Some questions for Vancouver locals....

[travelbuds]

17 minutes ago, martincath said:

All of the above meet both criteria, with some cheapish/casual restos and some swankier ones very close by. There's no such thing as an UNsafe area in the core really - our dangers remain extremely focused on theft from vehicles and homes rather than any kind of violence toward or robbery of persons.....

All have their relative advantages!

Thank you for all of your comments. Glad that we picked out a few that should be fine. I noticed that the EXchange is only a 6 minutes walk to the pier. Each of us will only have 2 pieces of luggage and small backpack so that may be her choice. I was looking more at the BH. Now will let my wife take a final look before decision is made. Thanks again!

[travelbuds]

6 hours ago, travelbuds said:

Thank you for all of your comments.....Each of us will only have 2 pieces of luggage and small backpack....... I was looking more at the BH. Now will let my wife take a final look before decision is made. Thanks again!

I think my wife has settled on the Blue Horizon. I read that it takes about 17 minutes to walk to Canada Place from the BH. With luggage on wheels, would that be an easy walk? Downhill? Sidewalks?  You are loaded with information! Thank you again. 

[martincath]

1 hour ago, travelbuds said:

I think my wife has settled on the Blue Horizon. I read that it takes about 17 minutes to walk to Canada Place from the BH. With luggage on wheels, would that be an easy walk? Downhill? Sidewalks?  You are loaded with information! Thank you again. 

Very slightly downhill on average, sidewalks or even a pedestrian only block at times depending on streets chosen, very little difference in distance so if e.g. there is some building work blocking a chunk of sidewalk you can basically zigzag down any of Bute, Thurlow, Burrard, or Hornby from Robson (even Howe would only add a hundred yards or so overshoot).

 

Google Maps has pretty much all the paths accurate around here - and free city WiFi network #VanWiFi enables live mapping even with phone data, but if in doubt if you can see mountains at the end of the street, you're heading towards the pier from your hotel ('Vancouver North', actually about NE in this part of downtown!) Light bags and ample time? Head all the way down to the Seawall on Bute through Harbour Green Park - bumps the distance up to a full mile, brings in a few stairs.

 

From BH a cab would beat you walking, but only by a few minutes given the usual bottleneck for access to the pier itself.

[travelbuds]

12 hours ago, martincath said:

.......Google Maps has pretty much all the paths accurate around here -....... Light bags and ample time? Head all the way down to the Seawall on Bute through Harbour Green Park - bumps the distance up to a full mile, brings in a few stairs....

Again, thank you for your time with these questions. Very much appreciated! Once we get to Waterfront Road in front of the cruise terminal, I assume (maybe I shouldn't) that it is well marked for pedestrian entry and to the luggage drop-off. We should have ample time. Light bags not too sure----each with medium size suitcase with rollers, 1 carry-on with rollers and a backpack.

 

Now will look into Canada Line from YVR to Blue Horizon. Have never used it. What is the closest drop off to BH? Thanks again. You have been a big help.

 

[martincath]

16 minutes ago, travelbuds said:

Again, thank you for your time with these questions. Very much appreciated! Once we get to Waterfront Road in front of the cruise terminal, I assume (maybe I shouldn't) that it is well marked for pedestrian entry and to the luggage drop-off. We should have ample time. Light bags not too sure----each with medium size suitcase with rollers, 1 carry-on with rollers and a backpack.

 

Now will look into Canada Line from YVR to Blue Horizon. Have never used it. What is the closest drop off to BH? Thanks again. You have been a big help.

 

If you're on Waterfront Road, things have gone terribly wrong... this is a below-street-level access way for trucks etc. to get at the lowest level of the pier. I've had a poke around on foot, walking back from the Heliport, just to see if there is a convenient pedestrian way to get into Canada Place, and it really isn't to be recommended! Unfortunately Google did send their streetmap car along - there's another sublevel 'street' a bit further west for access to parking levels under some of the big towers too - so sometimes if you are clicking forward to 'walk' a route it leaps down to the sublevel!

 

Stick to the Seawall or Canada Place though and the pedestrian ramp isn't hard to find - right where the cars enter. but with a curbed sidewalk and a nice solid looking railing to keep the people and vehicles separated until you get down to the actual taxi/bus drop/pickup spots.

