Best places to shop

Vancouver is truly a foodie's paradise. For instance, on Commercial Drive from Hastings down to 12th are on the order of 150 restaurants and depending on your tastes you could eat out at a different place every week and not hit the same kind of cuisine twice.

The "best restaurant" in town though is my own kitchen. This isn't meant as a boast that I could take on Rob Feenie on Iron Chef America or host my own cooking show on Food Network Canada; it is a statement of my confidence in my own culinary skills. I have the adventurous spirit to try new things, a core set of good kitchen tools, and a plethora of cookbooks to refer to for inspiration.

But every cook needs a source for supplies. I buy most things on or near Commercial Drive. There is a plethora of great little shops; Apollo Poultry for all things chicken; many fruit & vegetable markets; Italian delis by the handful; Italian coffee shops to go to after you’re done shopping (although my usual haunt is Café Calabria). Herewith, a small sampling of some of my favourite places to shop in Vancouver for my own little home "restaurant"...

• For cookbooks, there’s no better place to shop than Barbara Jo’s down in Yaletown. If you can’t get inspired to cook here, you shouldn’t set foot in a kitchen. Ever.

• There are two places I like to shop for cheese. The first is La Grotta del Formaggio on Commercial Drive. Italian style sandwiches, cheese from around the world (including many Italian cheeses as one might expect), deli meats including imported prosciutto, and they’re also the source of the fresh cake yeast I use in my baking. The second is Les Amis du Fromage. They’re a short distance from Granville Island, and you can almost just follow your nose there. They are pricier than La Grotta, but unbeatable for selection.

• Granville Island is renowned for its food market, but I like to shop at the local farmer’s market. The food there is local, often organic, and usually less expensive than the aforementioned Granville Island. You can also get things that are unavailable anywhere else in town.

• Speaking of Granville Island, one of my favourite places there is Oyama Sausage. They make all their own products, including terrines (the Strasbourg is my favourite), duck and goose confit, and throughout the year make seasonal specialties. In the fall, their order-ahead cassoulet for 2 is unbeatable and only around $12. Don’t forget to stop by La Baguette & L’Échallotte to get some bread to go with your terrine.

• Also on Granville Island is my favourite kitchen store in Vancouver, the Market Kitchen. It’s a small cozy shop with a wide selection of items including obscure things like truffle slicers; their proximity to the Pacific Culinary Arts School near the entrance to Granville Island certainly helps. The service and selection here are great!

• If you like sausages, ham, bacon, and other pork items, the place to go is the J N & Z Deli on Commerical Drive between 1^st and 2^nd (a few doors north of La Grotta). They have an open smoker and do all their own cured meats in house. Their smoked side bacon is divine. On Fridays and Saturdays only they have fresh pork, veal, and sausages available. On Saturday mornings, if you’re early enough, you can get their homemade fresh and hot from the oven meatloaf or roast suckling pig.

• Still on the Drive, Fratelli’s Italian bakery makes wonderful (and small!) pastries; their St. Honoré cake is a gourmand delight too. I find most places make unnecessarily huge pastries. I’ve often gone for a coffee and thought, “hmm, a cookie would be nice.” Unfortunately, what’s usually on offer is a cookie about the size of a dinner plate and not very good either. Here you can buy a dozen cookies to share with a few friends and have three different good ones instead of one monstrous yucky one.

• Famous Foods at the corner of Kingsway & Perry (between Knight and Victoria) is a great place to find all those obscure items that nobody else carries. Need almond bitter extract? They have it. Need bulk whole rye grain? They have it. Don’t want the mainstream brand of something? They have it. An entire row of various nut butters you can’t find anywhere else? They also carry buffalo meat in their butcher section.

• I usually buy my meat wholesale from farmers of my acquaintance, but Hills Foods in Burnaby is a wholesaler of all kinds of exotic meats and game. You need to spend at least $100 and you have to pick it up on site.

• The Gourmet Warehouse is a great place to find exotic or specialty ingredients. However, if you’re willing to spend the time exploring the Italian shops along Commercial Drive you’ll find most of what’s sold here and for less. Nevertheless, these guys have great product selection and great service. Another good place to look, although arrogantly pricy, is Meindhart’s Fine Foods on Granville and 14^th.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but this is where I would send anyone who moved to Vancouver recently to shop.