Where to stay

Prices quoted are per double room per night, with breakfast.

Fairmont Pacific Rim Opened in 2010, many rooms look to Coal Harbour and the mountains; the dramatic lobby has a piano bar. (see also Places to eat). Rooms from £202. 1038 Canada Place, 00 800 0441 1414, fairmontpacificrim.com

Moda This downtown boutique hotel has comfy, streamlined rooms and in the restaurant Cibo, wood beams and modern art are as stylish as the contemporary Italian food. Rooms from £85. 900 Seymour Street, 00 1 604 683 4251, modahotel.ca

Opus With its deep comforts and funky style, this Yaletown hotel appears regularly on lists of ‘best’ and ‘hot’ places to stay. From £140. 322 Davie Street, 00 1 604 642 6787, opushotel.com

St Regis Hotel Near Gastown, this revamped historic hotel offers a free business centre, local and North America calls. Rooms from £82. 602 Dunsmuir Street, 00 1 604 681 1135, stregishotel.com

Wedgewood Hotel In downtown, this family-owned Relais & Châteaux hotel is all European style, from the luxury bedrooms to the cosy bar. The outstanding Bacchus Restaurant completes the experience. Rooms from £125. 845 Hornby Street, 00 1 604 689 7777; wedgewoodhotel.com

Travel Information

Currency is the Canadian dollar (£1=C$1.58). Vancouver is eight hours behind GMT. Summer months are hot and sunny, winters are cold. The best times to visit are during the summer and autumn. The average temperature high in July is 23ºC / 74ºF.

GETTING THERE

Air Canada (08712 201111, aircanada.com) flies daily from London Heathrow to Vancouver.
British Airways (08444 930787, britishairways.com) flies daily from London Heathrow to Vancouver.

RESOURCES

Tourism Vancouver (tourismvancouver.com) is packed with tips on what to do and see, with everything from interactive maps and blogs to a guide to what’s happening when.
Tourism British Columbia (BritishColumbia.travel).
Canadian Tourism Commission (uk.canada.travel).

FURTHER READING

The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating by Alisa Smith and JB MacKinnon (Random House).

Vancouver Cooks 2 (Douglas & McIntyre) is the award-winning second book in a series celebrating British Columbia’s food scene. Over 100 recipes from 70 well-known or emerging chefs in or around Vancouver are supplemented by mouthwatering photography.

Where to eat

Prices quoted are for three courses per person, excluding wine unless stated otherwise.

Blue Water Cafe Go to this Yaletown favourite for seafood: 18 species of oyster; bountiful shellfish platters (£18); sushi made by a master at the bar. From £36. 1095 Hamilton Street, 00 1 604 688 8078, bluewatercafe.net

C Restaurant From the patio or airy interior, views of the promenade and Granville Island match skillfully made dishes. From £29. 2-1600 Howe Street, 00 1 604 681 1164, crestaurant.com

Cardero’s Large, lively waterfront restaurant serving great burgers, pizza, seafood and steak; live music in the evening. From £19. 1583 Coal Harbour Quay, 00 1 604 669 7666, vancouverdine.com

Cru Carefully prepared food partners a terrific wine selection. From £27. 1459 West Broadway, 00 1 604 677 4111, cru.ca

Hawksworth Restaurant The five-course tasting menu is a showcase for the talents of David Hawksworth, and costs £45. 801 West Georgia Street, 001 604 673 7000, hawksworthrestaurant.com

Oru Pan-Asian dishes are a revelation in the Fairmont’s restaurant, with a bargain six-course tasting menu. From £30. 1038 Canada Place, 001 604 695 5500, orucuisine.com

Pajo’s Fish & Chips Right on the Wharf at Steveston, where boats land their catch – it’s great fun. From £6. 001 604 272 1588, pajos.com.

Raincity Grill Informal, well-run and a showcase for BC produce. The five-course, 100-Mile Tasting Menu is £44 (£61 with wine). 1193 Denman Street, 00 1 604 685 7337, raincitygrill.com

Refuel Steak A casual restaurant in the residential Kitsilano area. From £24. 1944 West 4th Avenue, 00 1 604 288 7905, refuelrestaurant.com.

Salt Tasting Room A popular spot in Gastown; tasting platters of charcuterie, cheeses, house-prepared chutneys; over 50 wines by the glass. From £18. 45 Blood Alley, 00 1 604 633 1912, salttastingroom.com

West This 10-year-old, special-occasion restaurant still receives – and deserves – awards. The eight-course chef’s tasting menu is £58. 2881 Granville Street, 00 1 604 738 8938, westrestaurant.com

Food Glossary

Food and Travel Review

Vancouver is the gateway to British Columbia – or BC as everyone calls it. This west-coast city is many things to many people – some visitors to Canada’s most scenic province ride through the soaring mountains aboard a train; others cruise through the myriad islands dotting the Pacific coast. Skiers head two hours north to Whistler, the resort that hosted the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. But I go to Vancouver to eat.

