vacation: Granville Island, Vancouver, British Columbia
Yesterday, we ate at a French bistro and a sushi restaurant. Today it was time to eat and drink more locally, a theme of this trip, something I had become even more excited to explore after reading Omnivore’s Dilemma. Sure places like New York and San Francisco have greatly varied food scenes, but isn’t the best way to measure the quality of a city by the way they cook their own foods… from their own backyards, using the traditions and styles of the area.
We started by visiting Granville Island and their public market. The whole island is like an outdoor shopping mall, its own little city under the highway overpass. We were quite full from our breakfast of pancakes covered in authentic Canadian maple syrup and Canadian bacon. So, we just soaked in the view of the delicious fruits and meats and cheeses. We picked up some local spices at the spice shop.
We decided to take a boat ride around the island via the Aquabus, and then stop off at the Granville Island Brewery to try out some decent Canadian beer, which Tom was skeptical even existed. Tom’s favorite was the Maple Lager. Of course, if there is one thing the Canadians certainly know, its how to do maple syrup right. Later in the day we would visit a maple syrup store, and have a tasting of several different varieties. The sugar rush would leave us buzzing until dinner.
Next, we visited Gastown, a brick-lined street section of Vancouver. It’s a cute part of town with quaint shops and a famous steam powered clock. Unfortunately, it is also right next to what Tom and I would refer to as Bum City. It’s probably a wise thing, but the city of Vancouver placed all the shelters, bottle return depots, community centers, and pawn shops all together on Hastings Street. The result is crowds of homeless, the drug-addicted, and the flat out insane.
We went to lunch at a hidden cheese bar in the back alleys of Gastown, actually down Blood Alley. You wouldn’t even know it existed except for a chalk arrow written on the wall of the alley. The menu featured various meats and cheeses from the area. Tom had a Merlot from BC that smelled like a dessert wine, but tasted smoky and bold.
This entry will end up being mostly about food and wine, because that was, after all, the theme of the day. For dinner, we went to the Zagat top-rated restaurant of the entire city, West Restaurant. We don’t usually go to very top places, but I managed to hear that if you went between 5:30 and 6:00 they served a special tasting menu for half the cost. You would think that would cause a mad rush, but turns out we were the only diners lucky enough to score the special menu.
The food ranged from unusual to mind-blowing. Everything, again, was local. From our smoky, delicious Sandhill Syrah to the meats and produce used to make the food. We had a strange duck terrine which was cold and filled with foie gras and pistachios. Tom had a neon green soup made from fennel and spinach with some crunchy wax beans. It’s great when you get the feeling that the chef things out the way all the flavors and textures will play together for the diner.
The main courses and the deserts were where it really shined. We got a free salmon appetizer because the chef wasn’t pleased with my chicken and decided to remake it. I’m sure whatever it was before would have been fine, but when I got the remade chicken I didn’t regret having to wait. It melted in your mouth in a way I had no idea chicken could do. I even liked chicken livers which were incredibly mild. Finally, we finished with a frozen creme brulee soaked in grapefruit and Port, and some chocolate cake that Tom kept rightly calling a gourmet ding-dong.
We ended the night watching the sun set over the appropriately called Sunset beach with all the other people from the city. This is where couples came for romantic evenings. This is where high school kids came to socialize. It was incredibly easy to forget that you were a tourist.
RECENT WINES