Wine Bar at Is That French

Enter through a Gastown pet psychic storefront; emerge in a velvet, candlelit tarot-bar that's theatrical without being embarrassing.

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

A 25-seat Strathcona wine bar with an all-vinyl hi-fi setup and a Michelin Plate, because Tuesday needed an occasion.

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

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.

Live piano four nights a week at the Wedgewood Hotel, where the lamplight is warm and the reservations are not a thing.

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

Dim light, a sake flight, and small plates you have to negotiate over, which is how a low-key izakaya date runs three hours.

A shag-carpeted 1970s speakeasy hidden behind a fake accounting office, where the cocktails are far better than the decor suggests.

A Mount Pleasant urban winery fermenting natural BC wine in buried Georgian clay jars, with Saturday jazz and grocery-style cheese plates.

Follow the single red light behind a Main Street furniture shop down a graffiti stairwell into Vancouver's most satisfying open secret.

Off the Moda Hotel lobby on Seymour: low-lit, Italian small plates, marble bar, and a daily 2-to-5 happy hour worth knowing about.

Dundarave's small Italian bar with the raised, flower-hedged patio, where one glass has a well-documented habit of turning into three hours.