Duck Confit and Cocktails at Alouette Bistro

French technique and Gastown cobblestones, with an atrium, award-winning cocktails, and a bar that doesn't rush you out.

The Fraser St bistro that locals call FauxBo, guard jealously, and can't stop recommending despite the notoriously tough reservation.

The Marinaside seawall's grande dame: French-leaning West Coast seafood and a wine list a hundred deep by the glass, with False Creek lapping past the patio rail.

A tiny family-run French kitchen hiding on a Lower Lynn side street, rewriting its whole menu every week.

Gastown's newest bistro serves one dish, an eight ounce striploin with green sauce and frites for $44, and refuses to apologize for the short menu.

Coal Harbour, Stanley Park and the North Shore mountains through floor-to-ceiling glass, with a Canadian Culinary Champion kitchen to match.

Duck confit and beef bourguignon at a 55 acre Langley vineyard, poured with the wine that grew outside the window.

Iron Chef champion Alex Chen's glamorous Burrard Street seafood room, Michelin-recommended and seriously polished.

Chef David Hawksworth's marble-and-velvet Rosewood room, for the night you want them to think you eat like this every Thursday.

A restored downtown heritage atrium where soaring marble makes charred octopus feel like a civic event.

Chef Hector Laguna's plant-draped Coal Harbour room, where the world-ranked cocktails alone justify the good shirt.

A dim, jazz-soaked 1960s Tokyo cafe in Chinatown, where tajarin with uni is just how dinner starts.

Fort Langley's artisan bakeshop on the site of a 1910 blacksmith's, open at 7am for breakfast, oversized laminated pastry and Republica coffee.

Flame-kissed aburi sushi by Burrard Inlet, where the salmon oshi arrives, gets photographed, and makes the table go silent.