Thai Dinner at Maenam

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

Michelin-starred Mount Pleasant room with zero attitude, precise West Coast cooking, and a wine list that will respectfully wreck your schedule.

Michelin-listed Main Street kitchen where Peru meets Tokyo and Canton: alpaca tartare, arroz con pato, and a pisco bar that hums until close.

A tiny Railtown chalkboard room doing nose-to-tail, seed-to-fork cooking that changes with whatever's actually good right now.

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.

Seventeen seats, one sitting, Edo-style nigiri piece by piece, and your phone face-down all night. Michelin-recommended and books out fast.

Vancouver Foodie Tours runs a two hour progressive meal through the market: cheese, charcuterie, candied salmon, chocolate truffles and a honey-dip donut finish.

South Surrey's tiny, fiercely good open-kitchen bistro: Chef Veen's French technique, BC farm sourcing, and a 4.7 that politely destroys every chain nearby.

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

Where Pondicherry's centuries-old French-Indian love affair lands in Hastings-Sunrise, with a coconut tequila chaser.

Vancouver's first Michelin Young Chef Award winner cooks seasonal BC plates in a warm wood room beside the Pacific Spirit forest.

The Langley sleeper with a 4.8 rating and seats so few that booking one is basically a love letter.

A decades-long West Broadway fixture serving Kashmiri and Mughlai recipes nobody else in the city is cooking.

A low-lit East Hastings room where Pacific Northwest cooking gets a Japanese edit and the natural wine list has its own devoted regulars.