An insider’s guide to dining in Vancouver

One of the first things that hit me about Vancouver’s culinary scene is its seasonality. Every time I went to the local greengrocer I seemed to find a new fruit variety or vegetable to try. Restaurants around the city faithfully follow seasonal trends, most live by the farm-to-table ethos and you’ll often see suppliers such as Hannah Brook or North Arm Farms named on menus. One of the biggest seasonal stars is the sustainable spot prawn, a sweet local variety that is only available for a few weeks during May and June. Each year there is a Spot Prawn Festival on Fisherman’s Wharf to celebrate this delicious seafood and menus across town feature them raw and cooked. Flash-frozen prawns are available the rest of the year but nothing tastes more ‘Vancouver’ than a fresh-off-the-boat spot prawn.

Any decent Vancouver guide will tick off the must-eat restaurants from Hawksworth’s fine dining and Cafe Medina’s wonderful brunch to Blue Water Cafe’s extraordinary seafood, but it’s the city’s neighbourhoods that bring unexpected rewards. Cross the bridge and head to Kitsilano – known for its beaches and yoga-loving residents – Kits is increasingly becoming the city’s dining hotspot thanks to rents which are lower than the traditional dining hubs of Downtown and Gastown.

Seek out AnnaLena for its contemporary Canadian food where local ingredients and elevated techniques blend lusciously together. Au Comptoir conjures up the perfect French bistro, but with friendly Canadian service, Fable and its farm-to-table dining simply showcase BC’s best ingredients, and Mission’s multi-course vegetarian or meat-based wine, cocktail or temperance drink-paired menus take diners on a thrilling culinary adventure.

I live in the West End, home to Stanley Park and sandy English Bay, and also some of the city’s most fun late-night and casual dining. Along Robson Street you can find superb ramen (my current favourite is The Ramenman which instead of using tonkotsu pork-based broth, use a velvety chicken base instead with sous-vide cooked meats) and a host of Korean-fried chicken and barbecue joints – don’t miss Zabu with its incredibly addictive sweet, sticky, crunchy soy-based birds—and just like everywhere else in Vancouver, a breathtaking choice of sushi restaurants. As a rule, the very best sushi in the UK is almost as good as the most basic hole-in-the-wall sushi in Vancouver. Try Maumi for its omakase or go fancy at Miku on Coal Harbour and try its flame-torched aburi sushi.

You can hop on the Skytrain and head to Richmond for an adventure in Asian dining. Throughout summer, the Night Market offers a dizzying variety of superb street foods, from grilled baby squid and creamy takoyaki fried octopus dough balls, to sweet shaved ice desserts and sugar-dusted and nut-stuffed ‘Dragon Beard Candy’. Year-round, Richmond’s Chinese restaurants draw global admirers, especially places such as ultra modern Chef Tony’s or uber-traditional Sun Sui Wah.

Vancouverites have a seriously sweet tooth, and will happy queue up for the Next Big Thing, whether that’s organic soft serve ice cream served with local honeycomb, Ladurée macarons in an exact facsimile of their store in Paris, or frozen-to-order liquid nitrogen ice cream served with a dramatic cloud of smoke.