The food scene here is, arguably, the most innovative in North America. Like any New World city, there is a wide choice of ethnic restaurants, reflecting the immigrants who introduced their culinary traditions to their new home. But what draws enthusiasts back time and again and gains the city so many plaudits is Vancouver’s own inventive cuisine: modern, and with a real sense of place. Chefs always insist that the secret of great cooking is great ingredients – and BC is like one enormous larder. Thanks to its rich soil and agreeable climate, southern BC has orchards abundant with apples, pears and soft fruit, including peaches so ripe and fragrant they put me in mind of summer in the south of France. Then there are the endless fields of high-quality vegetables.

Along the shoreline, the cold, clean water is ideal for oysters and clams, as well as BC delicacies such as pink scallops and spot prawns (a type of shellfish like langoustines). A mere 10 miles from downtown, fishing boats still chug out daily from Steveston Harbour, home of Canada’s largest fishing fleet, to catch wild salmon and sablefish, halibut and tuna.

With so much on offer, it comes as no surprise that in 2005 two Vancouver journalists challenged themselves to eat only food grown or crafted within a 100-mile radius of their back door. Alisa Smith and JB MacKinnon recorded their experiment in the influential book The 100-Mile Diet. At the same time, restaurateurs and chefs were also enthusiastic about farm-to-fork initiatives. In 2006, Harry Kambolis, owner of Vancouver’s Raincity Grill, combined the two to create the 100-Mile Menu. ‘Basically, I took a map, drew a circle and tried to work within a 100-mile radius,’ he recalls. ‘But, it really should be the “250-mile menu”, because the Okanagan Valley, in south-eastern BC, is so important for fruit and veg.’ Today, almost all of what the kitchen prepares comes from BC. The only things sourced from out of province? ‘Salt and citrus’.

Study a menu and the dishes read like a gourmet’s itinerary of the region. The beef for the carpaccio is from a cattle ranch in BC’s mountains; the lamb cheeks are from the Fraser Valley, only 50 miles east of the city; the mussels come from Salt Spring Island, a few miles offshore. Salads of watercress and radish have a just-picked crunch, while the Dungeness crab tastes – and smells – of the sea. It’s a restaurant for lingering over lunch. The deck overlooks English Bay, where the sandy beaches attract swimmers and picnickers.

Vancouver enjoys one of the world’s most breathtaking locations. Set on a peninsula, the city has water on three sides and vistas of mountains. Modern apartment towers, like elegant glass shards, shimmer in the sunshine. But it takes more than good looks to top the tables of the ‘world’s most liveable cities’, and one of the reasons why Vancouver is regularly ranked number one is because it offers such easy access to the great outdoors.

Locals are an energetic bunch; they cycle and rollerblade to work, and run during lunch hours. Even the social scene is an active one. ‘We don’t do brunch at weekends,’ 30-somethings confirm. ‘We meet up to do stuff outside.’ Close to downtown is Stanley Park, almost three times the size of London’s Hyde Park. One of the world’s great urban playgrounds, it boasts woods, nature trails, the Seawall Promenade for walking and cycling – even a cricket pitch. And, with Grouse and Cypress Mountains only 30 minutes away, Vancouverites can ski and board in winter, zipline and hike in summer.

Not that the city is a cultural desert. Alongside international appreciation of Vancouver’s burgeoning restaurant scene is an acknowledgement of the arts and crafts of the First Nations, as Canada’s native people are called. Five miles west of downtown, at the University of British Columbia, the Museum of Anthropology’s cathedral-like Great Hall features a dozen monumental totem poles, carved with images of bears, ravens and eagles. Downtown, the Vancouver Art Gallery showcases west coast art, from paintings to sculpture, while in the lively neighbourhood of Yaletown, old brick warehouses are now home to independent galleries. In this buzzy area, where new cafés and shops open weekly, a long-standing favourite is a restaurant called C, where the entertainment is free. Munching on house-made focaccia, diners look out onto False Creek, a large inlet busy with sailboats, sea kayaks and water taxis that shuttle from pier to pier.

C’s menu is indeed all about the sea, from a salmon gravlax cured with blueberries and beet juice, to roasted sablefish partnered by lobster gnocchi, summer peas and chanterelles. Every ingredient sings out; together, they are in perfect harmony. But executive chef Robert Clark’s passion for fish extends far beyond the plate. In 2005, he was a founding member of Ocean Wise, a scheme launched by the Vancouver Aquarium to promote sustainable seafood. The programme has spread across Canada, as restaurants, markets and fishmongers realise the importance of protecting the marine environment surrounding them.

Vancouverites, too, care about how their food is sourced. They don’t simply order salmon; they want to know if it is sockeye, cohoor chinook. And they want to know how and where it was caught. But eating out is not a snobby experience. Restaurants are informal and fun – like the population. ‘We are not a fancy dining city, more a Goretex and jeans city,’ one resident points out. ‘And, we have neighbourhood restaurants that are affordable as well as good.’

One of the best is Cru. Since 2003, this small space has attracted plaudits. The duck confit is a happy marriage of crispy skin and melting meat, while the shiraz-braised short rib of beef matches tenderness with depth of flavour. And there is a reason it is called Cru; owner Mark Taylor is a sommelier and a self-confessed wine geek who wants to demystify wine drinking. His user-friendly list has categories such as ‘crisp’, ‘luscious’ and ‘smooth’. And he features wines from the Okanagan Valley.

