French Bistro at Les Faux Bourgeois

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

A fun, fabulous French bistro on Hornby that Tripadvisor ranks in Vancouver's top ten, open from morning croissants to last-call cocktails.

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.

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

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

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.

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

New West's Ethiopian-Eritrean spot where dinner is a shared platter you eat by hand and ends with a traditional coffee ceremony.

The only dinner where eating with your hands from the same plate is not just allowed, it's the whole point.

Off-Fraser corner café, 4.7-rated, with jerk chicken that falls off the bone and oxtail rich enough to end an argument.

Lantern-lit West End izakaya where the sake list rewards bravery and stone-grilled beef keeps arriving until you've forgotten your plans.

Six or eight tables, Ethiopian art, and a tradition called gursha where you hand-feed each other, which is romantic on purpose.

Vikram Vij's legendary modern Indian room, where the wine-marinated lamb popsicles have been redefining romance since the '90s.

Ethiopian stews by hand, a live Friday band, and the kind of injera-sharing that requires getting very comfortable very quickly.