Vancouver – the city, the island and nearby food-producing areas – has long been one of the world’s best kept food secrets. A blend of Asian influences with classical European techniques inspired the Chicago Tribune to declare as long ago as 2004 that "Vancouver’s culinary reputation ranks among gastronomic giants such as New York, London and Tokyo”. It has not dimmed.

A flick through Vancouver Cooks, a cookbook that showcases Pacific Northwest cuisine with recipes by its leading chefs, certainly looks good on paper.

Delicious recipes include: Heirloom tomatoes tossed with asparagus and Saltspring Island goat’s cheese; wild salmon steamed with Okanagan peaches and mint leaves; Ponzo-marinated sablefish drizzled with maple and ginger, and hazelnut spice cake served with late-harvest Riesling compote.

All the ingredients are Canadian and seasonal, the harvest of British Columbia’s vast interior which comprises mountains, forest, lakes, farmland and a spectacular fjord-jagged coastline.

“Back in the 1980s we wouldn’t serve local ingredients. We’d import Dover sole, Icelandic scampi and oysters. Now British Columbia’s cuisine is so distinctive,” says Mark Jorundson, a contributor to Vancouver Cooks and the Rocky Mountaineer train’s executive chef.

“The rediscovery of what’s in our backyard has forged a local food culture as diverse as any in the world,” he adds.

Vancouver is a good starting place to get a flavour of what Jorundson means. The city is famously the birthplace of Greenpeace and Vancouverites have a national reputation as wholefood-chumping, pioneering folk whose culinary antennae are tuned into the latest food trends. Like their American West-Coast cousins in Seattle and San Francisco, they relish fresh, local food that’s seasonal, organic and ethically produced where possible. This is good news if (a) you want to eat well and (b) you want to really “taste” the place you’re visiting.

According to Vancouver Cooks the city’s inhabitants eat out and drink more wine than those of any other Canadian city. From dim sum and bustling markets in Chinatown to microbreweries and the public market on Granville Island and from lounge bars in the trendy warehouse district of Yaletown to wild strawberries in Stanley Park, food and drink is central to the Vancouver experience.

The influence of significant Italian, Greek (can we expect Manhattan’s “New Greek Cuisine” to travel west soon?) and Japanese communities feeds into Vancouver’s culinary melting pot. There are more than 600 sushi outlets in town; “These street-corner outlets are very popular for a healthy fast-food lunch. Only the very worst use farmed fish,” says a Cate Simpson, a local food specialist.

Vancouver’s Chinatown is the third largest in North America, with more than one third of the city’s 1.9 million population hailing from Asia. The Chinese enclave east of Downtown and Gastown buzzes with sticky-bun bakers, bloody butchers displaying live eels and flattened ducks, and tea shops.

Granville Island, south of Downtown, is home to North America’s only artisan sake maker. In her arty split-level studio the barefooted Masa Shiroki brews Osake which she claims is the first “fresh premium” Junmai sake of its kind produced in Canada.

“Unlike premium sakes imported from Japan which are typically produced once a year in winter, Osake is made in small batches several times a year in cycles roughly corresponding to the changing seasons. This allows us to produce versatile wines that complement the seasonal bounty of our local west coast cuisine – from fish and shellfish in spring and summer to heart-warming braises and stews in fall and winter.”

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