Drinks After Sunset at Palms Beach House

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.

Arguably Steveston's best patio, with a rotating tap list and a flight-friendly board for finding out whose beer takes are a dealbreaker.

Dundarave's small Italian bar with the raised, flower-hedged patio, where one glass has a well-documented habit of turning into three hours.

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.

A 1930s Shanghai parlour hidden behind a Chinatown dumpling shop's fridge door, accessed by code, reserved in advance.

Off the Moda Hotel lobby on Seymour: low-lit, Italian small plates, marble bar, and a daily 2-to-5 happy hour worth knowing about.

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

A gloriously retro sunken circular bar a block off English Bay, where happy hour, low light, and the best free sunset in the city do all the work.

A proper old English pub hidden in a courtyard behind Marine Drive, one block up from Ambleside Beach, with the cheapest pints in West Vancouver and no pretension at all.

Dim light, a sake flight, and small plates you have to negotiate over, which is how a low-key izakaya date runs three hours.

A beach-village cafe a block from the sand where the smoked-salmon bagel has a cult following and the patio is dog-friendly.

The Fort Langley cafe-bookshop where a fig-and-brie grilled cheese and a well-timed chapter have rescued worse dates than yours.