Six food and dining choices

Eat in a new spot
The EAT! Vancouver Food + Cooking Festival happens this weekend (May 28 to 30), and you should know two things before you go. One: it’s in a new location, at the Vancouver Convention Centre (1055 Canada Place). Two: buying your ticket on-line shaves $3 off the $15 ticket price. Inside, in addition to the myriad commercial booths, Rob Feenie will be cooking sablefish, Fortune House Seafood Restaurant executive chef Tony Wu will be stretching and cutting noodles blindfolded, and a variety of cheese seminars will be offered. For show schedules and exhibition hours, see the Eat Vancouver Web site.

Pocket some produce
In conjunction with the Coquitlam Farmers Market Society, the SFU Pocket Farmers Market is operating again at SFU in Burnaby (at UniverCity’s Cornerstone Town Square). Smaller than a regular farmers market, the pocket market is run by volunteers so that farmers don’t have to leave their fields. It includes produce, free-range organic eggs, and more, and happens every Wednesday from noon to 6 p.m. until October 27.

Barbeque on the roof
It’s time to plot out your nearest patios for summer— sometimes they’re where you least expect them to be. Walk up to the third floor at Ceili’s Irish Pub & Restaurant (670 Smithe Street) and you’ll find a 5,000-square-foot space with a retractable roof that opens to the sky and a view down Granville Street. The pub is making every Friday this summer patio day by hauling out the barbecue; $15 buys dinners like an eight-ounce steak and potato salad, or a Portobello mushroom burger and coleslaw.

Lamb that won’t rack up the bill
Dine at Griffins in the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver (900 West Georgia Street) between 4:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. any day until the end of September and zero in on happy-hour half-price dining deals marking the restaurant’s 18th anniversary. What’s for dinner? Consider steak frites (half off $34) or rack of lamb (half off $40).

Foxglove has tasty plans in hand
This summer, Salt Spring Island’s Foxglove Farm Centre for Arts, Ecology & Agriculture has some tasty programming on offer. Field to Plate workshops (1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.) kick off the season on June 13 with Bishop’s chef Andrea Carlson’s Spring Salad and Cooking Greens and end on October 24 with Bill Jones’s Foraging for Fungi. Find course details at the Foxglove Web site.

Local bartenders succeed in global challenge
Each year the top-two finishers at Vancouver’s Giffard Cocktail Competition travel to Angers, France, to compete in the Giffard International Cocktail Challenge. On May 10 this year, they went up against 10 of their peers, who had each advanced from their home countries. The result was Canada’s strongest showing ever—a one-two punch—with Keefer Bar’s Danielle Tatarin taking first place and Justin Tisdale of MARKET by Jean-Georges coming in second.

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