Vancouver Good

Several months ago, a friend and I took a lovely food tour of Vancouver’s Chinatown with Edible British Columbia guide and chef Dora Ho.

Edible BC really started the whole food tour scene  that is blowing up now, with lots of new companies offering great food tours to locals & tourists today (the most notable newbie – Vancouver Food Tour).

I’ve done a Commercial Drive tour and the Chinatown tour with Edible BC and enjoyed both of them. If you’ve never been on a food tour, well it’s pretty fun. You talk about food, you eat lots of samples, then you talk about food some more, and eat a little more. Really, how can this not be fun?

Here are highlights from our Chinatown Tour:

• A good thing about booking a tour on a cold February day – it’s not too busy! It was just my friend and I that were signed up, so we had a nice, private tour
• We started our tour over dim sum at Jade Dynasty Restaurant (137 East Pender St), where Dora ordered up traditional dim sum fare while explaining its background in Chinese culture. Dora’s most recommended dim sum at Jade Dynasty are the deep-fried sesame balls filled with black sesame paste. Very yummy.
• After dim sum, we walked through Chinatown and around the free side of the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Chinese Garden (50 E. Pender St), while Dora gave us a historical overview of Vancouver’s Chinatown and pointed out key buildings and landmarks
• A tea tasting was next at Ten Ren Tea and Ginseng Company (550 Main Street), where we sampled different varieties of Chinese teas and Dora showed us proper tea brewing techniques
• After tea, we strolled through Chinatown’s plentiful produce stands, where Dora pointed out some exotic Asian ingredients,  and I picked up some Asian greens.
• More food was next at the Sun Fresh Bakery House, which specializes in fresh steamed pork buns, and the sweet cocktail buns filled with a sweet coconut and peanut filling. The pork bun was so good and juicy, the juice squirted out and ran down my entire jacket! A messy, but yummy affair. I also picked up a pack of freshly steamed red bean paste buns, my absolute favourite.
• After our snack, it was over to Guo Hua Enterprise, a store selling a crazy amount of Chinese herbal medicine and ingredients. My friend did a medicinal reading with a Chinese medicinal expert at the store and bought a week’s worth of prescribed herbal remedies. I have a brave friend as there were some totally strange ingredients in there! While we waited for my friend’s “prescription” to be made up, we munched on some Goji berries – a recent mainstream health food that’s been around forever in Chinese culture.
• Next was the Dollar Meat Store, where you can buy fresh meat from the butchers.  But more importantly, you can buy bbq pork, roasted duck, and Chinese sausages. So delicious! We bought a pound of BBQ pork and duck – believe it or not, we were headed to a dinner party after this tour.
• And finally, our last stop was at Ming Wo Cookware’s Chinatown location – the original and biggest store out of its five locations around Vancouver.
• The tour lasted the entire afternoon, starting at 1pm and ending around 5:30pm. An additional takeaway from the tour included a handout with details on the places we visited plus additional recommendations.

It was a great time – thanks to Dora and Edible BC for a fun afternoon!

Read more about Edible BC’s Tours here. The price is $65/person with the dim sum lunch, or $40 without the lunch. I’d definitely recommend having the lunch – it immerses you more into things.

Another tip – there’s a buy 1 get 1 free coupon in the Green Zebra Guide, which I used for this tour. The savings on this one item paid for the coupon book.

Edible BC also offers an excellent tour of Granville Island. Happy eating, on whatever tour you join!