A Commercial Drive cafe that branded itself as Indigenous-owned and operated got shut down by Vancouver Coastal Health just days after opening.
And the issues surrounding the moldy food are not even the main reason locals are cancelling this spot.
Indigenous Kitchen & Café, at 931 Commercial Drive, has been ordered shut by Vancouver Coastal Health, just days after Vancouver’s Indigenous community publicly flagged it as an alleged fraud.
The unraveling started with a visit from Inez Cook.
Inez is the co-founder and owner of Salmon n’ Bannock, the city’s first and only established Indigenous restaurant, and a member of the Nuxalk Nation from Bella Coola.
She noticed a new Indigenous business open during National Indigenous History Month and went to check it out in person on its grand opening day.
Plastered all over the walls were posters made entirely with AI, which has been getting quite a lot of flak online these days.
She says she wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt, in case the owners were Indigenous and just needed some guidance from community.
And when she inquired whether the business was really Indigenous-owned and operated, what she got instead was a tangle of stories that did not add up.
The operator, Vince Froom, first told her he was not the owner, only an employee.
He named Ruby Harry as the owner, then said Ruby had made the bannock he was handing out.
Inez says she called Ruby, who told her she was neither the owner nor the baker.
Sisters Sage shared in another video with a screenshot of Ruby’s post on Facebook about the matter:
Vince then claimed he was Métis dating back to the 1600s, according to Inez, before producing a second name, Dennis Kale, as the supposed owner.
Inez says Dennis reached out to her the next day to say he was not the owner either.
In Sister Sage’s video, they shared a Facebook Group post by Dennis on the matter:
The cafe’s own Instagram later walked it back, posting that the business is not Indigenous owned and not Indigenous.
Inez called the whole thing disrespectful, an attempt to profit off Indigenous History Month and the FIFA crowds in town.
Bob Kronbauer, who amplified the story online, landed on the same read: a money grab.
The food was its own problem.
Inez described what she saw as rotten, moldy and freezer-burnt, and said the group reported the cafe to the health board.
Yikes.
Inspectors agreed.
Vancouver Coastal Health issued a handwritten closure order on June 18, then replaced it with a formal one served to Vince Froom on June 19.
The order cites food pulled from unapproved sources, plus a list of contamination risks.
It names ice sitting in unsanitary beverage containers, bagels stored in non-food-grade bags, and unpackaged dessert bars left bare inside the freezers.
It also orders a deep clean of the walls, floors, ceilings and equipment, and a repair to the broken sanitizer dispensers.
The cafe cannot reopen to the public until it passes a full re-inspection.
Health records show the same address has cycled through concepts before, operating as Pizza Bagel Café, Vegan Café and Vegan Bitch under the company COVID Cafe Ltd.
Many locals know that COVID Cafe itself had its own problems, especially with that name operating during the peak COVID era.
Inez’s larger point was about first impressions.
She says Indigenous cuisine only gets one chance with a new diner, and a place like this risks souring people on it before they ever taste the real thing.
If you are after actual Indigenous cooking, both Cook and Kronbauer pointed the same direction: Salmon n’ Bannock, with locations on Broadway and at the airport.
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Address: 931 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, BC V5L 3W8