 

Once you enter a door, follow signage - do be sure to drop your bags with labels on at the right place! Print at home, bring them with you, attach in the hotel - a few folks reported that the queue for getting bag tags was the worse one they encountered!

 

BH's downside is it's not very close to SkyTrain. You need to walk basically the same distance as to the pier (get on the back of the train, when you get off at Waterfront look for signs that say to Granville St, the elevator there brings you up at the corner of Hastings - which is uphill from the station building itself, so you avoid the one block with a bit of a hill if you exit there instead of inside the main building!)

 

With the AddFare inbound, I would honestly recommend just taking a cab even with just two people unless you really want to stretch your legs - $34+tip door to door compared to ~$19 plus almost 20mins walking isn't enough of a saving to be worthwhile if it has been a long day of travel, although if you manage to get a nice non-stop flight from PHX and you're traveling anywhere around rush-hour then Skytrain+walk may be just as quick!

[Gryff]

Very excited to be travelling in under 3 weeks to Vancouver for a 3 day stay before a 14 day Alaska cruise.  We are staying at the Sheraton Wall Centre any recommendations for restaurants in area?

[martincath]

5 hours ago, Gryff said:

...  We are staying at the Sheraton Wall Centre any recommendations for restaurants in area?

What's your poison @Gryff? A couple of 'loadsa restos' streets are very close by, Davie and Granville, with a plethora of ethnic flavours available generally weighted toward the value end of the spectrum rather than super-swanky. Depending where you live and what you have available, you may want to hit familiar flavours or try something new...?

 

In the middle part of Davie near where you are, I tend to gravitate to Taki's Taverna (do yourself a favour and avoid Stepho's unless you like long queues and sub-par food - portion size, poor students, and people who have no idea what Greek food is meant to taste like keep Stepho's in business!), Banana Leaf (Malaysian, a local chain, good intro to the genre), and Gurkha (Himalayan - some of the closest local food to British curry, better at the 'meat in spicy gravy' game than any of the downtown Indian restos); Transylvanian Traditions bakery I still miss visiting regularly (diabetes and sweet, sweet cakes do not mix well!) and in my younger, boozier days Fritz' Euro Fry House would be a tempting post-pub stop for poutine (although visiting earlier in the day makes for a quieter crowd!)

 

On the swanky front, both Le Crocodile and Bacchus are ideal spots for a quiet, romantic dinner - some of the very few Vancouver restos that have heavy fabric in the dining rooms compared to our 'exposed walls and bare tables' aesthetic that is almost universal. Notch 8 in the Fairmont Vancouver is also close and swank, not quite as cutting edge as sister resto Botanist in the Pacific Rim but still you may get the odd dish served in a fishbowl full of smoke!

 

Don't mind more of a buzzy atmosphere and want to eat real well, Boulevard kitchen under Sutton Place hotel is superb; Hawksworth just the other side of the art gallery on Georgia; a few blocks straight down Helmcken brings you into Yaletown right past Blue Water Cafe, probably the best fish kitchen in the city.

 

And all of our 'slightly upmarket dining chains' have a branch within an easy walk - Joeys, Earls, Cactus Club (the best of the bunch IMO, and no price bump in their 'view' restos on the Seawall both sides of the downtown core, although it's much easier to get a reso in the 'no view' Yaletown or Bentall branches!)

 

In short - you'd need to be here for a month eating all your meals out to try everything within even a six block walk! So if I haven't randomly stumbled onto some restos that sound ideal, supply a bit more info on your preferred/detested cuisines and what sort of cash you're willing to part with to be fed and I'll happily curate a more targeted list for you!

Edited June 23, 2023 by martincath

[Alushar]

Wow @martincath what a lovely reply thank you so much.

 

Our poison hmm? We are pretty well travelled so happy with most world cuisine. Budget wise we are happy to pay for quality though rate quality over art! 
 

We like a good brunch and a late relaxed dinner.

 

Not personally a lover veg other than the mighty potato:) (our Irish roots) so meat and fish win. 
 

My wife has some mobility issue so accessibility is important.

 

Thank you again

 

Alun & Sharon

[martincath]

8 hours ago, Alushar said:

...My wife has some mobility issue so accessibility is important.

