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There are dishes and moments at Osetra Coastal Cuisine in which the intent behind the restaurant becomes very clear.
There’s the carrot dish—one of chef Ira Matthew’s favourites—layered with honey mustard toffee, dill, and crispy rice. It arrives looking restrained, almost delicate. Then you take a bite, and it lands with surprising force: sweet, sharp, textured, and deeply satisfying.
William Johnson
There’s the prawn, clean and precise with spiced crumb, curry leaf, and lime aioli. And there’s a flat iron steak, served with all i pebre sauce and preserved shallot, which leans toward refinement over excess (and is the definition of a feast for the eyes).
William Johnson
There’s caviar, too; prominently featured, confidently presented, and increasingly synonymous with the restaurant itself.
But Osetra, which opened late last year at 410 West Georgia Street, isn’t just about the food. It’s about what the food represents.
Behind the restaurant is The Key Collection, a new hospitality group co-led by COO Matt Coolen, a longtime operator whose career traces the arc of Vancouver nightlife over the past two decades.
Coolen got his start in the mid-2000s, working in clubs like Ginger 62 before helping open 100 Nights, a now-legendary Opus Hotel venue that he says blurred the line between restaurant and party.
At its peak, he recalls, the 60-seat room could generate six figures in a single night, with crowds lining up outside and celebrities mixing freely with locals inside. “It was just a completely different scene,” he says, seated inside his restaurant.
William Johnson
Coolen would go on to open and operate venues across Vancouver before stepping away from the city and relocating to Montreal, where he found a very different pace of business. There, he says, he was able to open nearly seven restaurants in under two years—something he attributes less to luck than to a fundamentally different approach to entrepreneurship.
“In Montreal, you can meet a landlord, get a lease, and be open in a week,” he says. “Here, you’re looking at months just to get through the process.”
That contrast has shaped his approach since returning to Vancouver. If Osetra feels tightly composed and intentional, it’s because it had to be; it was developed quickly, opened in late November, and immediately tasked with proving that The Key Collection’s larger vision could work in a city not always known for embracing risk.
William Johnson
“Part of opening Osetra was just to show the city that we know what we’re doing,” he says.
That vision is expansive. Rather than building a single restaurant, Coolen and his partners are developing a portfolio of venues designed to work together: restaurants, lounges, and nightlife concepts that collectively “capture the night,” as he puts it. Several projects are already in motion.
It’s an ambitious plan—especially in Vancouver, where high costs, permitting challenges, and shifting consumer habits have made hospitality a difficult business to scale.
Coolen is direct about the friction. “Every other city wants you to be in business,” he says. “This city tries hard not to let you.”
And yet, he sees opportunity in that difficulty. While he describes Vancouver’s food scene as “phenomenal,” he believes its nightlife has stagnated, with few new concepts pushing the category forward in recent years. The Key Collection’s approach is to reintroduce a level of energy, production, and intent that he feels has been missing.
William Johnson
Osetra, in that context, is something of a counterpoint. Where the group’s future venues promise scale and spectacle, this first opening leans into restraint. The room isn’t necessarily calm, but somehow at-once lively and chill; the lighting is soft; the staff is measured as they move around. There’s no attempt to overwhelm. Instead, the focus is on precision, on letting ingredients speak (as often is the case with seafood), on building dishes that feel deliberate rather than decorative.
There’s a noticeable emphasis on balance, including a strong showing of vegetable and grain dishes; an uncommon highlight for a restaurant positioned at this level. It shows range.
Still, there’s no mistaking the restaurant’s more luxurious side. The caviar program, in particular, has become a defining feature. Coolen says Osetra has quickly become one of the city’s top sellers of caviar, and that other restaurants have already begun to follow its lead, introducing similar offerings to their own menus.
“I like those caviar and champagne nights,” he says. “If we can bring more of that back to the city, I’m all for it.”
It’s a telling comment, one that speaks to both nostalgia and ambition. Coolen isn’t just opening restaurants; he’s trying to recreate a certain kind of experience, one that Vancouver, at its peak, once embraced more fully.
Whether that resonates now is an open question.
Osetra arrives at a time when many restaurants are playing it safe, leaning into casual formats and familiar concepts to weather an uncertain market. In that environment, a restaurant built on precision, luxury, and long-term vision stands out—not just for what it is, but for what it’s trying to signal.
For now, it works. The food is thoughtful, the room composed, the experience cohesive. But more than that, it feels like the start of something, a first move in a much larger plan to reshape how Vancouver dines, drinks, and goes out.
If Osetra is any indication, The Key Collection isn’t just betting on a restaurant.
It’s betting on the city itself.
Osetra Coastal Cuisine is located at 410 W Georgia Street.