Vancouver's Botanist grows into its own through locally inspired fine dining and electric cocktails

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When Botanist opened inside the Fairmont Pacific Rim, it wasn’t just a new restaurant — it was a blank canvas.

Executive chef Hector Laguna arrived two months before the doors opened, when the space was still rubble from the previous restaurant, Oru.

“When I went in, it was a construction zone,” he says. “It was a really, really good opportunity for me to make it my own — a way for me to express myself.”

Eight years later, Laguna is still at the helm, a rare tenure in an industry known for high turnover, especially for top-level talent.

“I find it hard to see Botanist without me,” he said. “I feel like it’s a part of me. I’m a part of it.”

Since opening, the restaurant and its bar have risen to the top of Vancouver’s food and beverage scene. The restaurant has been named one of Canada’s 100 Best and is listed on the World’s 50 Best Discovery. The bar, led by Fairmont Pacific Rim creative beverage director Grant Sceney, ranked No. 26 on a 2025 list of North America’s 50 Best Bars and received the Michter’s Art of Hospitality Award in 2023. It also earned the Michelin Exceptional Cocktail Award, recognizing its cutting-edge cocktail lab and culinary-forward approach to mixology.

Laguna often infuses his dishes with flavours from his native Mexico. The wagyu beef carpaccio started is accompanied by mojo de ajo, a Mexican garlic-olive oil sauce.

“Cooking Mexican flavours is very important for me,” said the executive chef. At the time of his interview with Postmedia, he was in Tulum with Sceney for Apapaxoa Culinary and Cultural Festival Xcaret 2025. “I want people to get to know me through it.”

He works with local farms to source ingredients like epazote — a herb native to southern Mexico — grown specially for him in Chilliwack. “Nobody knows what epazote is, but it brings me back memories.”

Seasonality drives the regular menu, which evolves gradually rather than in sweeping changes. The tasting menu, however, is where Laguna truly lets loose.

“It’s a way for me to be free,” he says. “I see what I got, and then I incorporate that into the dishes I have — or create a completely new dish for it. That’s why we don’t have it written down anywhere.”

Sceney is just as creative. Botanist has been known for its cocktails since Day 1, but the beverage director has taken the drinks program up a notch with a quartet of “experiential” beverages. These are elaborately staged concoctions such as Earth’s Energy, a hot-orange-coloured that comes on a wooden box sprouting a perimeter of vegetation. The drink is tequila-based with ingredients that include electric daisies, a “buzz button” that tingles the mouth. The glass itself responds to touch with the kind of electrical pulses that would make Nikola Tesla proud.

The regular cocktail menu is just as considered though a tad less electric.

“Our house martini is absolutely fantastic,” Sceney says. “We use a blend of gins and infuse it with seaweed for salinity. Then we garnish with sea asparagus — this little green stick that’s salty and crisp. It gives us the nuance of an olive, but with a local twist.”

Guests are increasingly making the bar part of their full Botanist experience. “We get a lot of people who come for dinner and are told to come in a half-hour early to have one of our cocktail services,” Sceney says. “We’re getting a lot of crossover.”

In addition to its usual offerings, this month Botanist is launching its first Winemakers Dinner Series. The guest winemakers are Rieslingfreak from South Australia on Sept. 9 and Louis Roederer Champagne House on Sept. 16. Each evening will feature a five-course paired menu by Laguna and his team in collaboration with the featured winery. And, at least one night this fall, chef José Luis Hinostroza of the renowned Tulum restaurant Arca is expected to share kitchen duties with Laguna and his team.

Check out botanistrestaurant.com to stay up-to-date on special events.