I was typing away with a follow-up and then realised you were not who my last post was directed toward! With mobility issues, before I add anything else I should definitely check the location of your hotel folks and also how restrictive I need to be with distance, stairs etc.? If you're not budgeting tightly then a cab to and from takes care of getting to the resto (at a modest % of the meal price for anywhere swank downtown) but many of our older buildings involve a few steps inside, have their loo in the lobby of the building which involves a couple of doors and a corridor, that sort of thing...

 

And I think I know what you mean by 'quality over art' but just to be sure - pricey ingredients fine, but froo-froo add-ons that are purely for presentation no? What about the in-between 'somewhat odd things done to the food, so still edible but looks different' like soils and foams?

[Alushar]

@martincath thanks re mobility steps etc is fine as is taxis. 
 

yes re food over art we just like good food whether basic or elevated as long as the foods good 🙂 so happy with a good burger or a swish steak tonight with the UK weather so hot we are having Greek! 

[martincath]

3 hours ago, Alushar said:

...happy with a good burger or a swish steak tonight with the UK weather so hot we are having Greek! 

Since you're good with cabbing as needed, I'll throw out a few more scattered locations, and since you obviously enjoy Greek food, I'll do an unusually deep dive - before moving to Canada we visited Greece at least once a year, I learned enough of the lingo to apparently pass as Athenian (provided I stuck to food-related topics), and even gave tours of Greektown in Toronto to tourists - there is nowhere near the sheer breadth of Greekness on the left coast, but we do have several Greek options around town.

 

From a UK perspective they vary from 'gouge-y tourist resto on the beach with gritty bread you have to pay for' to 'regular resto like local Greeks might visit' to "Mama; Papa; I'm sorry, and I know Yiayia's moussaka is the best... but I want to cook things differently, not the same every time! I'm opening my own place, with... cocktails that are not just smutty puns to entertain football-strip wearing tourists!!! <cue shocked faces of parents>" The Greek (by Anatoli) would be the downtown version(s) of the last of these BTW - there are two other branches now, but I prefer to patronize the original Yaletown one... their rabbit dishes were soooo good, I just wish more people than me would ask them to bring it back! Nobody wants to eat fluffy bunnies these days, we have more rabbit rescue organizations than restos with it on the menu regularly which is utterly irrational!!!

 

There's also a very Canadian genre of Greek, equivalent to Chinese-Canadian restos which combine a whole mess of 'what the local folks want to eat' into a single very broad menu - and 'Greek Pizza' is totally a Vancouver thing. Martini's was probably the ultimate exemplar of this Ethnic-meets-Other-Ethnic-meets-Steakhouse concept, more famous for their pizzas and lasagne than their Greek food, a multi-generational family run joint for over 50 years with a customer demographic that was all over the map - but they closed just before Christmas 😞 Minervas, which just happens to be the best place to spot Ryan Reynolds and family when he's in town (unless you know where his mum lives), is similar age and menu to what Martinis had - to my independent palate almost as good, but when you grow up with it as your family's spot of choice for all big celebrations, it's understandable the Reynolds' prefer it!

 

The best combo of authentic, tasty, big portion size, and value Greek tends to be well outside Vancouver - Coquitlam and further east have some really good places, but factoring in travel time and cost none of them are enough better for me than hitting up Nammo's if I want 'straight Greek' rather than more modern. Another spot in town that I have yet to try, but gets consistently good reviews and might be handy for your hotel would be Hydra in the EXchange hotel - it leans a bit modern/Mediterranean rather than traditional Greek, but it's on our 'must get round to dining here' list.

 

Steaks - compared to the UK, steakhouses over here are in general a revelation. Cows are so much cheaper that lengthy aging of beef is the norm, even dry-aged for a month is readily found which has a lot of wastage. The only real caveat I have is around the cuts - everyone I know from Blighty who thinks North American steaks are bad made the same mistake, they were Sirloin eaters who ordered a Sirloin here... and thanks to different butchering traditions, a Sirloin here is actually a Rump Steak in the UK!!! Depending on your preferred cut, you may or may not have an issue - Wikipedia has pretty useful comparative American/Canadian and UK cut diagrams if you have a strong preference. If in doubt, rib-eye baby! Where to eat them? You can push the boat out, eat Prime beef in fancy surroundings with very old-school waitrons at Hy's; go somewhere more modern, much brighter dining room, a few genuinely different products at Elisa; but unless you are already a quite extravagant steak eater The Keg is significantly cheaper but still manages great consistency between branches and 'just right, or we make good' customer service - they usually only have one Prime cut available, but the next step down is still a nicely marbled, tender steak, but they're most famous for their roasted Prime Rib which generally sells out every night. Honestly, it's so easy to cook a steak at home that I don't frequent the steakhouses often, but we get demands to hit The Keg from every repeat visitor - it's a really nice combo of good service, decent pricing, and we've had free wine or comped steaks even when they fix a mistake (like Medium Rare coming out Rare) right away.

