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A Northwest Getaway: Vancouver
- By Dan Clarke
- Published 01/1/2006
- Beyond California
Dan Clarke
California Wine Press publishes two internet magazines.
www.californiawineandfood.com (CWF) addresses the interests of restaurant and hospitality professionals.
Your kind comments have been much appreciated. Thank you. You may contact us at info@californiawineandfood.com
Regards,
Dan Clarke, Publisher
Canada’s most significant wine event is the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival. It’s a whole week of tastings, seminars, wine lunches and wine dinners. Each year the event salutes a different country and the 2006 edition will be featuring the wine regions of France. A couple of years ago we attended when the featured “country” was California.
Across the Burrard Inlet is North Vancouver.
It was a great experience and the festival was first rate—well organized and offering a variety of events to satisfy casual fans of wine, as well as the hard-core aficionados.
While the mid-March festival was the reason for our visiting British Columbia, we took advantage of the situation to experience some more of Vancouver and to spend a couple of days in Victoria. They’re two different cities, each with its own personality, of course. We liked them both.
We stayed at the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel in Vancouver (www.fairmont.com/waterfront). It’s just across the street from Canada Place, the white sail-topped convention center that hosted much of the festival. Our room was on the 14th floor and we had a good view of Burrard Inlet harbor and the seaplanes that seemed to be taking off or landing every few minutes. One of three Fairmont properties in the Vancouver area, the Waterfront was everything a modern urban hotel should be. The night of our arrival we joined some other journalists for dinner in Heron’s Restaurant just off the lobby. If it was an opportunity for the hotel chef to show what he could do, the venture succeeded substantially. Our hosts chose wines for each course, even including a really hard-to-find selection from the Okanagen Valley winery, Burrowing Owl. The hotel personnel were friendly and competent. One was a dog, but it also performed its duties with similar friendliness and dedication. Inside the lobby and just to the left is a large pad. It’s the working station for Holly, a Golden Retriever who performs her duties as sort of an adjunct doorman. She and her canine colleague Morgan, a Black Lab, work regular hours and spell each other on their days off. She’s well-mannered, of course, and is available to take hotel guests on walks around the neighborhood (this latter service is available by appointment).
Visitors learn about the totems in Stanley Park.
A native San Franciscan can see some similarities between that city and Vancouver, British
Columbia. Both are surrounded by beautiful water; both have hills, though San Francisco’s are steeper. San Francisco has a great urban park (Golden Gate), as does Vancouver (Stanley). Both cities are enriched by diverse ethnic neighborhoods. There’s a vibrancy in these two gem cities on North America’s Pacific Coast.
Around Town: Some Places to East and Drink in Vancouver
Gastown is named after a publican of a bygone era, Gassy Jack Deighton. It’s a historic area popular with tourists for drinking and dining. After checking out the steam-powered clock and some of the shops, we visited the Steamworks Brewing Company (www.steamworks.com) for a couple of beers. It’s a multi-level brewpub serving good food, appropriate to its definition, and even better beer. Though we dropped in early in the afternoon, the house was half full. Not bad, but not as impressive as one January day a few years earlier when I sat at the bar, watching locals stand outside in sub-freezing temperatures, waiting to enter. One or two patrons departed and couple fresh ones were admitted. Three left—three others came in. And so it went. I can’t imagine that the management wanted to keep patrons out, so it must have been an issue of the fire marshall’s standards for not overcrowding an obviously popular public accommodation.
The cartoonish Aquabusses shuttle passengers
to and from Granville Island.
Vancouver boasts several distinctively ethnic neighborhoods, among them Indian, Italian and Chinese. The Chinatown is big and no restaurant there is bigger than Flota Seafood Restaurant (www.floata.com). It bills itself as “the biggest Chinese restaurant in Canada,” which seems maybe too narrow a definition. It can seat up to 1,000 guests and we wondered what restaurant might be bigger—in Canada, or anywhere else for that matter. We enjoyed Dim Sum and samples from the rest of the menu, too.
Shaughnessy (www.shaughnessyrestaurant.com) is a restaurant at VanDusen Botanical Garden. Created twenty years ago to serve the visitors to the gardens, it’s come along way since then. The Shaughnessy name is taken from the golf course that once occupied the space, which is now the 55-acre site of the VanDusen Garden. We experienced a lighter lunch, but the restaurant serves substantial dinners, as well. Chef Bill Grimshaw does some very creative work with sorbets using products of the gardens surrounding the restaurant.
Spectacular sorbets are signature
of Chef Bill Grimshaw.
Granville Island is home to a large public market, which is open daily. Among several restaurants in the area is The Sandbar (www.vancouverdine.com), a big, multi-level place that still managed to feel very cozy on the overcast and drizzly day we visited. Inside there’s an exhibition kitchen and outside a great deck overlooking False Creek where little water taxis operate. There’s a good array of beer and wines to accompany a vast selection of seafood. We tried at least half-a-dozen choices from the à la carte menu and liked all.
