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Home » Artisans and producers » Vancouver – my new favourite city!

Vancouver – my new favourite city!

19/01/2012 by Amanda

Well – we finally made it to Vancouver after travelling for 34 hours and through three international airport stops thanks to Qantas, who seem to resent one actually trying to use their hard-earned Frequent Flying points.  I’m really loving Vancouver and it is so easy to see why it consistently makes it onto the lists of the worlds most liveable cities.  It is fresh, clean, friendly and magnificently set with the snow-capped mountains on one side and the harbour full of bobbing boats at their moorings on the other.  It is possessed of  wide streets, stylish high density housing and a glorious green space called Stanley Park which is bigger than New York’s Central Park and which wraps around the harbour.  Vancouver has some of the most expensive real estate in Canada.  I’m told that the cost of housing is so high here that it is not included when the national average is calculated as it will distort the national figures!  And dogs – everyone appears to have a dog.  I’ve never seen so many.  They are everywhere – all on leads and all very well behaved.  There are approximately 100,000 dogs in the city area – or one dog for every six people.  Our hotel has 2 resident dogs which are available to the guests for patting or walking if we so desire.  Apparently this hotel also allows guests to bring dogs to stay and has a special selection for them on the room service menu.

We spent our first, somewhat brain-fogged, day with my daughters host family whose generosity appears to know no bounds before we collapsed, semi-comatosed, into our hotel beds.  Our plans for day two were somewhat curtailed by the fact that we overslept, but we managed to spend some very happy hours on Granville Island.  Granville Island is the major craft and artisan centre for the city of Vancouver and includes the public fruit and vegetable markets as well as numerous art and craft studios.  All of the stores and outlets on Granville are locally based with all of the products coming from largely British Columbia-based artisans and craft-persons.

There was such a wealth of local talent on the island is was hard to know when to stop/start snapping pictures.  There were artists, weavers, photographers, jewellers and ceramicists, but most of my attention was taken up by the food.  No surprises there.  We did find a store called the Broom Co. which made – you guessed it – brooms.  They were all hand made on the premises out what I think was millet and were all very desirable.  Sadly, I know for a fact that Australian Customs officers would not have been pleased to see one of these in my luggage.

But, I digress.  Back to the food.

 

The strawberries and raspberries were massive and extraordinarily cheap – especially given that they were shipped from California.  I couldn’t resist the raspberries in particular which where big and blowsy and practically perfect.  I paid $18 for just over a kilogram of them – a far cry for the $7 per 200 gms I pay for the local ones in the Adelaide Hills.  While the big, flashy US fruit might have looked the part, their flavour lacked the sweetness and juiciness of our local fruit, unfortunately.

There were stunning pastries and baked goods as far as the eye could see –

and a remarkable range of locally made smallgoods and specialty meats.

Anyone for elk proscuitto or bison bresaola?

After an hour or so of wandering around looking at all of the above we felt it was time to get serious about some eating and managed to snare ourselves a table at the hugely popular  Edible Canada.  So much more than a bistro or a providore, this business is an almost complete exercise in local food.  The busy bistro sources approximately 80% of the food it prepares and serves from local producers in British Columbia, with the bulk of the remaining 20% coming from elsewhere in Canada.  It also includes a retail and online store dedicated to sourcing high quality local products, hosts demonstration market dinners, runs guided market tours and gourmet weekend kayaking trips – in short, the absolute go to place for all things related to British Columbia food.

The Salmon Benny, with hot smoked salmon was an absolute winner, closely followed by the Canadian Rockies beefburger, both of which are served with local beverages – alcoholic or non-alcoholic, including a stunningly fresh cranberry juice which beat the pants off anything I’ve had back home in Australia.

After lunch I took a wander through their store and checked out some of the range of local products available, including flavoured honey from Honeyview Farm,

 

Urbansweet Honey, collected from bee hives which have been located around the parks and buildings of the city of Vancouver –

 

and the salt produced by Andrew Shepherd of the Vancouver Island Salt Co.  British Columbia has no large commercial salt production as there is not enough sunlight to evaporate the water from large salt pans.  Andrew, who is no stranger to South Australia, hand-collects fresh seawater and personally oversees the evaporation process of small quantities of it, adding flavours at selected stages.