 

Burgers - sooooo many opinions! Even the fastfood chains vary quite a lot from each other (I genuinely enjoy A&W in comparison to McDs/BK myself), we have several 'sort of premium' burger joints and chains like Fatburger and Five Guys in town, and of course just about every restaurant has their own iteration. Not because they're super good, but because they're very Vancouvery, if you are out and about and fancy a quick burger lunch White Spot is worth visiting - Triple Os is their 'burger only' smaller footprint resto, with the full service ones covering a very broad, something for everyone, menu. As a Brit, skip the curry and the Sticky Toffee Pudding - the former is far too mild and the latter almost entirely date-free - but there's nothing actually bad at the Spot!

 

Brunch also got mentioned by you - our brekkie scene has definitely improved over the years, several genuinely great swanky spots now, a lot of top-notch waffles (incl Liege style with the pearlized sugar crust) and we can even do you two Irish brunches on the weekends, with black pud and everything! Johnny Fox's plates up black and white pud, proper bacon (not just streaky or 'Canadian' but the overlapping cut with a bit of both like it defaults to all over the UK), soda bread etc. or will bung the meaty bits into a decent slab of baguette for the best breakfast sammich in the city IMO; the Irish Heather swapped out soda bread for a (very nice) home made wholewheat a while back, but still brings the pud and the bacon with the best selection of whisk(e)y in Vancouver available to wash it down with. So if you get a bit homesick, you have options that aren't just full of touristy crap like bikes on the walls and making all the servers wear tiny kilts (looking at you, Mahoney's!!!)

 

Generally meaty-fishy but not so much veggie other than taters - do you already eat Spanish food? Tapas seems made for your requirements - lots of small things, don't order veg if you don't want to, deep-fried tater croquettes with cheese & ham & whatnot, mmmmm. Certainly not quite the Spanish cultural level of spending hours nibbling until the wee small hours, but we have a couple of seriously-authentic places that source a lot of conservas from Spain. Down in the West End is Espana, run by a Brit who really upped the local sausage game at a couple of Italian joints as well as his own poub for a while; outside the core but not far, in the 'brewery zone' of Mount Pleasant, is probably the best tapas in the city, Como - these guys actually let you stand at the bar and get super-cheap happy hour nibbles, with draft vermut! For various ridiculous reasons, drinking while standing at a bar in Vancouver was historically illegal... and the food is absolutely delicious.

 

Speaking of the brewery zone - any chance you're fans of real ale? There's some pretty decent grub in some of the full-service brewpubs, like R&B (great thin crust pizzas), or the remaining original 80s establishments Yaletown brewing and Steamworks both conveniently downtown - all of these do a decent burger, my fave is oddly enough the veggie burger at Yaletown (but mostly the new breweries opened using a limited license which prevents them cooking. Some have gone down a charcuterie path as it's legal to cut and serve cold meats and cheeses, others just get food trucks to park right outside and let you bring the food in, some do a bit of both! Beer tastes vary wildly, so if you've got a particular palate, lemme know what you like to drink and I'll try to point you at the most likely local spot.

 

Let's see - I stuck to walkable from the Wall for the first list, so it's missing a lot of Vancouver staples. We obviously have access to a ton of seafood here - every pub and their granny will do you chips with cod, halibut, salmon as the commonest fish. I do think that it's a bit of a waste to batter the last two, but if you've never had it give it a go - it's pretty hard to screw up frying things so whatever pubby place is most convenient works for F&C.

 

Sushi is super common and popular - downtown, I personally am not a huge fan of Miku but most people are (they do Aburi sushi, flame-seared, and while I am fine with barely-cooked fish as well as raw the texture combo just does not quite work for me - but everyone I know who likes the style agrees they do it well), if I wanted just sushi I would go to Kaide - it's been a round a long time, always has brown rice, great value, and isn't at all touristy - unless it was going to be A Big Deal Experience... if you really want to have a spectacular meal, try going Omakase at Tojo's - it's an institution, and the man himself is NOT young so don't put it off to a future trip!!!