Okanagan was originally known just for its orchards, but grapevines now march across many of its hillsides. The wines may be unfamiliar to British drinkers, but the quality has improved dramatically in recent years. There is bubbly from Blue Mountain and pinot noir from Quails’ Gate. Taylor is a fan of JoieFarm, the 2010 BC Winery of the Year. Like its Alsace forebears, the riesling from this small, five-acre winery has grapefruity aromas with a satisfyingly dry finish. ‘But I don’t carry these wines just because they are from the province,’ Taylor points out. ‘They have to compete with the rest of the world.’ Pouring a glass of Pétales d’Osoyoos, he insists that ‘it shows the potential of the Okanagan’. The root stock and winemaker are both French, the style is a Bordeaux blend (mainly merlot and cabernet sauvignon), but the soil is BC. The result is concentrated, smooth and delicious.

Cru is near Granville Island. Close to the city centre, this island district was a run-down industrial area 30 years ago; now it bustles with art galleries, craft studios, theatres, cafés and the Public Market. This is crammed with fresh produce as well as chocolates, coffees and prepared dishes. Organic and biodynamic labels are common; everything is top quality. ‘Every chef in the city has a parking permit here,’ says Eric Pateman. He is the founder of Edible British Columbia, whose chef-guided market tours are a gourmet’s delight. These include tastings of bread, BC cheeses, locally made sausage and candied salmon, a First Nations speciality that is lightly smoked with a hint of maple syrup. Thanks to the city’s large Chinese and South Asian population, there are stalls of lychee and rambutan, seaweed and an encyclopaedia of chillies.

Because Vancouver has no culinary heritage, many successful chefs have learned their skills abroad. And, when they return home, they have an enthusiastic audience that likes to experiment. ‘We can serve whatever we fancy, whatever is really tasty,’ says Robert Belcham. ‘That’s liberating for a chef.’ At Refuel, the sort of cheerful neighbourhood restaurant everyone would covet, Belcham cooks nose-to-tail. While working at the French Laundry in California, he started making charcuterie: ‘but my grandfather cured bacon, so it’s probably in the genes’. When he takes a 12oz rib-eye steak, rather than putting it on the grill, he sears it in a pan, ‘for better flavour’. His only additions are ‘butter, oil, garlic and fresh thyme’. The first bite provides a beefy hit. ‘The secret is dry-ageing for 40 days,’ he reveals. ‘Wet-ageing just doesn’t deliver that taste.’

Belcham is proud of the culinary strides that have been made: ‘Now we can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with anywhere in the world,’ he maintains. ‘The only thing we don’t have is history and tradition; after all, we aren’t even 150 years old!’ When BC became a province in 1871, Vancouver was just a settlement where sawmills provided the buzz – literally. Hospitality was dispensed by saloonowner ‘Gassy Jack’ Deighton, for whom the Gastown district is named. In the past few years, this old heart of the city has enjoyed a revival: brick pavements and Victorian street lamps contrast with edgy art galleries, boutiques selling local designer fashions, fun pubs and cafés.

Atmospheric though this area is, what visitors love about the city is its modernity. Vancouverites look to the future, and there is always something new happening. The latest trend is street food, sold from mobile kitchens, providing a pick ’n’ mix of world cuisines. Customers range from university students and lawyers to office workers and tourists. Across from the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Re-Up BBQ foodcart serves pulled pork sandwiches topped with barbecue sauce. ‘I was in computer software before this started,’ Michael Kaisaris discloses. ‘But I have been barbecuing competitively for years.’ He gets full marks for his pork, a tender and non-greasy mouthful that is the result of slow cooking and smoking over pecan wood. Spiked with chipotle chillies, his sauce has a hint of dark chocolate for depth.

Prices are low and quality is high at these funky vans that open around lunchtime and close in the afternoon – or when the food runs out. Outside an office block is Roaming Dragon. ‘We are the old guys out here,’ Don Letendre admits with a laugh. ‘We’ve been open almost a year!’ Here, aficionados listen for the clang of the gong, signalling that he is open for business. A former executive chef at Opus, one of Vancouver’s most stylish hotels, Letendre now heads a team that conjures up pan-Asian dishes. Fried rice balls are crunchy outside, soft and nutty inside; an unctuous pork belly slider is offset by cucumber and spring onion; Korean short ribs are a mix of smooth and savoury, salt, spice and fruit.

Last May marked the eagerly awaited opening of Hawksworth Restaurant. Run by David Hawksworth, one of Canada’s leading chefs, it is located in the revamped Rosewood Hotel Georgia, one of the city’s most historic hotels. After successful stints in the 1990s at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, L’Escargot and The Square in London, Hawksworth returned home to collect a string of awards at West, yet another fine Vancouver restaurant. ‘I couldn’t stay away from BC,’ he confesses. ‘Of course there’s the fantastic produce. But it’s also the lifestyle. Where else can I live by the ocean and mountains, go skiing or fishing all day – and then go out for a gourmet dinner in the evening? That’s Vancouver for you. It’s one of the best places in the world.’