Yaletown was once working warehouses. Now the scene includes some of Vancouver’s hippest shopping and restaurant action. It’s a great place to drink, but an area potentially dangerous to those unwise enough to drink too much and pay too little attention to their footing (Access to some of these spots is from old loading docks several feet above the Hamilton Street sidewalk below.). Looking for a late-evening snack and the opportunity to hear live music, Maria and I found both in this part of the city.
Luncheon patrons have both indoor and outdoor
seating options at the Sandbar.
We wandered into the Blue Water Café (www.bluewatercafe.net) after 10 pm to find that people were still waiting to be seated for dinner. Not sure if we wanted to wait for a table, we found seats at the bar to ponder our next move over a beer and a glass of wine. The menu listed 14 varieties of oysters and entrees such as BC Sablefish, Big Eye Tuna and Vancouver Island Lingcod and Ebony Mushrooms. The wine list looked comprehensive and the place smelled terrific. As good as Blue Water’s potential seemed to be, we decided to forego dinner there in pursuit of music and a snack elsewhere.
Capone’s (www.caponesrestaurant.net), just a block or so down the street, advertised “Live Jazz 7 Nights a Week.” It was just what we were looking for. We stayed for two sets, enjoyed a quartet that featured a fine tenor sax player, and even found good chow, reasonably priced (the place was serving a menu strong in pizzas and tapas, which suited us fine at that time of night).
Salt prawns is one of
The Sandbar’s great appetizers.
No matter how diligent the reporters, spending just a few days in Vancouver only scratched the surface of the opportunities there for lovers of wine and food. We look forward to future trips and continuing investigation of their vibrant restaurant and nightlife offerings. A good source of information is www.tourismvancouver.com.
This year’s Vancouver Playhouse wine festival is earlier than the edition we attended. For 2006 the dates are February 27 to March 5. To get a feel for how the festival seemed to us in 2004, you might want to check out:
* Canada Hosts International Wine Festival (http://www.californiawineandfood.com/wine/vancouver-wine-fest.htm)
* Californians in British Columbia (http://www.californiawineandfood.com/events/vancouver-wine-fest.htm)
* Canadian Dinner Bridges Oceans (http://www.californiawineandfood.com/events/vancouver-dinner.htm)
For more information about this year’s festival, which features wines from the regions of France, please visit www.playhousewinefest.com.
Editor’s note: We could have enjoyed many more days in Vancouver, but opted to take one of those seaplanes over to Victoria. Next week we’ll bring you some impressions of that “most English” city in Canada.
Across the Burrard Inlet is North Vancouver.
It was a great experience and the festival was first rate—well organized and offering a variety of events to satisfy casual fans of wine, as well as the hard-core aficionados.
While the mid-March festival was the reason for our visiting British Columbia, we took advantage of the situation to experience some more of Vancouver and to spend a couple of days in Victoria. They’re two different cities, each with its own personality, of course. We liked them both.
We stayed at the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel in Vancouver (www.fairmont.com/waterfront). It’s just across the street from Canada Place, the white sail-topped convention center that hosted much of the festival. Our room was on the 14th floor and we had a good view of Burrard Inlet harbor and the seaplanes that seemed to be taking off or landing every few minutes. One of three Fairmont properties in the Vancouver area, the Waterfront was everything a modern urban hotel should be. The night of our arrival we joined some other journalists for dinner in Heron’s Restaurant just off the lobby. If it was an opportunity for the hotel chef to show what he could do, the venture succeeded substantially. Our hosts chose wines for each course, even including a really hard-to-find selection from the Okanagen Valley winery, Burrowing Owl. The hotel personnel were friendly and competent. One was a dog, but it also performed its duties with similar friendliness and dedication. Inside the lobby and just to the left is a large pad. It’s the working station for Holly, a Golden Retriever who performs her duties as sort of an adjunct doorman. She and her canine colleague Morgan, a Black Lab, work regular hours and spell each other on their days off. She’s well-mannered, of course, and is available to take hotel guests on walks around the neighborhood (this latter service is available by appointment).
Visitors learn about the totems in Stanley Park.
A native San Franciscan can see some similarities between that city and Vancouver, British
Columbia. Both are surrounded by beautiful water; both have hills, though San Francisco’s are steeper. San Francisco has a great urban park (Golden Gate), as does Vancouver (Stanley). Both cities are enriched by diverse ethnic neighborhoods. There’s a vibrancy in these two gem cities on North America’s Pacific Coast.
