Local Culinary Experiences: Delicious and Interactive Ways to Experience Vancouver

Vancouver’s culinary landscape is distinctive due to its multicultural diversity, as well as its local ingredients that showcase the city’s proximity to nature.

In addition to visiting Vancouver’s many outstanding restaurants, you can sign up for experiences that immerse you in the places and communities that make its food vibrant.

Foraging Classes

Wild ingredients are close at hand in Vancouver, with classes that will guide you in sourcing them ethically and sustainably.

Swallow Tail Culinary Adventures specializes in foraging education, with a variety of field trips that will introduce you to wild ingredients. For example, they are holding “Spring and Summer Foraging Classes” (two hours long, appropriate for ages 5+), during which you will enjoy a forest walk and learn how to identify local foods, such as edible shoots. Your guide will bring samples for you to taste, and you’ll also get a pdf of edible wild BC plants. Other tours on offer include a “Morel Hunting Field Trip” and “Seaweed Harvesting 101.”

Another company offering wild food experiences is A Taste of Nature, which guides you through forest trails and along Second Beach in Stanley Park (daily 11:30am to 1:30pm). You’ll stop for delectable tastings incorporating local wild ingredients, including wild mushrooms with sea asparagus on Yukon sourdough, and a seafood platter with items like crab, prawns, and shellfish.

Other tours will teach you about wild food and medicinal ingredients (note: no tastings). Talaysay Tours, operated by Candace and Talaysay Campo (members of the Sechelt and Squamish Nations), run a variety of tours, including a “Talking Trees” tour that educates you about how Coast Salish and Squamish peoples draw upon the land for food and medicine.

Meanwhile, Takaya Tours, run by the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, offers cultural tours involving canoes, during which guides will share a wealth of knowledge, such as traditional practices for identifying and harvesting wild ingredients.

Culinary Classes

With numerous local culinary schools geared toward both aspiring professional chefs and home cooks, there are many different classes to choose from. The schools are also located in key neighbourhoods in the city so you can do some exploring before the classes.

Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts is found at the entrance to Granville Island, renowned for their bustling Public Market. The school features professional programs, in addition to cooking and wine classes. Currently on offer is “Flour + Water: A Pasta Master Class” (March 29, 10am to 2pm; April 19, 10am to 2pm) instructing you how to make pasta, like fettuccine and tortellini. They also run cooking camps for kids (ages 10-16), taking place this July and August. Kids will cover units like “A Cook’s Tour of Asia” and “Sweet Tooth Baking Day.”

The Dirty Apron Cooking School is a lovely boutique cooking school in Crosstown. Classes focus on cooking with West Coast ingredients, such as “Ocean Fling – The Ultimate Seafood Class,” which features dishes like pan-roasted halibut cheeks. Classes showcase multicultural flavours, such as in “My Thai – Take on Thai Cuisine” and “Cin Cin! Celebrating Italian Cuisine.” Each class ends with a shared meal at a communal dining table with a glass of wine.

Located in Mount Pleasant, Northwest Culinary Academy is popular for their 7 Week Fantasy Camps, as well as their multiday/night enthusiast bootcamps. They also offer many one-off classes, such as “Cambodian Night with Top Chef Canada Winner Chanthy Yen” (who calls Vancouver home), and ones devoted to sushi, ramen, and Korean fried chicken.

Dumplings and More

The Vancouver restaurant scene encompasses a rich variety of Asian cuisines. If you’ve like to try your hand making dumplings, there are fun classes for doing so. Or, you can book a tour for a guided dumpling experience

Dicky’s Dumps, which specializes in frozen artisanal dumplings available all around town (e.g., TV Dinner Market & Café in Kits), collaborates with a variety of restaurants and holds periodic events and classes. For example, the duo who operates Dicky’s—Pearl Lam and Dickson Li—are holding a “Cantonese Classics” class April 9 (6-9pm) at Gourmet Warehouse in East Van. The class will teach you how to make hand shredded chicken, and Taiwanese cabbage and pork dumplings. The evening will end with mango pudding.

Judy Lam Maxwell provides Historical Chinatown Tours, such as “Chinatown Walk, Historic Talk, and Dim Sum” and “Dumpling Hop and Cocktails, as well as “Masterclass Dumplings” (3 hours), during which you’ll get a tour of Chinatown, and engage in dumpling-making (and eating, of course).

Robert Sung Tours is well known for his long-running “A Wok Around Chinatown,” which takes you all around the neighbourhood, particularly visiting specialty food shops. The tour ends with a dim sum lunch. Sung also offers a “Wok Around Granville Island” with plenty of food tastings.

Other Gourmet Tours

Vancouver has some exemplary tour companies that specialize in guiding you through the best of food and drink in the city. Vancouver Foodie Tours offers three different tours, the first is a “Granville Island Market Tour” (10:30am-12:30pm), which will involve walking through the food market, trying bites and drinks from some of its top vendors, such as Benton Brothers Fine Cheese. Or, you can take part in their “Gastronomic Gastown Tour” or “Downtown Asian Eats Tour.”

Taste Vancouver Food Tours has a tour through Gastown, as well as one through North Vancouver. The Gastown one (2-5pm or 3-6pm) is a walking tour with seven stops, and includes 6 food tasters (e.g., French onion soup) and 4 alcoholic tastings.

Or, if you are an enthusiast of craft beer, sign up for one of the tours offered by Vancouver Brewery Tours. They have three: “Vancouver Brewery Tour,” “North Vancouver Brewery Tour,” and “Beer and Food Brewery Tour.” The latter is a four-hour tour involving visits to breweries where you’ll sample craft beer, and fuel up with a meal at Big Rock Urban Brewery and Eatery.

So, make sure to book a Vancouver food experience for a memorable and interactive way to get to know the city’s food cultures and communities.