I have not been cooking much lately. Mostly because the past two weekends (weekends are my primary cooking time) have been spent north of the boarder, bird-watching on Vancouver island and watching the paralympics in Vancouver. So, in the spirit of my all-time favorite food-blog An Endless Banquet, I thought I would give the foodie’s summary of our adventures in Vancouver. Sadly, the camera decided to eat half of my pics from the trip, so this post will be rather sparsely illustrated

1. Banh Mi: Everytime I try to explain Banh Mi to someone who’s never had it, the reaction is the same: “a sandwich is a sandwich is a sandwich”. But banh mi is so much more than a sandwich. Its a delicious marriage of French and Vietnamese cuisine, a baguette dressed with homemade pâté, vietnamese cold cut meats, cilantro, pickled vegetables, and should you desire it (and you should–it makes all the difference!) hot peppers–and a magical mystery sauce. These seemingly simple flavors combine to make a sandwich so light, and so tasty, that once you’ve had a good one, you will never look at Subway the same again. In fact, some people take banh mi so seriously that they conduct formal experiments
   to find the best one. We made use of the research and visited the top ranked banh mi bakery: Tung Hing on our way into town, to replenish us after our long drive, and also on the way out of town, to stock up for lunch purposes.
2. Oysters! Oysters have been on my list of “things-I-should-really-be-taking-advantage-of-on-the-west-coast” for a while now. So when we happened upon a popular, reasonably priced oyster house in Yaletown, it seemed like the perfect opportunity. Rodney’s was buzzing when we came in, and packed by the time we left. We enjoyed an excellent plate of pan-fried oysters, and a small sampling of raw oysters (Kusshi and Kumamoto), all were very tasty. One of these days though, I’m going to get to an oyster-house with an oyster-afficionado, who can teach me all the secrets.
3. Quebec-ness: Yes, I know, you’re supposed to eat sushi and dim sum and so forth in Vancouver, not cheese, bols du café au lait, and chocolatines. But you have to realize that we’re talking about two deprived ex-pat Montrealers here. Anyways, after oysters, we headed to our favorite Vancouver pub, The Alibi Room, which, in addition to an excellent selection of beers on tap, and a lovely IPA on cask (I cannot pass up a cask ale–I blame London), had a Quebec cheese plate that evening–yum!

   The next day, the Quebecness continued when we found ourselves out in Kitsilano, for a lovely breakfast at Coco et Olive before making our way to the Canada v. Sweden Sledge-hockey match (Canada won, 10-1). But the highlight of the morning for me was not the game, but the coffee… Coco et Olive was positively Parisian, complete with paninis, buttery pastries, “bols” of câfé au lait with strong espresso and steamed milk, and toasted baguettes with cheese. Of course, such places are a dime-a-dozen in both Montreal and Paris, but we were pretty desperate for a fix, after suffering 6 months of Starbucks-saturation.

4. On to Italy: It had been raining off and on all weekend, and by Saturday night, between the rain and the hour and a half spent in the cold arena watching Curling, I was ready for something warm. We decided to take a cue from the experts at Food and Wine Magazine, and hit Nook, a small understated pizza joint on Robson street. Nook is not the place to go if you want the choice of 70 different pizza toppings. Instead, they have a selection of about 10 different pizza options, each with 3 or 4 well-paired toppings. Unable to make a decision, we ended up with 2 pizzas: the special, with pancetta, roasted onions and hot peppers (which was quite spicy but in a good, warm-you-from-the-inside-out sort of way) and a classic vegetarian pizza with olives, tomatoes, roast garlic and ricotta. We also enjoyed Nook’s Italian wine selection. So much so that as we were leaving, and the restaurant was closing (we dined fashionably late), we asked the staff for a recommendation for a good place to go for a glass of red. They pointed us to Uva, a cosy little hide-out where we finished the evening.
5. At last, Asian: We had big plans to go for dim sum before leaving town Sunday morning. We even had a place in mind, that had been recommended to us by two completely separate sources. (When this happens in a city with as many good restaurants as Vancouver has, its rarely a coincidence). However, when we showed up there, hungry after our morning jog and eager to give it a try, we found it closed for renovations =( Instead, we wandered aimlessly along Broadway, in search of a reasonable substitute, only to find Sha Lin Noodles. The reason Sha Lin caught my interest was that it was filling up, before noon on Sunday, which, seeing as it didn’t do dim sum, was pretty impressive. So we ventured in. We were still in dim sum mode, so we ordered a disproportionate number of dumplings for 2 people (we are still working our way through them). But the clear winner here was the noodles: 4 different types of homemade, hand-cut (or dragged, or shaved or rolled) noodles, available with a variety of meats, veggies and sauces. Since we had just ordered a metric ton of pork dumplings, we stuck with vegetable, shaved noodles (shaved meaning you shave chunks of noodle dough off a block with something resembling a vegetable peeler). The noodles were gingery, garlicy and delicious, but the best part of the meal was watching as the cooks made the noodles.

Restuarants

• Tung Hing: 1196 Kingsway, Vancouver, BC V5V 3C8, Canada‎ – (604) 875-3394‎
• Rodney’s: 405-1228 Hamilton Street, Vancouver, BC V6B 6L2, Canada‎ – (604) 609-0080‎
• Alibi room: 157 Alexander Street, Vancouver, BC V6A 1B8, Canada‎ – (604) 623-3383‎
• Coco et olive: 3476 West Broadway, Vancouver, BC V6R 2B3, Canada‎ (604) 736-7080‎
• Nook: 781 Denman Street, Vancouver, BC V6G 2L6, Canada – (604) 568-4554‎
• Uva: 900 Seymour Street Vancouver, BC V6B 3L9, Canada – (604) 632-9560‎
• Sha Lin noodle house: 548 West Broadway, Vancouver, BC V5Z 1E9, Canada‎ – (604) 873-1816‎o