Best excuse to drink excessively

The hipster invasion

The rules of the game are simple: park yourself on a patio on Main Street and take a drink every time you see a person sporting one of the following: an attempt at an ironic mustache, flannel, thick-framed retro glasses, or a shirt from a band you’ve never heard of. Two drinks if they’re riding a fixie bicycle. Straight staffers are not responsible for any alcohol poisoning that may ensue.

Best place to be an uncouth maroon

CRU
1459 West Broadway
604-677-4111

Yes, CRU wins a lot of awards for its food and yes, chef Alana Peckham walks that fine line between classic and creative as well as any of the city’s tastemakers. But what good is ordering great food only to look the fool when ordering the wrong wine? This is where CRU really shines for the culinary uncouth. Designed in the classic Parisian wine-bar style, CRU’s menu includes a series of colour-coded wine pairings accompanying each item—paint by numbers for winos. And if you’re colourblind, ask the staff. They are very knowledgeable and friendly and possess perfectly functioning rods and cones.

Best snack after a night out drinking
No late-night drinking session is complete without a greasy snack, the kind of junk food you wouldn’t eat if your judgment weren’t somewhat clouded. But what to choose? Do you have a greasy slice of pizza or an even greasier order of poutine? Well, debate no more, as one Commercial Drive eatery offers poutine pizza. Like the makers of Reese’s peanut-butter cups, Brado Pizza (1399 Commercial Drive, 604-251-7251) has taken two great flavours and combined them into a gut buster that will soak up all the alcohol in your system. The Montreal-bred owner of Brado serves pizza pies covered with french fries, gravy, and cheese curds well into the night. When you eventually wake from your coma, your head may be pounding but your stomach won’t be grumbling.

Best hit of espresso

Gene Café
2404 Main Street
604-568-5501

Tucked into a wedge-shaped space that’s light on décor, Gene Café exudes deliberate nonchalance. Its interior is sparse—all raw lumber, metal chairs, and concrete—and its baristas prefer to communicate in noncommittal shrugs rather than words. You’re more likely to get a scowl than a smile with your order here, but who cares when the brew is just so damn perfect? The punchy espresso is deep, velvety smooth, and mercifully free of any burned overtones. If you time your visit right, you might catch one of the city’s most buttery croissants, still warm from the oven. But to grab one you’ll have to beat the regular caffeinated clientele—plugged into the free Wi-Fi—to the counter.

Best places to snack ’n’ go

Hot-dog stands can come in handy when you forget to pack a lunch and don’t have time to wait for a seat in a restaurant. But Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson wants street venders to provide citizens and visitors with more nutritious and culturally diverse menus. In the summer, the city launched a pilot program to introduce food carts at 17 locations. The city received 800 submissions from hopeful venders, selecting the winners by lottery. Instead of scarfing down mystery meat on a bun, hungry people will now be able to pick up everything from schnitzel and baked goods to fresh-squeezed lemonade and Korean short-rib tacos.

Most erotic and web-savvy name for a weenie

Japanese fusion hot-dog chain Japadog is so popular that American comic Roy Wood Jr. posted a video rant about not being able to find it in Japan. (Roy, don’t blame Japan for your own misunderstanding.) The local chain of outdoor stands finally opened its first indoor location at 530 Robson Street this past summer. The new location has one of the sexiest-named hot dogs around, one that puts the frank in frankfurter. Naming a wiener Love Meat—especially one that’s covered in meat sauce and cheese—doesn’t beat around the bush (so to speak). What’s more, it’s a smart on-line–marketing strategy, as it’ll be a gold mine for Web hits.

Best place to line up for a chicken shawarma

Babylon Café
708 Robson Street
778-371-9029

There’s a permanent lineup outside the original Babylon Café, but the six-year-old hole-in-the-wall has the best chicken shawarma in the city, so it’s hardly surprising. Owner Laith Istifan agrees. “That’s what people tell me,” he says. “It’s the biggest seller, along with the lamb.” That’s not to diminish the awesomeness of Istifan’s super-juicy falafel or the basic quality of his freshly made sides, including tabbouleh and an extremely addictive homemade tahini. In all cases, the Baghdad-born Istifan is working from family recipes that, he says, go back generations. In other good news, he recently installed fans and an exhaust system in the tiny location, so patrons are now less likely to perish from the café’s authentically Babylonian heat.

Best way to get back to the ’50s

White Spot drive-ins

Sure, Vancouver has a lot of great restaurants, high-end places with Michelin-rated chefs and great Zagat numbers. Real gourmet stuff. Sometimes, however, you just need a little comfort food. That’s when it’s time to turn the wheel toward a White Spot drive-in and tear into a burger, all within the friendly confines of your own car. When the carhop arrives with your car-width food tray, reach down between your legs and ease the seat back to make room for the bounty of good eats—those burgers, French fries, onion rings, shakes, maybe even a Pirate Pak if you’ve got young’uns. You’ll feel like you’re in a time warp, enjoying diner food in a uniquely North American way. There are only two White Spot drive-ins left in Vancouver proper (2519 West Broadway and 1126 Southeast Marine Drive), but they abound in the burbs (Surrey, North Vancouver, Maple Ridge, Langley, Delta, and Burnaby). And it’s still just like it was when you were a kid.

