The Goods from Burdock & Co

Vancouver, BC | At Vancouver’s Michelin-starred Burdock & Co, Andrea Carlson captures the fleeting beauty of an early-spring rainforest on the plate. Her new tasting menu, Gathering Resins Under a Budding Moon, turns rarely touched foraged finds and tactile treasures—crumbled pine resin, sticky cottonwood buds and golden beeswax—into woodsy glazes, coastal creams and earthy butterscotch. Layered with sharp-green spruce and citrusy fir tips, crispy lichen and tender morels, each course pushes the Pacific Northwest pantry past its familiar borders and into wild bloom. The seven-course menu ($175 a person) runs through early June.

“This menu was created for that lean, in-between period when the root cellar has run bare and the cultivated crops have yet to emerge,” says chef-proprietor Carlson. “It’s our most challenging menu inspiration to capture, as its components are fleeting and assertive. But the constraints help drive the creative process and offer great reward.”

Take cottonwood buds, for example, which burst into white fluffy seeds, dreamily floating through the air to herald spring’s arrival. Covered in a honey-like resin, the buds have a distinct sweet balsamic scent due to their high content of salicylates, compounds that have been used for centuries by Indigenous peoples as a natural pain reliever—but are not commonly associated with food.

Carlson extracts the bud resin into oil and infuses the stalks into cream—briefly, before the salicylic acid turns bitter. Their warm, waxy, almost vanilla-like fragrance is woven through a sweet potato flan baked with rich egg-yolk and mussel cream, then finished with a light briny mussel foam.

“These flavours are super specific,” Carlson explains. “They don’t work with everything. I went all over the place this year, experimenting with different ingredients. In the end, I came back to cream because it tempers and rounds out the cottonwood oil.”

Pine Resin—the menu’s signature dish—has been refined and reworked for deeper flavour and sharper clarity. Charcoal-grilled morel mushrooms are stuffed with koji-fermented burdock root and roasted pine nut butter, then finished with a warm, resinous pine glaze.

This year, Carlson changed the extraction of the pine resin, using sherry to bring more complexity. It appears again as the final bite, in the shape of crystalline kohakutou, a Japanese candy.

“I wasn’t sure when Andrea asked me for resin—she was definitely the first,” says Sunshine Coast forager Alexander McNaughton, who harvests the semi-solid crumbles that looks like candle wax dripping down the tree trunks.

“Working with Andrea pushes me to think differently,” he says. “She’s always looking for what else is possible—what else the forest might offer that we haven’t considered. It’s rare to find a chef who’s that curious, that open.”

A Nod for Culinary Trailblazing

Carlson’s singular culinary vision and deeply original dishes have earned her a nomination for Canadian Menu Trailblazer at the Good Food Innovation Awards.

Inspired by the late Anita Stewart and founded in partnership with the University of Guelph, the awards celebrate the people shaping Canada’s food future, recognizing culinary leadership rooted in Canadian ingredients, regional identity and the belief that food builds community.

The awards will be announced on May 1, 2026.

Gold for Burdock’s Micro Wine List

Burdock & Co’s small but mighty wine program has also been drawing fresh accolades. On March 13, it won gold for Best Micro Wine List at the 2026 Vancouver International Wine Festival’s Wine Program Excellence Awards (a category recognizing programs with fewer than 50 labels) and an honourable mention for Best Wine Service.

The recognition was followed by a Scout Magazine profile of Burdock & Co wine director Maisie Ryan. “Burdock & Co’s Wine Director on Storytelling and Cutting the Stiffness Out of Service” captured Ryan’s warm, unpretentious approach to service, which emphasizes trust, surprise and making sure everyone at the table is having a good time.

The momentum continued after Burdock’s Mark Haisma dinner on March 23, which drew glowing praise from Anthony Gismondi in the Vancouver Sun. Calling the evening “a match made in heaven,” he wrote that chef Andrea Carlson and the Burgundy-based Australian winemaker are “both exceptional artisans” and singled out the restaurant itself: “I’m not a food critic, but after thousands of meals in restaurants across the world, it’s clear Burdock & Co has that special something, including a charming, intimate atmosphere.”

Eat Uni, Save The Kelp Forests

To celebrate World Biodiversity Day on May 22, Andrea Carlson will join 11 Vancouver chefs for Eat the Invaders, a one-night tasting event and fundraiser featuring invasive and overabundant species as refined culinary creations. Burdock’s uni gelato with birch syrup, braised burdock, hazelnut macaron and pickled fir tip will be featured, bringing the resin menu’s wild Pacific Northwest sensibility to the fight for kelp forests: invasive sea urchin, having lost their natural predators (otters and sea stars) are turning vast stretches of ocean floor into desert; eating more uni can help support restoration. Tickets for the event, to be held at La Salle College, cost $129 to $169 and can be purchased HERE.

Bar Gobo x Café de Nadie

On Tues., April 21, Burdock’s sister restaurant Bar Gobo — the hi-fi wine bar at the end of the world—will host a pop-up with Mexico City’s Café de Nadie as part of North America’s 50 Best Bars week in Vancouver. Swing by from 4 to 7 p.m., for premium rum cocktails by Jimena Alva and Mapo Molano, sponsored by Ron Matusalem, along with snacks from the Bar Gobo kitchen and a soothing bath of golden sound spun by local selectors Tom Howard, Bobby Myseh and James Hearn.

Burdock & Co

Neighbourhood: Main Street

2702 Main St.

604-879-0077

WEBSITE