Dine Out Vancouver (DOV), Canada’s biggest annual celebration of food and drink, is set to dominate Vancouver’s food scene from Friday, January 16th to Sunday, February 1st.

The highly anticipated festival from Tourism Vancouver attracts more than 100,000 locals and visitors to a unique range of special events and affordable prix-fixe menus ($18, $28, or $38), and this year there are a record number of restaurants – 277 – participating. For the complete list with menus and booking details, click here.

Several hotels are on board offering special rates during DOV. A few have even arranged for exclusive packages pairing high-end accommodations with once-in-a-lifetime culinary experiences. You can find the complete list of participating hotels here, together with package information and booking details.

For events, Vancouver’s top chefs, restaurateurs and food experts have put together a whopping 35 of them. Among these are a spirit-pairing pop-up dinner from Bittered Sling Bistro’s Lauren Mote and Jonathan Chovancek, who will be working alongside The Keefer Bar’s Danielle Tatarin and Cibo chef Faizal Kassam; a craft beer-pairing supper from Belgard Kitchen and Postmark Brewing; and a vegetarian feast that will see the kitchen crew from the UK’s celebrated Terre à Terre eatery teaming up with executive chef Felix Zhou of The Parker in Chinatown/Strathcona.

Returning favourites include the signature kickoff, The Grand Tasting, the Chef Soup Experiment, and the food cart frenzy known as Street Food City.

We’re particularly keen on checking out the Craft Distillery Tour, the Southern Feast at Mamie Taylor’s, the Best of Hawksworth Side Dishes event, Café Medina’s Robbie Burns Whisky Supper, and the Film Feast at Market in the Shangri-La that pairs dinner with a screening of the ultimate foodie film, Big Night.

Prices for event tickets range from free to $125. For select events at the higher end, there is Club Amuse-Bouche (CAB), which allows diners interested in special experiences to purchase premium tickets for VIP perks. These range from cocktail receptions to chef meet-and-greets. There are also special CAB hotel packages to be had, like “Forage and Feast” at The Listel Hotel (two nights’ accommodation, a private preserving workshop and 10-course tasting menu at Forage, rainforest walk and edible food tour with Chef Chris Whittaker and more) and “Sushi and Sip” at the Fairmont Pacific Rim (two nights’ accommodation, sushi rollin’ and cocktail shakin’ class with Sushi Chef Taka Omi and head bartender Grant Sceney, multi-course omakase dinner at The RawBar and more).

To keep track of (and share) what’s going on during DOV, tap into their social media via Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (#dovf). The 2015 Dine Out For a Year contest invites diners to submit pictures or videos of their festival stories through their own accounts (tag “@dineoutvanfest” and hashtag #MyDineOutStory). One winner will be chosen every day of the festival by a panel of judges and given a gift certificate to a participating DOV restaurant. A Grand Prize winner will be selected at the end of the festival to take home gift certificates to 52 different restaurants.

DINE OUT OFFICIAL WEBSITE