Eating Vancouver

We had to head over to Granville Island this morning for a 9 am tour of the Public Market and should have hit the ground running.  But despite retiring relatively early last night, we were dragging our tails around the apartment before wolfing down breakfast and bolting out the front door.

Last night's rain had slowed to a trickle, but the day started like the ones we had experienced in Southeast Alaska in the summer of 2008:  Mid-fifties, damp, and gloomy.  But at least there was no wind and by late morning the rain had stopped completely.

It only took us ten minutes or less to drive from our lodgings to the island.  Once inside the Public Market, we found our way to the "Edible British Columbia" store, met our tour guide, Rossanna Ascencia, and began a two-hour walk around the market complex to sample food from several vendors.

Up to eight people can take an EBC market tour, but we were lucky to have Rossanna all to ourselves.  All of the company's tour guides have experience working in the culinary industry.  Rossanna is a trained chef and has her own catering business.  She literally knew everything about soup to nuts.

Our first stop was Triangle Square just outside of the Public Market buildings.  This area was a sandbar on False Creek that was turned into an island and became the industrial center of Vancouver.  Timber and shipbuilding companies, as well as several factories, were located here.

By the 1970's these commercial establishments on the island had either gone out of business or moved elsewhere.  Rather than allow waterfront housing or condos to be built, the Canadian government bought the island and restored the old industrial buildings for re-use by other businesses.

Seattle's Pike Place Market (where I often went shopping with my grandmother when I was a small child) was built specifically to provide space for seafood, meat, and produce vendors.  But Vancouver had no similar venue for food purveyors until the Granville Island Public Market opened in 1979.

After our brief history lesson, Rossanna took us into La Baguette et L'Eschalote Bakery and we began "eating Vancouver" with a delicious chocolate croissant made in the traditional French style.  The bakery has been there for over twenty years and operates around the clock to turn out all manner of bread and pastry. 

At Petit Ami we stopped for a cup of decaf made from locally roasted coffee beans using the Swiss Water Process and learned that dark roasted coffee beans have the least caffeine. The result:  A flavorful brew without the bitterness or acidic aftertaste that one sometimes finds in a cup of Joe from the large chain coffee houses.

The New York Stock Exchange may make your stomach turn sour some days, but the Stock Market in the Granville Island Public Market will restore your innards with their made-on-premises soups, stocks, sauces, and condiments.  Here we had a mid-morning sample of hot cereal with a fruit and brown-sugar topping.

At Seafood City we stopped to sample locally-smoked salmon (English settlers found this cured and smoked fish to be slightly sweet to their tastes and dubbed it "Indian Candy") and learned from Rossanna that fish marked "Ocean Wise" on area restaurants means it is harvested in a sustainable, "ocean-friendly" way per standards set by the Vancouver Aquarium.

For another "sweet treat" we had fresh, warm chocolate doughnuts at Lee's Donuts and then chatted with master doughnut-maker, Alvin, who kept a close eye on dough churning away inside of a huge mixer while showing us two of the doughnut cutters he uses to make these delectable goodies all by hand.

One of our tastiest stops was at the Oyama Sausage Company where the owner, Jerome, gave us a charcuterie plate of salami made with truffles, jambon, two kinds of proscuitto, and other similar products which he sells .  We could have easily spent the rest of the day stuffing our faces there.

ChocolaTas rewarded us with a hand-made chocolates made by master chocolatier Wim Tas who moved to Vancouver from Belgium. James, who runs the retail store Wim, moved to Vancouver from Hawaii and had also lived in Palo Alto when he worked for long-defunct Tandem Computers.

At the Granville Island Tea Company Rossanna brought out several small tins of tea and we sniffed at the different aromas while she explained that excerpt for herbal teas (made from dried herbs) White, Green, Oolong, and Black teas all come from a single species of tea plant with the chief difference between them being when the leaves are picked or who they are processed after harvesting.  We learned that the caffeine in coffee quickly gets you "high" then lets you "crash" if you drink it all day, while that in tea just makes your day slow and mellow.

In addition to the vendors who have permanent spaces in the market, there are several who have "day tables" that are temporarily set up and change location within the market from day to day and week to week.  Many are artisans selling paintings, photographs, jewelry, and other handcrafts.

After our tour we left the Public Market for a while and wandered along the waterfront, over the the pleasure-craft marina, through the boat yard where a few sailboats and powerboats had been hauled out.  We continued our stroll around and through some of the shops and Cindy stopped to buy a couple of scarves.

We walked to the east end of the island, past the Granville Island Hotel (where we'll stay for a night at the very end of our two-week trip), then swung back west, passed Emily Carr University of Art & Design, left our purchases in our car, and returned to the market for a quick lunch of Asian noodles, and then picked up pasta, sauce, tomatoes, and wine for tonight's dinner, and pastries for breakfast.

By about 3 pm we'd started to run out of gas and returned to our apartment to relax before cooking dinner and going back to Granville Island to see this evening's performance of Don Quixote.