Patio Wine at Bar Olo

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.

Climb the Robson staircase into a golden room where a six-foot wood grill has been perfuming everything since noon.

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

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

Tsawwassen's quiet fine-dining secret: a husband and wife kitchen, dry-aged AAA beef, house pasta and a 4.6 built over a decade.

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

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

A Michelin-name Italian on Kingsway where spit-roasted meats, seasonal handmade pasta and wine do more romantic work than you ever had to.

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.

A tiny, beloved West Point Grey room near Alma serving slow-cooked northern Italian with a menu that changes nightly and often isn't printed at all.

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

Ladner Village's cozy 4.7-star Italian, crisp wood-fired pizzas and house pasta at prices that make it a weeknight regular.