There was a great deal more in the store to tempt me, including some maple syrup (although it is not cold enough in British Columbia to produce very much syrup), sustainably line-caught salmon, whisky, jams and so much more.  If you are planning a trip to Vancouver can I suggest that you put a trip to Granville Island on the top of your list – we liked it so much we went twice!  If you are interested in taking a guided tour of the food markets make sure to book beforehand with Edible Canada.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Barbara

    January 19, 2012 at 4:47 pm

    Excellent post Amanda. Beautifully written and photographed.

  2. Grant nowell

    January 19, 2012 at 5:31 pm

    Great post,
    Looks like a beautiful city- the berries looked gorgeous and cheap! I just loved you smallgoods pic, DUCK and ELK prosciutto and all those amazing things- I guess it’s like a Canadian coming here and having some smoked roo fillet!
    Safe travels

  3. Hotly Spiced

    January 20, 2012 at 8:03 am

    Wow! What a great post. Vancouver certainly looks impressive. Glad you’re having a great time.

  4. Judy

    January 20, 2012 at 8:49 am

    Beautiful pictures Amanda, felt like I was with you with your descriptive details. Have fun.

  5. trudy

    January 20, 2012 at 10:33 am

    Glad you arrived safely Amanda. Have a great time!!!

  6. George

    January 20, 2012 at 10:57 am

    Just adds to all the good things I’ve heard about Vancouver…a must see city. Thanks Mandy..

  7. Kate

    January 20, 2012 at 2:55 pm

    Did you see the cute racoons at Stanley Park ????

  8. Mandy - The Complete Cook Book

    January 20, 2012 at 5:08 pm

    Well I am certainly sold on wanting to visit Vancouver too. I love the idea of everything being clean and neat. Beautifully written Amanda, you could easily become a travelling journalist.
    Enjoy the rest of your time there.
    🙂 Mandy

  9. Lorraine @ Not Quite Nigella

    January 20, 2012 at 5:28 pm

    I loved Granville Island too. We took one of the chef tours and it was really interesting to see the difference in the produce and try the food. We went to Go Fish afterwards which was so popular but we had to try it!

  10. Jennifer (Delicieux)

    January 21, 2012 at 12:12 pm

    What a beautifully written post Amanda. And everything looks so beautiful. The comment about your hotel having 2 dogs for guests to walk and pat made me laugh. I can’t imagine any hotel in Australia doing that.

    Those strawberries and raspberries look amazing, what a shame the raspberries weren’t as sweet as what we get at home.

  11. InTolerant Chef

    January 24, 2012 at 7:53 am

    What a lovely time you look to be having! Hope you shake of the jet lag soon 🙂

  12. cityhippyfarmgirl

    January 24, 2012 at 7:58 am

    Isn’t that the best thing about travelling? Seeing what food goodies are available…. Elk prosciutto? I’m intrigued. (Probably as they would be with our kangaroo prosciutto.)
    Enjoy your time there Amanda, it does sound absolutely gorgeous.

  13. Lizzy (Good Things)

    January 25, 2012 at 7:03 am

    Oh Amanda, I would so love to visit Vancouver, but you have taken me (and your other avid readers) by the hand and taken us on a personal guided tour! Love your images and detailed descriptions. Aren’t those brooms so funky! Wow. Love the look of those markets. And how about being able to walk a dog in a strange city, now that’s a novel idea. Happy travels. Looking forward to reading and seeing more.

  14. AB

    January 30, 2012 at 9:33 am

    Vancouver is one of my favourite cities too! It is an amazing place. Your photos are great! Am going to have to allocate a bit of time to read through the rest of your blog today!

  15. Lucas @ coverversions.tv

    February 13, 2012 at 7:54 am

    Sadly, despite being born in Vancouver & living there from grades 6-8, it was in the burnaby suburbs, so I’ve only been to Stanley Park once. It’s on my bucket list to retour cities I’ve lived in and actually see them.

Trackbacks

  1. Back to Beautiful British Columbia – And the Rest of Canada! says:
    14/05/2013 at 4:14 pm

    […] of you will remember my posts from the ‘girls trip’ I took with my two daughters in January of last year.  We began […]

  2. Vancouver Shares It's Gourmet Secrets - Lambs' Ears and Honey | A Food & Travel Blog says:
    01/11/2014 at 8:06 am

    […] from Downtown Vancouver across False Creek. It is a popular tourist spot that I had sniffed out on my first trip to Vancouver and one I was keen to explore again with a knowledgeable guide from Edible Canada. The Granville […]

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