Modern Vietnamese at Ong Ba Eatery

The plant-filled Main Street room that makes a first date feel like it's going well before a word is spoken.

The Vietnamese street food that made Anthony Bourdain misty on television now has a permanent home on The Drive.

A Vietnamese kitchen with a French cooking style in the Beach District, where the pho broth gets the bone-marrow treatment.

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

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.

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

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

Downtown's chocolaterie-patisserie on Alberni: thick drinking chocolate, a macaron case that looks like jewellery, and cheap enough to be completely spontaneous.

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

Butter chicken poutine, paneer tacos and spiced cocktails in Surrey's slickest Indian lounge, open until 3am.

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

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

Sumu grand opened in August in the old Sala Thai space, 130 seats of blackened steel and hand blown glass flowers, with binchotan yakitori mostly under $4 a skewer.