Best taste of Montreal on Broadway

Zako’s Deli
500 West Broadway
604-709-9202

The corner of Broadway and Cambie Street is a sight for sore eyes if you happen to be a ravenous human being. Restaurants abound, from the fast-food usual suspects to an Asian overload: Thai, Cambodian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Mongolian. Snuggled in among the Oriental fare, though, is a genuine little refuge of Montreal comfort food. It’s Zako’s Deli, and it serves up a luscious, tender Montreal smoked-meat sandwich on rye with mustard that will make you think you are back on boul. Saint-Laurent. The friendly owner, Salah, will talk on almost any subject and presses samples of his smoked meat on anyone. Good poutine, too, and even a steamie platter.

Best mommy hangout

Little Nest
1716 Charles Street
604-251-9994

A cluttered eatery filled with the sounds of shrieking toddlers and wailing babies may not sound like a heavenly locale to most grownups, but for harried parents, Little Nest, located just off the Drive, is an oasis of sanity. Its ever-evolving menu of organic and locally sourced cuisine, scribbled on chalkboards, includes kid-friendly items such as fruit “fries” with yogurt, while its adult-minded fare comes with gourmet touches such as ratatouille, goat cheese, and polenta. There are plenty of retro-style highchairs on hand in addition to a well-stocked play area filled with vintage toys to keep the rug rats amused while Mom trades battle stories with other shell-shocked parents.

Best shack in the middle of nowhere to host you and 30 of your friends for dinner

Casa Fabesso
850 Barnet Highway, Port Moody
604-937-0727

Where do you want to go for dinner, honey? “Let’s get off the Barnet Highway and head to that nondescript shack at Reed Point Marina in Port Moody” are perhaps not the first words out of your mouth. That said, Casa Fabesso is one of those under-the-radar gems that offer an unforgettable dining experience. The restaurant is basically just one intimate room, ideal for hosting a couple dozen or so of your nearest and dearest. You all take your places around a long dining table, and your gracious hosts for the evening, chef Roberto and his wife, Anna, serve you a hearty, multicourse Italian feast. Once the candles are lit and the familiar chatter begins, you’d swear you were at a best friend’s place, celebrating with good food and wine.

Best Mount Pleasant grease indulgence

The Nice Cafe
154 East 8th Avenue
604-874-4024

This venerable eatery doesn’t have ferns, televisions in the bathrooms, or even unripped seats in its booths. It also lacks pretension, a vegan menu, high prices, and breakfast foods that aren’t perfectly delicious. Mexican omelette? Eggs Benny? Corned-beef hash? Steak? Yes, it’s food, made inexpensively and with care, cooked with heat and sourced from animals! How retro and ironic.

Best place to dismount and enjoy the old world

Union Food Market
810 Union Street
604-255-5025

Gloria’s, otherwise known as the Union Food Market, is Strathcona’s unofficial centre. It’s where neighbours stop to chat and cyclists halt their bike-route travels in the hope of finding one last loaf of homemade corn bread or the family’s Portuguese tarts (pasteis de nata). Or—even better—cod cakes (pasteis de bacalhau) and shrimp turnovers (rissois de camarao). Gloria, Anibal, and their son David have run this place, a true mom ’n’ pop shop, for 17 years, ever since they took it over from the Gomez family, who held it for the 30 years before that. Much more than a corner store, this market is a beloved holdover from another time.

Best contribution to food security

Sunrise Market
300 Powell Street
604-685-8019

Heirloom tomatoes at $5.99 a pound? Hothouse tomatoes at $2.99 a pound? If produce prices make you go “Holy sheep shit! It’s KD for me and the kids again tonight,” check out Sunrise Market. It’s a bit like secondhand shopping for fruit. Stores serving wealthy Vancouverites won’t accept bruised, scratched, too-ripe, misshapen, or otherwise unsalable produce, but it gets rescued at this Downtown Eastside institution. And, as a bonus, you can experience the classist thrill of seeing top restaurant chefs shop here to feed the city’s crí¨me de la crí¨me. For thrifty home cooks, the value is unmistakable. As the price of fresh food has soared elsewhere, a week’s worth of fruit and veg at Sunrise has remained steady at about $5 per person. This summer, firm, flavourful hothouse tomatoes have been as low as 39 cents a pound. For those who’ve already had their food security threatened by fruit inflation, Sunrise is a godsend.

