This outstanding feature article in the Walrus (March issue) by my sometimes editor Gary Stephen Ross over at Vancouver magazine was recommended to me by a colleague recently. I’ve only read it just now, and it will likely reverberate throughout the day. Of note to me were words on restaurant reviewing, which – among a great many other things about Vancouver – he hit with a resounding bang on the head:

Restaurant criticism here, as in many a burgeoning city, sometimes resembles professional cheerleading (in which, as editor-in-chief of Vancouver magazine, I can fairly be accused of participating) or, on the web, endless amateur nitpicking. So many people spend so much time deconstructing and photographing and blogging about what they put in their mouths that you’d think they were preparing for an exam. Dining has as much to do with fashion as food, of course, each place outdoing the last in lavishness (the plushly expensive Coast) or thrift (the minimum-security Campagnolo), the daily ebb and flow recorded and amplified for distribution by a small army of “experts” — bloggers, reviewers, oenophiles, free-ride artists, all of them one click away from the next BC wine tasting, small plates sampler, or media preview.

But that’s a mere molecule in the whole of how he nails the city zeitgeist. Typically, essays on Vancouver are self-satisfied bouts of personal anecdote-riddled navel-gazing a la Douglas Coupland. This one’s a must read, as fine a treatment of our town as I’ve ever read.