Tourism B.C./Tom Ryan

Hidekazu Tojo is still creating original sushi rolls, and locals love their raw fish, but the region offers more than just salmon.

Salmon is being given the hard sell for the Olympics. It appears, crispy-skinned, on the Olympic menu at YEW restaurant at the Four Seasons Hotel Vancouver; Opus Bar has created a sushi roll called the Sockeye Slalom; and, of course, the 2010 Aboriginal Pavilion is offering salmon—smoked and skewered.

But when it comes to a food that defines Canada’s West Coast, the president of the Culinary Tourism Society B.C. says that salmon is overplayed. It’s what everyone expects, Don Monsour told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview. It’s the ultimate B.C. culinary cliché—and it’s time for that to change.

“Years ago, escargot, or snails, was the thing that people thought of France about. Now you hardly hear about it,” Monsour said, noting that B.C.’s 250 varieties of fresh produce, cherries in particular, deserve more attention. So do B.C.’s artisan cheeses, he suggested. “Things change. They change as the generations change.”

Monsour claims that the West Coast can compete for food tourists on par with Tuscany. Still, he can’t name another food that’s in the same league with salmon in terms of recognizability. It’s an important part of the region’s branding, he said, to get our food symbols nailed down.

“When you ask people who are returning [home] what do they remember most, usually they remember the dining experience,” he said. “It’s one of those experiences we see, we taste, we touch, we smell, so it stays with us for a very long time.”

Salmon has another problem besides fading foodie hipness. British Columbians don’t eat much of the fish—at least not in their homes. Here, each household spends just 79 cents a week buying salmon at stores, or $2.49 on fish in general, according to Food Expenditure in Canada (2001), Statistics Canada’s latest full report on this topic. Sure, that’s more than in any other region. But the figure is dwarfed by West Coasters’ appetite for beef ($4.13 per household per week), chicken ($3.52), and cheese ($4.38). In fact, the province’s households spend about as much on salmon as they do on crackers.

Canada is indeed home to a bevy of tired food clichés. Maple syrup (sold in Quatchi-adorned cans for the Olympics), poutine, flipper pie, and back bacon have endured, but they certainly don’t represent the West Coast. So what does?

For Olympic tourists hoping for a fresh, authentic taste of the region, much of our most-promoted foods are out of season. Fiddleheads appear in April; spot prawn season starts in May. And the incredible Fraser Valley produce harvest happens in summer.

For prepared food, it’s a different story. Ubiquitous in this city are some truly original West Coast creations. Chef Hidekazu Tojo, of Tojo’s restaurant, tells the Straight that he invented both the California roll and the B.C. roll in 1974. Nanaimo bars were invented by a Vancouver Island homemaker, according to the City of Nanaimo Web site. Alan Morley’s 1961 classic Vancouver, From Milltown to Metropolis states that Vancouver is the home of the lumberjack breakfast—a hearty load of pancakes, bacon, and eggs. (Try the version at the Tomahawk Restaurant [1550 Philip Avenue, North Vancouver].) Morley also states that the Chinese-style steam tray smorgasbord was invented in Gastown. (Try the one at Kent’s Kitchen [232 Keefer Street].)

But Mike McDermid, program director for the Vancouver Aquarium’s Ocean Wise initiative, which helps restaurants highlight sustainable seafood products for consumers, thinks salmon should endure as a B.C. food icon. That said, he noted that given the fact that half the province’s runs should no longer be fished at all, sockeye should be seen as a “luxury, special-occasion food”, rather than a staple.

“B.C.’s wild-capture fisheries—we’re really talking about some of the last wild hunts on the planet. I think we need to not undervalue that,” McDermid told the Straight in a phone interview.

Still, McDermid advocates supporting the West Coast’s sustainable salmon fisheries, especially for the less popular but arguably just as delicious varieties, such as pink and chum. McDermid said chum is being “sexed up” with a new name: silverbrite.

Gitksan chef Dolly McRae also thinks salmon deserves its iconic status. To McRae, the former owner of the now-defunct Liliget Feast House, the best West Coast symbol is hard, dried salmon, dipped in oolichan oil and eaten on the trail as she did when she was a child, berry-picking with her family.

“We could have it morning, noon, and night, and it would taste good all the time. Plus, it’s portable,” she said.

Even Monsour thinks salmon is still a pretty great lure for foodie tourists.

“We say yes, by God, we have probably the best salmon in the world,” he said. “But we also have 200 other products you need to try before you go home.”

So if the fresh, authentic stuff isn’t available, grab a Nanaimo bar and a container full of takeout Chinese food, and eat like a local.