This year Vancouver International Wine Festival (VIWF) came back after a whole year of absence in 2021. Despite the fact that international traveling was still very limited, VIWF 2023 hosted 101 wineries from 41 countries around the world. The festival also presented 27 events such as wine tasting, wine-pairing dinners, and fun wine mixers. I was fortunate to be invited back as a media guest and report the delicious finds in the 3 events I attended: The Icons of South America hosted by Arboleda Winery & Alouette Bistro, International FestivalTasting, and Spring Fling Brunch. I always ..read more

This is a first for me – paring classic French cuisine with exclusively Chilean wines! Already a fan of chef Albert Tran of Alouette Bisro, I was looking forward to his vision inspired by some of the priciest wines of Chile from Arboleda Winery. It turns out to be such an evening to remember, sitting at this fabulous table at the Icons of South America, one of the highly anticipated dinner events at the 2022 Vancouver International Wine Festival. Overall the pairings are spot-on! Here are the highlights: The freshness of combining sweet prawns, fennel, and grapefruit is such a classic. Parin ..read more

I was invited to the media preview of the Neverland Cocktail Experience, a pop-up bar with theatrical performances, created by the same team behind The Alice Cocktail Experience and The Wizard’s Den. Based on ‘Peter Pan’, which I have seen in many versions growing up, the themed event is also held at Vancouver Alpen Club on Victoria Drive, where The Alice event is held at the same time. There are famous sets such as Wendy’s Bedroom, Blue Lagoon, and Captain Hook’s Pirate Ship with beautiful glowing details as if they are covered by Tinkerbell’s pixie dust. We sure took a ton of photos and vide ..read more

Areta (@foodgressing) and I were excited when the heavy stone bowl of boiling soup came to our table, waiting for us to dip in the noodles. The aroma of was incredible and my mouth was watering. We were about to experience this iconic noodle dish at MeetRice Noodles, one of China’s most famous Yunnan “Crossing The Bridge” rice noodle soup restaurant chains with over 600 locations around the world. In merely one year, MeetRice Noodles has opened 3 shops in Greater Vancouver. Besides the Kingsway location in Burnaby where we visited, the Richmond location is on the famous “foodie” block of Alexa ..read more

Heritage Asian Eatery has just released a mouth-watering dim sum menu at its West Broadway location. I was one of the few lucky ones to have the first taste of the new dishes. Since its debut in the financial district,  Heritage is one of my favourite lunch spots in Downtown Vancouver. Their 2nd location was opened in Mount Pleasant 3 years later,  offering dinner service and  a much bigger menu of baos, bowls, Chinese BBQ and many more Asian comfort dishes. The new dim sum service is looked after by an experienced dim sum chef who had worked at big names such as Sun Sui Wah, ac ..read more

“Yakiniku” means grilled meat in Japanese. But after an incredible tasting experience, I have concluded that Kanae Yakiniku, recently opened in June, is much more than what the restaurant name implies. Yes, the new Japanese restaurant in Richmond does highlight a wide selection of Wagyu steaks cooked on the grill － from American Wagyu Striploin to ribeye to Japanese A5 Wagyu ribeye from Miyazaki, all handled by a designated grill master, which are incredible treats for Waygu and BBQ lovers. But the full raw bar is just as impressive, featuring fresh, highly sought seafood imported from Ja ..read more

The fair at PNE is still on this yea.  With the health measures and social distancing in place, the experience of the fair will be received with the comfort of your vehicle, a drive-through experience that includes the President’s Choice® SuperDogs Tail-Gate Party, farm animals like pigs, cows and goats, and a reverse parade where you’re IN THE SHOW.   Then head to one of the fondest highlights of the fair – a drive-through for from mini doughnut, foot-long hotdog, and many more of the classic food concessions, The fair at PNE 2020 Drive-Thru @ The fair at PNE 2020 Agricult ..read more

This year, there are 3 cafes over 11 locations offering their awesome creations for the Iced Summer Drink Challenge by Vancouver Foodster Iced Summer Drink Challenge. After you have tried these drinks at the participating establishments, you can then VOTE for your favourites.  You can vote once per day throughout the promotion. The voting ends on September 6, 2020. I was fortunate to be selected as one of the media judges and couldn’t wait to seek out the qualities to make the drink become my most favourite: originality, creativity, uniqueness, price, value, and most important ..read more

Although located in the heart of Downtown Penticton, we can’t simply describe TIME Winery & Kitchen as an “urban winery”. It is so much more! A Legacy in the Okanagan Wine Country Built within a historic and revitalized movie theatre space, the full-on winery is also the home to the 3 labels: TIME Winery, Evolve Cellars, and the MacWatters. An elegant wine tasting bar and a restaurant are also on the premises, where you could taste and discover delicious wine for any occasion, as well as some of the best gourmet burgers in the Okanagan. TIME Winery TIME Winery Many would recognize the McWa ..read more

The Okanagan Valley is one of the biggest Summer attractions in British Columbia. As I have not been able to take any oversea vacation this year due to COVIC-19 and probably won’t be able to do so in a while, I decided to have the foodie adventure in our very own beautiful wine country. And this time I travelled with my new drinking buddy RC, who you might have seen in my recent cocktail crawl posts. He’s more of a whisky person but curious about wine tasting. It’d be interesting to see how he would like the wine country. I would also make sure to visit some distilleries Planning a food & ..read more