Best place to feel good about buying seafood

According to Greenpeace, Overwaitea is among the least fishy of the national retailers. The B.C. grocery chain earned the highest marks of eight major Canadian stores in the report “Taking Stock: Ranking Supermarkets on Seafood Sustainability”, released in June. Greenpeace recognized Overwaitea for promoting sustainability, creating a seafood policy, and not selling certain flagged species.

Best loaves-and-fishes tale

Fraser Valley Gleaners Society
85 Winson Road, Abbotsford
604-870-9272

Since 1999, a volunteer organization called the Fraser Valley Gleaners Society has been feeding the world’s hungry to the tune of about 10 million bowls of soup each year. The society, a registered Canadian charity, collects fresh and frozen vegetables, all donated, processes them, and turns them into a nutritious dried-soup mix, which is then shipped to relief organizations, church groups, and individuals around the world. So far this year, the soup mix has been sent to Guatemala, Paraguay, Romania, Malawi, Burundi, Mexico, Kenya, Uganda, Haiti, Moldova, Ukraine, Liberia, Thailand, and Argentina. The society is 100 percent donor-driven, with most food donations coming from greenhouse growers, frozen-food distributors, and farmers. Want to help? Consider volunteering or attend a fundraising event.

Best place for fresh eggs

Your own back yard

Thanks to a recent bylaw update, residents of Vancouver can now house up to four hens in their yards. However, you may have to contend with the protests of your NIMBY neighbours. The key to winning them over is, of course, baskets of eggs.

Best Way To Turn Homegrown Fruit Into Cheese

Au Petit Chavignol
843 East Hastings Street
604-255-4218
www.aupetitchavignol.com

If you’re a Strathcona resident with more back-yard fruit than you can handle, Au Petit Chavignol may be willing to take it off your hands. Residents can give excess fruit like plums, pears, figs, and apples to staff, who will turn it into delicious jams and relishes. In exchange, manager Joe Chaput offers gift certificates for sister store Les Amis du FROMAGE. All that, plus you can brag to your friends that you’re now a fresh-fruit supplier to one of the best wine-and-cheese bars in the city.

Cheesiest cheese that isn’t cheese

Daiya

It looks like cheese. It smells like cheese. It tastes like cheese. Hell, it even melts like cheese. Unbelievably, Daiya is vegan and soy-free. Despite its awesomeness and the fact that it’s made in Vancouver, the stuff’s not easy to find here, turning up only on a few restaurant menus, including those of Sejuiced (1958 West 4th Avenue) and Bandidas Taqueria (2781 Commercial Drive), and in five-pound bags and blocks at Karmavore Vegan Shop (468 East Columbia Street, New Westminster). Available in Cheddar and mozzarella style, Daiya makes for killer (in this case, only figuratively) pizza, nachos, and grilled-cheese sammies.

Best baked-goods bulk buy

Lií¨ge waffles are becoming more and more popular in Vancouver. Always the main attraction at Café Medina (556 Beatty Street, 604-879-3114), the Belgian breakfast staple can now be found at Michi Waffle & Espresso Bar (1319 Robson Street, 604-568-8750) as well as most frozen-yogurt franchises. But those who don’t want to stand in weekend brunch lines should head to Damien’s Belgian Waffles Ltd. (3891 Chatham Street, 604-304-2884), an unassuming mom-and-pop operation in Steveston where bundles of waffles—the very same sold at Medina—can be purchased for takeout or enjoyed on-site with ice cream and French-pressed coffee. Available in vanilla, cinnamon, maple, matcha, and chocolate (dark, milk, or white) flavours, these waffles can be kept in the freezer for up to three months, and you can easily heat them up in an oven or toaster. Bite-sized baby waffles are also sold.

Best candidate for a customer-relations course

There are those who’ll argue that La Casa Gelato owner Vince Misceo is a true visionary. For the past two decades, the owner of the East Side institution, located at 1033 Venables Street, has been taking ice cream—er, sorry, gelato—to places Baskin Robbins never dreamed of. Forget boring old vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry: Misceo has become the go-to guy for people who crave flavours like lavender, garlic, taro root, and corn-and-apple wasabi. La Casa has 218 flavours on the premises and more than 500 in whatever recipe book he’s got stashed in the back of the factory. It’s a formula that’s turned the store into a gold mine. During the summer, the floor is busier than Tokyo Station at rush hour, with people lining up to buy a $4.50 token for a single scoop and a $6.50 token for a double. Which brings us to Misceo, who sits behind the cash register doling out said tokens and looking like a man who has just watched someone take a dump in one of his waffle cones. (And trust us—it’s not just our imagination; the Web is littered with reviews along the lines of “The owner is smiley only in photographs. He never smiles in real life” and “Vince was working the cash register in an almost zombie-like trance.”) Dude, would it kill you to put on a happy face once in a while? With the amount of money you’re charging, you should be wearing the biggest shit-eating grin this side of Jack Nicholson.