Ten years after joining Nightingale Restaurant, former biomedical sciences student Taylor Mikasko is its general manager — with no regrets.

We independently select everything we recommend. Buying through us may earn us a commission, which supports our work.

For many people, a job in the restaurant industry is something temporary, not a career.

Taylor Mikasko once thought so too. Ten years after joining Nightingale Restaurant, the former biomedical sciences student is its general manager — and has no regrets about choosing hospitality.

“It was a gradual shift. I was pursuing sciences and medicine, but I found myself continuing to move up in hospitality and gravitating toward sharing my passion and knowledge. I was always the trainer or the shift leader. It was a bit of an ‘aha’ moment where I stopped and reflected: What am I good at? What do I actually enjoy? It always came back to hospitality.”

Mikasko has been at the downtown establishment since 2016, when David Hawksworth opened it. Nightingale was the Vancouver chef’s second restaurant, after opening his namesake flagship in the Rosewood Hotel Georgia five years earlier. Mikasko worked for two years as a manager at Hawksworth.

For Mikasko, the move to fine dining from more casual work experiences at Cactus Club and Yaletown Brewing Company was a learning curve.

“First, there was wearing a suit and tie and pocket square every day. And then learning to romance each dish as you put it down, and to clear as a team. Gosh, dropping a piece of cutlery and having it bang on the floor was the ultimate no-no.

“But it was actually quite fun because I’ve always been more of a gregarious, social person. Fine-dining restaurants can be somewhat intimidating sometimes, so it was fun to bring my personality into that room.”

And it’s a big room. The 7,400-square-foot restaurant seats 166, with a bar, lounge and patio on the main floor and the main dining room upstairs. Origami-like birds appear to take flight across the upstairs walls, while antique bird cages hang over the downstairs bar.

Nightingale occupies a former private club on West Hastings Street, where its perfectly situated to wine and dine office workers, downtown residents, tourists and cruise-ship passengers.

From the beginning, Nightingale’s menu has centred on share plates, with pizza, raw-bar selections and vegetable dishes among its signatures. At any given time, there are eight pizzas on the menu. One that has survived since opening day is topped with spicy spianata salumi, piquillo pepper and San Marzano tomatoes.

The vegetable dishes are treated as more than obligatory sides, with the same attention to flavour, texture and unexpected combinations as the rest of the menu. Come for the pizza; stay for the grilled Japanese eggplant with spiced honey, tzatziki and hazelnut dukkah.

Mains include spaghetti with Manila clams and jalapeño, another dish that has been on the menu since opening and one featured in Hawksworth: The Cookbook. Published in 2020, the cookbook has also become Nightingale’s most popular retail item, outselling branded baseball caps and T-shirts.

Much has changed in the restaurant industry over the last decade, and Mikasko’s role has changed along with it.

“When we first opened, it was all about getting the restaurant open and building a reputation, about delivering the quality of the dishes and maintaining a certain standard. Now, it’s more about building and maintaining a culture that people have come to really enjoy and expect, staying relevant in the city, and mentoring and training the management teams.”

The restaurant’s longevity is reflected in its staff, with Mikasko far from the only employee who has stayed for years. For someone who once regarded restaurant work as a temporary stop on the way to another career, helping others see a future in hospitality has become one of the most satisfying parts of his job.

“The most exciting thing about my role is creating a culture where people want to come to work and see us as a career path forward, or at least as a place where they will get something out of it.”