It's Food Week

When people ask me what I've been doing this summer, invariably the answer involves eating or cooking. Food has become something of an obsession. Perhaps you should stop reading this blog for the week as my hunger for food photography, recipes, and cuisine-related articles is at a fever pitch.

Anyhow, after last night's post about fish, Bon Appetit published their own guide to eating well in Vancouver. Describing our city of glass, food writer Alan Richman says,

In addition to a number of thoughtfully revitalized neighborhoods, [Vancouver] has an excess of slender glass high-rises that make it appear as though the city was invaded by aliens who constructed identical breeding towers.

But it's not the architecture that most interests Richman, but our complicated food politics. While the 100-mile diet is gospel for chefs like Robert Clark of C, it's comes off as gwai-lo propaganda in Richmond. Other chefs such as Robert Belcham and Dale MacKay buy what tastes best, whether it's local or not. But the pressure to conform to eco-friendly practices in Vancouver is so deftly conveyed as Richman writes,

A friend of mine who lives near Vancouver tells me, "We're a culturally diverse place, and people want food from where they're from." I am reassured, not because I want the opportunity to buy such products, but simply because I want to find out whether the merchants are comfortably able to sell them. (If you wish to walk around with such items, I suggest purchasing an Organic Acres Market cotton shopping bag: perfect camouflage.)

Thanks for the tip, Andy