Portland Monthly cited Lapellah in a recent story on Fall Sunday Suppers! Check the link for the full story. 

Chef Dave Mork is featured in the current edition of Beer West Magazine! If you've ever been curious about Dave's story and his vision behind Lapellah, we definitely suggest picking up the magazine or reading it online. The article covers everything from the early shaping of Dave's food ideologies, the technique that goes into our our famous BBQ shrimp and of course - cooking with beer! Dave also offered up a few recipes....but you'll have to read it to find out!

Click the magazine to read the story online or pick up a copy at your local newsstand today.

Lapellah is featured alongside a review for Roots in the 2011 Oregonian Dining Guide. The Dining Guide hits newsstands soon!

The Vancouver Voice had some great things to say about what we do at Lapellah. They did a large feature on us in their 2011 Diner's Guide.

Chef Mork recently made a trip to Koin Studio 6 to prepair his seared halibut with chilled potato puree & avocado salsa on air. Click the link to see that now!

Dale Chumbley of the popular 365 things to do in Vancouver blog reviewed our happy hour selections recently. Here's what he had to say.

Lapellah was on the cover of The Columbian Newspaper's Weekend section January 14, 2011. They did a story on the best brunch spots in Vancouver. We think our Sunday brunch is one of Vancouver's best kept secrets. If you haven't tried it yet, what are you waiting for! 

Click here for the full story.

Lapellah was recently covered in KOIN's Studio 6 "Drink of the Week." This video features three of our signature drinks as well as some of our favorite happy hour dishes. Click "read more" to be directed to KOIN's site where you can view the video.

It's a glossy, lovely restaurant, all dark wood and red brick and sweeping lines. It's in an otherwise largely empty corner of a huge new shopping center, which may explain why its name comes from an old tribal trading term.

Off in its corner of the parking lot, Lapellah feels a bit like an outpost.

An outpost, of course, is often a very welcome discovery, and Lapellah can be as welcoming as a cornmeal-crusted, crabmeat-stuffed trout. It's the new project of Vancouver celeb chef Brad Root, and it's a combination of varied skills and reasonable prices, with only one entree above $20.

And there has to be a place for a restaurant with a range extending to elegant lines, vivid shrimp beignets, a mouth-filling rib-eye steak and heartwarming milk shakes.

Back before there were shopping centers in the area, explains the menu, "Lapellah" was a local word for "roast." There is indeed a lot of fire here, a wood-burning oven and a flaming grill, and you can sit at the counter and get a front-row seat for the conflagrations. But there are also lots of frying objects, mostly seafood, and sometimes the sizzle even matches the steak.

Still, it's the council fire ambience that pervades the restaurant and the menu, and it produces meats that are pungent and juicy. The steak, with a light char and scatterings of sweet grilled onion bits and horseradish shreds, is inspiring. The same approach produces a juicy, thick pork chop, lightly gilded with a sweet chili sauce; moist rotisserie chicken with an herbal crunch around the skin, and rosy slabs of grilled lamb with a faint spice around the sides.

All of them -- along with a thick hamburger precariously perched atop a thick slice of grilled onion -- provide persuasive reasons to yell "fire" in a crowded restaurant, or at least to order that way.

But the frying theme batter can produce the estimable trout, with the fish sweet beneath the greaseless corn crust, and enough crabmeat to make its presence felt. (The menu also promises an oysters Rockefeller sauce, but it's beside the point.) Shrimp beignets, New Orleans-style fritters unimaginable to the people who used the word "lapellah," are deep-fried until both light and crusty, with a puddle of remoulade sauce assertive enough to get your attention.

One evening's special of razor clams sat crisply on a lively tartar sauce, and fish and chips offered sweet, flaky cod beneath a sometimes crumbly batter. But the accompanying chips were less than crisp, and calamari arrived in a tangle of semi-soggy battering.

A handful of dishes fall outside the fire/fry dichotomy, and carve out their own satisfying identity. Mussels become almost creamy in a broth of garlic butter brined by the shellfish's own presence. Pork ribs braised in a tomato sauce are meaty and lively, with the sauce contributing more spice than acidity. A nightly gumbo -- arriving in the Northwest on the tail of the shrimp beignets -- arrived one evening thick with andouille sausage and rockfish, a rice-rounding deal at $10.

The nature of heat is transcended at dessert, and the most impressive finish is the simplest, involving no heat at all: a milkshake (chocolate, vanilla or strawberry) that transports you back to the world of Hamilton Beach blenders and never lets you forget that the dominant ingredient is ice cream.

The restaurant's inviting version of mud pie is only marginally more complex: a huge wedge of coffee ice cream with a chocolate graham base, chocolate crumbs anointing the top and a chocolate sauce ambience. Lapellah achieves ultimate levels of crunch on its apple crumble by surrounding it with granola, which not only sets off the melting softness of the apple slices (which are indeed roasted in the wood-burning oven) but can let you think that this dessert -- even with accompanying ice cream -- is actually healthy.

Lapellah manages all this on a moderate price basis, with only the rib steak topping $20, most appetizers below $10 and desserts topping out at $6.50. The wine list, while not extensive, is reasonable, although diners might get distracted by house cocktails such as Spiked Lemonade or Peach Cosmo. There is an extensive Happy Hour menu, with items ranging from $1 to $6.

Lapellah is a very attractive restaurant, to the point of a stylized canoe hanging over the central dining area. It's a reminder of how true it is to its roots -- not to say its Root -- with flavors as local and vivid as a Northwest trading language and a Northwest trading outpost.

And with all those empty storefronts around, even parking is easy.

Review: Lapellah
Grade: B+
Cuisine and scene: Vancouver chef Brad Root goes deep into Northwest roots, and sets out a cuisine both regional and reasonable.
Recommended: Shrimp beignets; mussels; rib-eye steak; rotisserie chicken; corn-meal-crusted trout; gumbo; milkshakes
Vegetarian friendly? Mostly salads.
Sound level: High ceilings open the place for conversation, and aromas.
Beverages: Wine list limited but reasonable; several local microbrews and intriguing house cocktails, notably the Peach Cosmo.
Price range: Entrees $16-$24.50; appetizers $5.95-$10; desserts $5-$6.50. Happy Hour nightly, with options $1-$6
Extras: Reservations; major credit cards; parking lot; disabled access
Serving: Dinner nightly, lunch, (Mon-Sat), brunch (Sun)
Info: 2520 Columbia House Blvd., Vancouver; 360-828-7911;