Gastown’s “Judas Goat” Inching Toward Early 2010 Opening…

I took this video today of construction continuing apace at Judas Goat, the tiny tapas joint going in right beside Salt Tasting Room in Gastown’s soon-to-be-much spiffier Blood Alley. Look for it in January. Read more

Rob Feenie’s Great Big Comeback At The 2009 Gold Medal Plates

“Comeback” might be a bit of a loaded word, but it fits to an arguable degree. After Rob Feenie left his eponymous Feenie’s restaurant and flagship Lumiere two years ago and landed as the Food Concept Architect for the Cactus Club chain, it could have easily been assumed that he had bought a one way ticket to the wilderness of the restaurant world. But last night, at the prestigious Vancouver Gold Medal Plates cooking competition, he bested nine of BC’s greatest chefs and reminded this town of his incredibly refined talent by taking gold. And he totally deserved it. Read more

Food Media Omnibus #530: Local Cookbooks Rule A Weird Week

A strange week this was in the local food media. All the critics seem to have taken it off, myself included, preferring to write about cookbooks rather than reviewing restaurants. And as far as my google reader is concerned, Alexandra Gill is AWOL at the Globe and Mail. I couldn’t find her column to save my life (here’s last week’s on Nor Boo to tide you over)… Read more

Who Are All Of These Chefs And Why Are They In The Same Room?

The other night at the Dirty Apron cooking school, the Chefs’ Table Society hosted a launch party for their new cookbook, Vancouver Cooks 2. Several contributing chefs served up samples of their recipes from the book using the school’s many stations, while dozens of guests from the media and the restaurant world sipped on Mission Hill wines, R&B Sun God Wheat Ale, and bottles of Chambar’s signature brew… Read more

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Really Love The Internet…

Rob from VanMega reads my WE cover story on my 50 favourite things to eat in the city, and posts a challenge:

If someone lays this over a Google map, I’ll happily hit all 50 things by year’s end.

The next day, Richard Eriksson of Just a Gwai Lo provides a blow by blow with the finished product. Thanks Richard (and good luck Rob).

Food Media Omnibus #529: Top 50 Things To Scarf In Vancouver

In the Westender, I do a cover story recommending 50 of my favourite things to eat or drink in Vancouver.

In the Globe and Mail, Alexandra Gill and Chris Johns do a strange he said she said on the end of Gourmet. That’s two weeks in a row for Gill sans review. Seriously, that’s enough. Read more

I Really Hope My Emergency Kit Contains Huge Bullsh*t Flares

Earthquake depictions can be exceptionally scary when you live on a fault line (and we do – tick tock, my lovelies), but the one in this brand new five minute clip from the upcoming 2012 blockbuster (filmed here in Vancouver) is patently Over-The-Top. After watching it, I suspect the film, which premieres Nov. 13th, might be a bit too apocalyptic for its own good. Still, as with all legends, its premise contains an ounce of truth: the ancient Maya did devise an incredibly accurate, 5,126-year calendar system (they scoffed at “leap” years, preferring to keep in galactic sync), and it will run out of time on Dec. 21st, 2012. Does that mean the end is near? Naturally, there is a wackjob quotient of New Age freakazoids who believe the calendar’s abrupt (and inexplicable) wrap up must mean the literal end of time, as in the end of everything, but for people who aren’t as adorably gullible, this just means a retroactive F in math for the Mayans. While I’d love to join these crazies in their flying monkey butthole soothsaying, if only to get an inside glimpse of what it’s like to be an absolutely barking mad loon, I just don’t have the…er…reach. Do you? Read more

Sazerac Supper Marks New Turn For Heather’s Long Table Series

Michelle and I attended a very satisfying Long Table Series dinner at the Irish Heather last night. It was the first of the restaurant’s whisky themed LST suppers. Chef Lee Humphries plated an excellent baked ham on mash with bourbon soaked cherry compote to close out a solid tasting of four Buffalo Trace products: Rock Hill Farm Single Barrel, Hancock’s President’s Reserve Single Barrel Reserve, Buffalo Trace Eagle Rare 10YO Single Barrel, Buffalo Trace Bourbon Kentucky Straight. Read more

All-Star Line Up Of BC Chefs To Compete At Gold Medal Plates…

The province’s biggest cooking competition, the Vancouver Gold Medal Plates, will take place this October 23rd at the The Westin Bayshore Hotel. On that night 10 of the region’s most celebrated chefs will compete for the coveted opportunity to represent BC at November’s Canadian Culinary Championships (also in Vancouver).

See who they are after the leap… Read more

Coupland Clip Will Make You Buy Book Or Destroy Computer

Watch this promo clip of Canadian author Douglas Coupland by Crush, Inc, commissioned by Random House Canada. You’ll either buy his new book or break your computer.

Sealed in a sterile white room, author and artist Douglas Coupland is bombarded with a series of questions designed to gain some insight into his thought processes and his new novel, Generation A. Intermittently punctuated by advertising for a television news team and a mysterious drug, both of which feature in his novel, the film covers a wide and seemingly random range of topics, from Couplands working methods, to his favourite letter of the alphabet. The film tries to mirror the novels fragmented structure while offering an unguarded window into a celebrated thinker, artist, and cultural icon.

It certainly tries.

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