Vancouver: A Glutton's Paradise

As the days 'til my flight ticked down I found my mind returning again and again to one of my most enduring obsessions - FOOD! Anyone's who's tried to track down a recent roll or well sauteed noodle anywhere else in North America knows that as far as Asian food goes Vancouver is where it's at. This is my tribute to all that is awesome about pan-Asian nosh.

I have always wanted to try Kintaro Ramen down on Denman but the immense lines which snake out of it's front door always dissuaded me. Clearly the time for excuses was at an end. My friend A. and I made a lunch date for Monday and eagerly rushed down to the unassuming storefront only to find that it is closed only one day a week and that day happens to be Monday. We ogled the cook prepping the different kinds of miso paste and sighed with regret. But thank god Kintaro has a sister restaurant just a couple of shops down where I was treated to this bowl of steaming goodness. My usual complaint with Asian soups is that they tend to be extremely salty but this broth was light without loosing any complexity. The noodles were firm and chewy bearing absolutely no resemblance to that package crap we all ate in university.

Thanks to the generosity of the parental exchequer I was also able to squeeze in one last meal at Italian Kitchen one of many establishments riding the wave of nuevo-Italiano cuisine. The place was packed and unfortunately a table of rowdy drunk Americans, the men all sporting golf shirts and khakis, the women untouched up roots and litres of perfume, made it a bit hard to hold a conversation. Our server, a fatter version of a young Matthew Broderick bordered on what I would call "over enthusiastic." But nothing could take away from such a gorgeous plate as this. Organic heirloom tomatoes, with basil oil and the best buffalo mozzarella I've ever eaten. Unlike most fresh mozza this stuff hadn't been firmed up and shaped into a ball but was pillowy like a cumulous cloud and practically dissolved in my mouth. Certainly a moment when I was grateful for Vancouver's granola crunching organic crusaders.

With 48 hours on the Toronto countdown clock I was frantic to find and try another Vancouver original which has escaped my jaws for way too long - JAPADOG!!! I was running around downtown hitting the bank, Staples, you know, FUN STUFF and swung by Japadog's storefront location to finally satisfy my urge to find them closed. No matter I told myself, I'll just go by the cart at 5oo Burrard but lo and behold the cart was NOT THERE! I cursed my fate and did my best to reconcile a destiny without fake tube meat and Japanese mayonnaise. But as luck would have it on another frantic errand run earlier today I had a vision, there it was at Burrard and Pender, the ever-so-holy Japadog cart. It was like eating a sushi hot dog and it was everything I hoped it would be. I saw the light and it was beautiful.

As a true glutton I have my certain special things that I simply cannot do without. These take the form of shameful addictions to one particular place and one particular dish that drives my senses into an MSG-fueled frenzy. It's time for me to confess that I would cross mountain ranges, brave raging torrents of white water and the most infernal of Toronto winters to have once again the fresh Shanghai style noodles from Legendary Noodle on Denman. It's the kind of place you could walk by a thousand times and never look twice, never know that inside greatness is resident. If you eat in you get the free floor show of watching the non-English speaking cooks stretch and slap the dough into submission. I usually get take out because I love to drown my noodles in sriracha hot sauce (yet another shameful addiction). The noodles are shaved off a large ball of prepared dough straight into the boiling pot of water and the result is a noodle like nothing else. Ugly and misshapen, varying accordance with the hands that shaped them they are the proverbial ugly duckling of noodles but once they're in your mouth you realize that's a swan baby, without a doubt.

There you have it, a tiny glimpse into the culinary wonderland that is Vancouver. I've eaten sushi in Tokyo that didn't hold a candle to what we have here (though I admit Narita Airport probably wasn't the best place to try 'real' Japanese sushi). The point is we are friggin' lucky, we eat well, we eat healthy, we eat fresh, we eat local, we eat organic. Though it's hard to imagine when you live here I can tell you the rest of the world (especially North America) does not eat this way. We've got it good.