Around Town: Some Places to East and Drink in Vancouver
Gastown is named after a publican of a bygone era, Gassy Jack Deighton. It’s a historic area popular with tourists for drinking and dining. After checking out the steam-powered clock and some of the shops, we visited the Steamworks Brewing Company (www.steamworks.com) for a couple of beers. It’s a multi-level brewpub serving good food, appropriate to its definition, and even better beer. Though we dropped in early in the afternoon, the house was half full. Not bad, but not as impressive as one January day a few years earlier when I sat at the bar, watching locals stand outside in sub-freezing temperatures, waiting to enter. One or two patrons departed and couple fresh ones were admitted. Three left—three others came in. And so it went. I can’t imagine that the management wanted to keep patrons out, so it must have been an issue of the fire marshall’s standards for not overcrowding an obviously popular public accommodation.
The cartoonish Aquabusses shuttle passengers
to and from Granville Island.
Vancouver boasts several distinctively ethnic neighborhoods, among them Indian, Italian and Chinese. The Chinatown is big and no restaurant there is bigger than Flota Seafood Restaurant (www.floata.com). It bills itself as “the biggest Chinese restaurant in Canada,” which seems maybe too narrow a definition. It can seat up to 1,000 guests and we wondered what restaurant might be bigger—in Canada, or anywhere else for that matter. We enjoyed Dim Sum and samples from the rest of the menu, too.
Shaughnessy (www.shaughnessyrestaurant.com) is a restaurant at VanDusen Botanical Garden. Created twenty years ago to serve the visitors to the gardens, it’s come along way since then. The Shaughnessy name is taken from the golf course that once occupied the space, which is now the 55-acre site of the VanDusen Garden. We experienced a lighter lunch, but the restaurant serves substantial dinners, as well. Chef Bill Grimshaw does some very creative work with sorbets using products of the gardens surrounding the restaurant.
Spectacular sorbets are signature
of Chef Bill Grimshaw.
Granville Island is home to a large public market, which is open daily. Among several restaurants in the area is The Sandbar (www.vancouverdine.com), a big, multi-level place that still managed to feel very cozy on the overcast and drizzly day we visited. Inside there’s an exhibition kitchen and outside a great deck overlooking False Creek where little water taxis operate. There’s a good array of beer and wines to accompany a vast selection of seafood. We tried at least half-a-dozen choices from the à la carte menu and liked all.
Yaletown was once working warehouses. Now the scene includes some of Vancouver’s hippest shopping and restaurant action. It’s a great place to drink, but an area potentially dangerous to those unwise enough to drink too much and pay too little attention to their footing (Access to some of these spots is from old loading docks several feet above the Hamilton Street sidewalk below.). Looking for a late-evening snack and the opportunity to hear live music, Maria and I found both in this part of the city.
Luncheon patrons have both indoor and outdoor
seating options at the Sandbar.
We wandered into the Blue Water Café (www.bluewatercafe.net) after 10 pm to find that people were still waiting to be seated for dinner. Not sure if we wanted to wait for a table, we found seats at the bar to ponder our next move over a beer and a glass of wine. The menu listed 14 varieties of oysters and entrees such as BC Sablefish, Big Eye Tuna and Vancouver Island Lingcod and Ebony Mushrooms. The wine list looked comprehensive and the place smelled terrific. As good as Blue Water’s potential seemed to be, we decided to forego dinner there in pursuit of music and a snack elsewhere.
Capone’s (www.caponesrestaurant.net), just a block or so down the street, advertised “Live Jazz 7 Nights a Week.” It was just what we were looking for. We stayed for two sets, enjoyed a quartet that featured a fine tenor sax player, and even found good chow, reasonably priced (the place was serving a menu strong in pizzas and tapas, which suited us fine at that time of night).
Salt prawns is one of
The Sandbar’s great appetizers.
No matter how diligent the reporters, spending just a few days in Vancouver only scratched the surface of the opportunities there for lovers of wine and food. We look forward to future trips and continuing investigation of their vibrant restaurant and nightlife offerings. A good source of information is www.tourismvancouver.com.
This year’s Vancouver Playhouse wine festival is earlier than the edition we attended. For 2006 the dates are February 27 to March 5. To get a feel for how the festival seemed to us in 2004, you might want to check out:
* Canada Hosts International Wine Festival (http://www.californiawineandfood.com/wine/vancouver-wine-fest.htm)
* Californians in British Columbia (http://www.californiawineandfood.com/events/vancouver-wine-fest.htm)
* Canadian Dinner Bridges Oceans (http://www.californiawineandfood.com/events/vancouver-dinner.htm)
For more information about this year’s festival, which features wines from the regions of France, please visit www.playhousewinefest.com.
Editor’s note: We could have enjoyed many more days in Vancouver, but opted to take one of those seaplanes over to Victoria. Next week we’ll bring you some impressions of that “most English” city in Canada.