Courtyard Pints at the Squarerigger

A tiny Commercial Drive room built on Italian aperitivo culture, amaro walls, and booths sized for exactly two.

A shag-carpeted 1970s speakeasy hidden behind a fake accounting office, where the cocktails are far better than the decor suggests.

A Mount Pleasant urban winery fermenting natural BC wine in buried Georgian clay jars, with Saturday jazz and grocery-style cheese plates.

North Van's original nano-brewery, still pouring one of the best IPA lineups in the region out of a tasting room that has never once tried to be fancy.

Chinatown's apothecary bar where the cocktail menu is literally called Remedies and Cures.

Minimal-intervention BC wine, lamb tartare, and a Gastown alley that does half the romantic heavy lifting.

A 25-seat Strathcona wine bar with an all-vinyl hi-fi setup and a Michelin Plate, because Tuesday needed an occasion.

Vancouver's first natural-wine bar, a tiny bare-bulb Kitsilano room built for organic pours, premium sake, and losing track of time.

The old Old Crow room on Front Street, now pouring cocktails named after star signs until eleven.

Follow the single red light behind a Main Street furniture shop down a graffiti stairwell into Vancouver's most satisfying open secret.

Float weightless in body-temperature saltwater side by side in W 4th's most serene, screen-free double room.

All-butter pies and specialty coffee on a heritage strip in Moody Centre, where the afternoon has nowhere else to be.

Enter through a Gastown pet psychic storefront; emerge in a velvet, candlelit tarot-bar that's theatrical without being embarrassing.

Live piano four nights a week at the Wedgewood Hotel, where the lamplight is warm and the reservations are not a thing.