 

Japanese other than sushi we also have a fair whack of - many of our casual noodle places are Ramen joints, and if all you want for lunch is a big bowl of noodles there are many options! But I really like the Izakaya concept, a sort of Japanese Tapas Pub, and I think we have more here than any city outside Japan - two local chains, Guu and Hapa, have multiple branches but Kingyo is generally held as the standard of excellence, all in the downtown core. This way you can do sushi, noodles, tempura, donburi, yakitori, etc. etc. all in the one place!

 

Chinese - including lots of regional ones! abound. Downtown, on the casual end hit up Dinesty for dumplings; maybe ChongQing for Szechuan (the original branch on Commercial Drive is more consistent - but it's a safe bet to try Ginger Beef here, a unique-to-Canada thing); and while outside the core since they closed some branches during the pandemic, Peaceful is justifiably famous - northern cuisine is far more obscure than Cantonese, especially their Xinjiang dishes will be very different, and they are one of very few affordable places that hand pull their own noodles! Fancy - you can do a nice dim sum extravaganza at Kirin downtown, but if you're good to cross False Creek to Broadway then Dynasty is even better. Want to dine in a Michelin Starred Chinese? QuanJuDe is a recentish arrival here, but its heritage goes back to the mid1800s -  a fancy meal with all the ways to eat duck you can imagine awaits!

 

And if you've got a limited time in town and want to sample a wide variety of Vietnamese & Cambodian food - Phnom Penh has been doing their thing for decades, with a queue every single night for tables long before the Michelin guide threw a Big Gourmand at them. It's even busier now! Plastic tablecloths, shared tables with strangers, service that runs rather brusque if you don't already know what you want but hot dang, they do what they do very well indeed! Two people can manage to hit the highlights in one dinner - wings, beef luc lac (add the fried egg, trust me!) and butter beef (carpaccio basically, in a GimmeSomeMoreOfThat sauce!!!) - you won't have room for veggies, so no worries! 😉

 

We do have quite a lot of Vietnamese around, people and food, but downtown the best bets are the snacky lunches - a really nice Bahn Mi is a delicious lunch. The anglicized name of Viet Sub might out you off - but they're old, so using a name locals can recognize made sense at the time! Really good proportions of fillings, nice light & crispy baguettes, no skimping on the pate for the non-veggie butties. If you're in Chinatown, the original Ba Le is my go-to; a tiny mom & pop shop, homemade everything, and you do need to ask (and pay extra) for the pate, but it's cheap as chips. Reviews really don't do it justice, because usually they're either taken aback by the incredibly simple space (2 rickety tables) or think that these guys are franchised from the more well-known on on Kingsway (nope - other way around!) so a lot of annoyed 1-star Yelpers... I like to take a butty and go eat it in the park next to Sun Yat-Sen garden - the free city side has a nice pagoda and shares the same pond as the pay-to-get-in super-authentic garden next door who do not let you bring your own lunch inside (but is still totes worth visiting...)

 

While we do have lots of Indian food, if you're used to British curry you will be disappointed across the board - the core concept of pre-Partition northern food with the dairy and meat ramped up just doesn't happen here, so I would strenuously avoid any generic 'Indian' and especially buffet restos... but if you want actually-Indian authentic stuff you can eat pretty well! Most of the really good stuff is out in Surrey, which can be a bit ropey unless you know exactly which neighbourhoods to avoid - but there are some really good options along Kingsway (frequent bus service, easy to get a cab, but maybe ~$20 ride back depending where your hotel is) like House of Dosas!  In a sort of similar evolution to British curry, just in a different direction, Jambo Grill looks tacky as all get out but it's actually really nice - Indian food by way of Africa, with various familiar things and a bunch of perhaps new to you. Almost outside the city here though, virtually in Burnaby, same bus fare but a cab probably $25 each way...

