.<\/p>\n

\u201cA big part of the concept was keeping fundamental pieces that are in the space,\u201d Spartano says.<\/p>\n

For the new Pax, the goal is not to reproduce the current room piece by piece. It\u2019s to carry over its familiarity: the warmth, the coziness, the easy access to the bartender, and the feeling that the person greeting you is never very far away.<\/p>\n

\u201cI do hope that there is a sense of familiarity and the same energy and comfort,\u201d Spartano says.<\/p>\n

While the new location will be roughly the same size, the biggest change will be behind the scenes. \u201cIf anything, it\u2019s going to allow greater ease of service and a little bit more opportunity for creativity,\u201d Spartano says. \u201cWe\u2019ll have the means now.\u201d<\/p>\n

The move, then, is not about making Pax grander. It\u2019s about giving the restaurant better tools to keep doing what it already does well. The address will change. The room will look different. But if the team succeeds, walking into the new Pax Romana should still feel like returning to somewhere familiar\u2014just one better equipped for what comes next. GS<\/p>\n

Pax Romana opens at its new location, which is still under wraps, in early fall.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get the best of Vancouver in your inbox, every Tuesday and Thursday.\u00a0Sign up for our free newsletter. For…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[415,17,412,413,418,407,414,420,416,423,226,389,419,422,421,417,95],"class_list":["post-173365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-arts","tag-canada","tag-city","tag-culture","tag-dining","tag-entertainment","tag-events","tag-fashion","tag-film","tag-food","tag-lifestyle","tag-music","tag-nightlife","tag-restaurants","tag-shopping","tag-tv","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}