Best reason why we need more Starbucks in the Lower Mainland

Because we only have about 183. Now, 184. Sorry, it's 185 now. 186. 187, do we hear 187?

Best all-weather dining experience

Go Fish Ocean Emporium
False Creek Fishermen's Wharf
1505 West 1st Avenue
604-730-5040

Go Fish. Gord Martin's little fish shack has been packing 'em in since they propped open the take-out window last September. There's little shelter from the elements-hunker down in your car if it's raining-but that hasn't stopped the near-constant year-round lineups for very good fish and chips, fish tacos, and oyster po' boys.

Best restaurant sign

Lolita's South of the Border Cantina
1326 Davie Street
604-696-9996

Keeping to her "down there beach bar/cantina" theme, owner Lila Grace Gaylie painted the restaurant's name on a huge surfboard and hung it over the front entrance. Cowabunga!

Best place for a fill-up of mindfulness

Dharma Kitchen
3667 West Broadway
604-738-3899

One more to add to the growing list of quality vegetarian restaurants, Dharma Kitchen earnestly bills itself as serving "the food of mindfulness". What we like is the serene, uncluttered atmosphere, the perfectly done veggie burgers, salads, and rice bowls, but especially the red curry tofu.

Best Site for predinner reading

Vancouver Coastal Health Authority
www.vch.ca/environmental/food/index.htm

The Vancouver Coastal Health Authority's Web site is the mother lode for getting the dirt on local restaurants that have been shut down for various health infractions. The reports date back to 2001 and there are few repeat offenders. Infractions are mostly modest and short-lived as operators clean up their acts and reopen within a day or two. Look for the prominent, busy restaurant that was "operating without an approved kitchen; attempting to operate out of food preparation vehicles". Our curiosity was piqued by a bird infestation at a catering company in 2003: it doesn't say if these were intended for the soup pot, and the reopening date is still listed as pending. There are few reports of cockroach infestations. Considering that public health inspectors do more than 16,000 inspections of food facilities a year ("5500 food service establishments and 3000 food stores and processors"), the number of closures is reassuringly small.

Best "You're Pulling My Egg" marketing award

Canada Safeway's Lucerne Premier Eggs boast that they are "selected from young hens in the first month of lay" and sold at a premium price. According to the Canada Egg Marketing Agency, these particular eggs are from 25- to 35-week old hens. (Hens usually start laying at 19 weeks and produce until they are 72 weeks, at which point they are turned into main courses.) Eggs from these young hens-the Premier Eggs-are well-shaped, uniform, and clean, but nutritionally no different than less-expensive eggs. "It's simply a marketing technique and they usually can ask for a few cents more a dozen," the CEMA goes on to state. "All eggs are of equal quality."

Best urban oasis on a damp fall day

Somewhere Good Gourmet Pizza
1205 Pacific Boulevard
604-899-4554

This small café is a bright light in a sea of concrete and brick on busy Pacific Boulevard. A bouquet of flower petal-pretty umbrellas in sunny shades of red, green, blue, and yellow tops a half-dozen red-and-blue spindle tables. Step inside and you'll be met with smiles, spicy smells of sizzling donair (chicken and beef), and there are pizzas, paninis, pastas, Persian rice bowls, and Persian teas on the menu too. Somewhere Good indeed.

Best buns in the business

Falconetti's Sausage Company
1812 Commercial Drive
604-251-7287

Eddy Dolmat and Carmine Falcone are the smooth operators behind Falconetti's, a tiny 16-seater on the Drive. Serving mostly homemade sausages and requisite fries, Dolmat raged against the straitjacket standard bun and decided that a curved bun that perfectly snugs a cooked-to-order sausage was the only way to go. He had a local baker make them and bake them to his specifications. Falconetti's sausages are grinning.

Best local fast food chain

Steamrollers
Various locations
www.steamrollers.com

The five outlets of this locally created franchise sprang from a pair of shops in the West End and Yaletown. You might walk by and assume it's only another ordinary wrap joint, but you won't find the usual turkey-with-swiss-and-romaine here. Instead, the cuisine (and as quick-service food goes, this is cuisine) might be termed more West Coast macrobiotic (rice, beans, optional tofu, trans fat-free, and everything cooked with steam) meets Mexican-via-Seattle (flavourful but not too spicy unless you opt for the hi-test sauce), with real chicken breast or slow-simmered beef brisket for carnivores (and, for breakfast, scrambled eggs with salsa). The kitchens are on full display to patrons, and if you look around the walls back there, you'll spot a few dozen tubs of individual spices (they mix their own flavours here): mole sauce, garlic yogurt, pesto, and curry. They're not married to the wrapped-up thing, either: they have bowls too.