 

If, like me, it's hard to go a week without some kind of 'spicy saucy meaty thing with flat bread' dish - we have some Ethiopian restos that are really nice, but outside the core. Axum is my usual spot, not too far east from the core, and for the missus and I who love walking heading out to some of the breweries nearby, then Axum for dinner, with dessert picked up on the way back home at la Casa Gelato makes for a really nice evening. Cabs will stop (meter on!) and wait while you go inside, but note that they have an insane amount of flavours so if you can't pick fast better to just pay the cab and call another one! NB: cash (they do take USD if you have some leftover from AK) only, unless you have a Canadian bank account with Interac debit... There's also a cluster of three Ethiopian restos quite close to each other, about the same distance from the core as House of Dosas or Axum: Fassil, Gojo, and Harambe if you wanted to compare and contrast Injera between them!

 

Dinner With A View is popular with tourists - you can rotate while you dine, for much increased cost of a ground level resto but perfectly decent grub, on top of the Harbour Centre. Many places ring the Seawall, with views across Burrard Inlet or False Creek, or pointing westward in English Bay for some glorious sunsets - Cactus Club cover two of these views pretty well, but Tap & Barrel do so for cheaper (with decent pub grub, some unique booze collaborations with local wine & beer makers). The Coal Harbour outlets of both look northish, English Bay the CC has the best views of the couple of restos right at the edge, and False Creek it's T&B with their unique two storey covered patio that rack up winter 'outdoor' dining options - Granville Island's Bridges is now also a T&B pub. A bit swankier, Lift is right out on a pier, water on all sides; but for me the sweet-spot of actually getting views of the mountains AND the city itself then Seasons in the Park is the only game in town - good food, albeit not cheap and not cutting edge, good service, an unbeatable view adds up to a good combo! SkyTrain gets you close, buses even closer, but all need a hill climbed so I'd cab it... although if you sneakily SkyTrain to King Edward station and then call a cab or Uber you'll save money, especially dining early that might overlap into evening rush hour!

 

From the resto, walking across the park viewing points at the top is minimal distance; the big glass dome of Bloedel is also very near - but the other paths down into the Quarry Gardens might be too much, I would play that by ear and see how your wife's doing after touring around. If she's up for a bit of walking on some steep paths though, QEP is like a mini-Butchart, but totally free!

[Alushar]

@martincath amazing thank you so much! and yes I have your spicy sauce thingy which frequently struggle with when travelling almost every time we return to UK it's Curry first night!

 

A lot to digest 🙂 We are going to sit down and pick out a few favourites (or at least try to) and aim for these. 

 

Luckily we are back in October, if only for a day before cruising so we can tick another one off!

 

Thank you so much again!

[martincath]

10 hours ago, Alushar said:

... when travelling almost every time we return to UK it's Curry first night!...

My first stop after getting off the plane in Blighty is almost always at the best-reviewed curryhouse in that city I can get to for dinner. It's truly hard to explain to folks from elsewhere that 'Curry' to a Brit and 'Indian food' are not actually synonymous... absolutely nothing wrong with the real cuisine of any of the subcontinental countries of course, but attempts to make a British dish like tikka masala over here always make my tastebuds sad as they're never quite right. In many ways they're undoubtedly better, but it's the different that trips my emotional childhood food memories!

[gottagoacruzn]

Hi guys, was wonderin how far granville island is from the Westin Hotel, any ideas?  Thanks.

 

Virginia

[d9704011]

13 minutes ago, gottagoacruzn said:

Hi guys, was wonderin how far granville island is from the Westin Hotel, any ideas?  Thanks.

 

Virginia

The Westin Bayshore in downtown Vancouver?  It's a couple of miles.

[gottagoacruzn]

Yes, the Westin Bayshore.

[d9704011]

10 hours ago, gottagoacruzn said:

Yes, the Westin Bayshore.

Other than taxi, there are few 'easy' ways to get from your hotel to Granville Island.  Check out this site for transportation options.

 

https://granvilleisland.com/directions-and-parking

[Milhouse]

From the Bayshore to Granville Island, it's a pretty easy trip by car.  Google maps puts it just over 15mins. 

It's a pretty long walk though which I wouldn't recommend unless you really enjoy walking.  You'd also have to either walk across a bridge (each have their own challenges), take a water ferry, or take the very long way around.  

You can also combine/take the bus which also addresses the bridge situation.  There are a number of different combinations that will get you across the bridge but ending with the #50 bus has a nice route that saves a couple of blocks.