Last Friday I went on a food tour via
Vancouver Food Tour. They offer different types of tours: Craft Cocktail Tour Series, Gastown Beer 'n' Bites Tour and the very cool sounding Salt Spring Island Food Tour. They even do a custom self-guided tour if you have your own budget to work with and want something more intimate! I went on the popular Gastown Tasting Tour with some co-workers on the company that I work for.
We met up our guide, Carlos, inside the Waterfront Station building. Very convenient since the first spot was at
Rogue Kitchen and Wet Bar.
This stop consisted of beer and food pairings. The beers were: R&B Sun God Wheat Ale, Driftwood Fat Tug IPA, Driftwood Farm Hand Ale and Central City IPA. The food pairings were: lobster mac and cheese, chilli, Vietnamese tacos (which was the filling of a banh mi inside the bun of a cha siu bao) and I believe the pulled pork sandwich.
Favourite beer was the Sun God Wheat Ale which was a lighter tasting beer that was very smooth. I also liked the Driftwood Farm Hand Ale while the other beers were just too bold and bitter for me. But I'm not a huge beer person to begin with. Favourite food was the lobster mac and cheese which was very creamy and had nice chunks of lobster. I wish I had the full size! Chilli was my second favourite. It had good kick of heat and spice and was very hearty. The pulled pork sandwich was dry and so was the meat inside the Vietnamese taco. My favourite from the taco was actually the pickled vegetables inside. I'll definitely be back for the lobster mac and cheese.
Second stop was
Salt Tasting Room located inside Gastown's Blood Alley. This stop consisted of charcuterie, cheese and wine tasting. Normally, guests would make their own tasting plate based on the meat, cheese and condiments written on a giant chalkboard inside the restaurant. For our stop, everything had already been chosen for us. They actually had two different types of platters, one on the other side of the table. Unfortunately, my camera was hijacked so I didn't take photos of the other side (nor do I remember what the other platter consisted of).
These were the pairings on my side of the table:
All of the pairings were amazing! You really could not go wrong and I found that all the food pairings went well with all of the wines. I can't pick a food that I liked best but for the wine I loved the Pentage Gamay Noir.
This was my favourite stop. Although I've heard of Salt before, I never really had that itch to go so it was great that I had the opportunity to visit and a wonderful surprise that I loved it so much.
Our final stop was
Judas Goat Taberna, located right next to Salt Tasting Room. Judas Goat does Spanish inspired tapas. We got red peppers stuffed with ricotta, fried polenta, puff pastries filled with manchego cheese that went with pickled green bean and membrillo, bacon and egg bites, sweet potato empanadas and chocolate mousse with cherries. The bacon and egg bites and the puff pastries were my favourite. Everything was very good though! Being tapas style, the serving sizes are very small and I felt less filling than what you'd get at an izakaya. It was a good experience and great staff but for the amount of food you get, I'd say be prepared to spend some money if you're going to eat until you're stuffed!
After the tour, our group went off to
Guilt and Co. for drinks and board games.
The food tour was a great experience and as a local, it exposed me to new experiences and facts about Gastown and Vancouver that I was not aware of. I would definitely recommend this tour and the company who were so great with arranging everything from timing to allergies (thank you Melody!).
