Where to eat in Vancouver

By Mary Lussiana

It rains a lot in Vancouver but residents are too busy discussing food and foraging, restaurants and craft distilleries to waste time moaning about the weather. If you are there in May, the talk will centre on where to find the best spot prawns, a local variety both sweet and firm. Their short season – only six weeks long – creates a frenzy of seafood feasting, incorporating the Spot Prawn Festival. Last year’s favourite dish was fried spot prawns with pickled fir-needle tartar, served in a fir broth at Burdock & Co., a restaurant renowned for its inventive use of local ingredients. Eating the region’s own produce has become something of a religion in Vancouver, which has ambitions to become the world’s greenest culinary city by 2020, building on home-grown ideas like the 100-mile diet (all food is sourced within a 100-mile radius of the city) and Ocean Wise sustainable seafood, which labels fish for which large stocks remain. Food really matters in Vancouver: it has become a cultural bridge, fusing Pan-Asian flavours with Pacific-rim bounty.