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Belly’s Budget Best

Vancouver’s Le Parisien: a Worthy Tribute to the Original Café de Paris

April 28, 2012

It was quite the soirée last week, when owner John Blakeley pulled the wraps off Le Parisien, in Vancouver’s West End. (You can read the review in our current Courier column, below.) However, aside from the fact that this is indeed a welcome restoration, I was moved (as I suspect were some others) by John’s [...]

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Vancouver’s upstairs Gurkha Himalayan Kitchen adds a different dimension to West End dining

April 10, 2012

Upstairs restaurants (i.e. those without any significant street level presence) can be notoriously challenging. In a business where ‘location, location, location’ is everything, you can count one hand those in downtown Vancouver that are successful—starting with CinCin as arguably the most enduring. In fact, part of CinCin’s very success—beyond impeccably executed wood fired dishes and a [...]

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Gastown’s Bitter: Sweet Destination for a Perfect Pint

March 23, 2012

If there’s one thing the Hired Belly finds hard to resist it’s a decent pint, particularly when it’s properly poured, and at the right temperature.  I’m sure it’s one of the many very sound traits inherited from my dad—who I still sorely miss. Growing up, beer was very much a church and state kind of thing—literally. [...]

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Siena: Vancouver’s South Granville Enjoys a New Rising Star

March 19, 2012

Do you ever wonder how restaurateurs pick their locations? Late last year, Mark Taylor (the man behind small plates Cru) received word that the one time, long ago Star Anise space (latterly turned failed Thai resto) at Granville & 12th was up for grabs. As it turns out, Taylor at one time lived just down [...]

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Why the food at Vancouver Trade & Convention Centre is, well, unconventional

March 6, 2012

We reckon we’ve eaten our fair share of meals on the rubber chicken circuit. But I don’t know why I’m even saying that here, because the food at Vancouver Trade & Convention Centre is just about as far removed from standard convention fare as you can possibly imagine. Last week’s Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival [...]

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Canned Budget Bites by the Book: Moving Well Beyond Sardines on Toast

January 24, 2012

A few weeks before Christmas we dropped into Barbara-Jo’s Books to Cooks to take a peek at what’s hot in the culinary book world. And, as usual, we wound up picking up a couple of things that would make fun gifts—but somehow we forgot to give them away. One was Len Deighton’s French Cooking for [...]

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Zagat Releases 2012 Vancouver (plus Victoria, Whistler & Okanagan) Survey

January 12, 2012

As some folks may know, in our role as the local editor for Zagat, (backed by a great team in New York) we’ve been working for the last few months on the latest Zagat Survey, that encompasses key players in Vancouver, Victoria, Vancouver Island, Whistler and the Okanagan Valley. Well, here’s an exclusive look at the [...]

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In Vancouver’s Yaletown, this Newbie Pig is Really Flying

October 30, 2011

It just goes to show; you can never know what to expect on a Vancouver Monday night. One recent, still dry October soirée, you could have fired a proverbial cannon down most of Yaletown’s narrow streets, so who knew that we’d only just manage to score the last two seats at The Flying Pig? Yes, [...]

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On Vancouver’s Robson Street, (and on West Broadway) Everything Old is Nu Again

October 5, 2011

It’s a tasty irony indeed that Nu Greek Robson (542 Robson St., Vancouver) is right next door to Japadog (530 Robson St.)  Somehow the notion of having a direct descendant of the city’s original souvlaki mainstay side by side with east-meets-west hotdog heaven adds up to perfect bookends: a capsule of Vancouver’s ethnic culinary evolution [...]

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Vancouver’s Gord Martin Dumps Bin 942 in Favour of Second Go Fish!

July 1, 2011

One of the rewards of taking too many photos is that eventually you can always find a reason to use at least some of them. We’re a long time fan of The Bin-Meister, aka Gord Martin, who essentially single handedly kick-started the small plates revolution (not just in Vancouver but across the continent) way back [...]

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