Most original pasta

Raviolino Gourmet Pasta & Foods
2822 West 4th Avenue
604-736-0772

It's a bit off the usual shopping circuit-by all rights, this place should be the toast of Granville Island or Hastings-Sunrise-but it's more than worth the trip (you probably needed to drop by neighbouring Drexoll Games to pick up some 20-sided dice anyway). Fine, fresh pasta-regular, organic, reduced carb-all made right in the store. Superb prepared dishes that taste great, even from frozen. Innovative culinary crossbreeding (Italian-slash-Peruvian), thanks to the union of owners Giuseppe and Marie Frasca. A varied deli selection, bulk and catering services, a room full of spotless machines designed to compel pasta into marvellous shapes or entice it to bond with exotic South American flavours (in addition to the more traditional Italian ones): this is the kind of alchemistic combination that makes Vancouver an interesting modern city. How is it that the best lasagna and chocolate-chip cookies in town are made in the same shop, way the hell over at 4th and Macdonald?

Best place to spend a fistful of rupees

Ashiana Tandoori Restaurant & Sweets Shop
6591 Fraser Street
604-327-7020

Goya Restaurant & Sweets
6669 Fraser Street
604-326-1111

Hardwar Sweet Shop & Restaurant
6673 Fraser Street
604-325-9444

Where does a dollar feel like many rupees? At any of the sweet shops at Fraser and 50th. Although all three of these shops drip with gulab jamon and barfi, it's the flaky samosas gleaming under the heat lamps that are the real deal. Hand over a loonie and get four-count em, four-plump vegetarian samosas from Hardwar. Another 50 cents gives you sauce to dip them in. Goya and Tandoori both give away three samosas for a buck, including the sauce. With prices like this, you might as well be in India.

Best treat that also saves lives

Chai
3239 West Broadway
778-837-1862

You can cross the globe by climbing a single flight of stairs when you visit Chai, the new upstairs offspring of West Side fave restaurant East Is East. East Is East, down the road from the Hollywood Theatre in Kits, has settled into the neighbourhood with amazing ease, winning over passersby with a near-constant offer of chai samples through the takeout window. Everything sampled here so far (and that's a lot) has been outstanding, from the savoury Middle Eastern wraps to the exotic shakes. Recently opened above, though, is the espresso version of East Is East, appropriately named Chai. More concentrated in its decor and its menu, Chai offers the adventurous diner an immersive experience. Not a single centimetre of the large, open second floor has been left unpainted, undraped, uncarpeted, or unspackled, and the effect is wonderful: an Aladdin's cave of cushions and candles. Go for an all-in-one thali, splurge for one of the signature chais, brewed from a variety of teas and spices, and settle in for a night of sensual relaxation. There's a heated enclosed patio off the north end that's a pleasure in its own; bookings (for five or more) are recommended.

The saving-lives part? Every Wednesday evening from 7:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m., Chai hosts a fundraiser for Children of War (www.thechildrenofwar.org/), an NGO dedicated to helping orphaned children of war in Afghanistan. The fundraiser "showcases local instrumentalists, musical acts and traditional dancers", with appetizers, chais, and organic wine on offer as well. Tickets are by donation, and all proceeds go to Children of War.

Most International Food

Commercial Drive

The greasy Chilean place has closed, but the Cafe Kathmandu eatery is now open for business on Commercial Drive. By our rough count, at least 25 countries are represented by restaurants on the Drive, 26 if you consider the patrons of WaaZuBee to be members of a separate and distinct nation. Should you add coffee from Sumatra, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, Brazil, Guatemala, Uganda, and Brazil and consider Cobs Bread's Australian origins, the Drive represents 35 countries-and counting.

Best New Restaurant Stage

Rime
1130 Commercial Drive
604-215-1130

From the finest local jazz (Morgan Childs, Hard Rubber Orchestra) to international treats (David Lindley, Sonny Fortune, Eliana Cuevas), this Commercial Drive restaurant has raised the bar for music on a street where music really matters. Before-or during-the events, gustatory and visual entertainment is provided by the menu of "Turkish tapas". There's excellent value in the $10 plate of appetizers; don't miss the soothing yet lively eggplant purée or the hummus, thick and loaded with cumin. Main dishes are luxurious. The kitchen is currently experimenting with prawns in a densely concentrated tomato and cheese confit.

Most Missed Bird Man

Jerry, where have you gone? When the Nazares Mexican barbecue joint at 2nd Avenue and Commercial shut down last fall, the Drive not only lost the best cooked whole chickens in the city, it lost a shop that made the city fall in love with the Drive in the first place. From the sombrero that descended from the ceiling onto the head of the customer at the till when the front door opened to the Mexican paper chickens on an old turntable to the story that Jerry was once a Tijuana gynecologist to the spin-the-wheel win-a-kiss contest to the "chickens are sleeping" closed sign, Nazares was a true original, and its absence is magnified by the loss across the street last year of the original Falcone Brothers butcher. When the rents go up, characters go down. But Jerry, we never even got a chance to say goodbye over a bowl of pozole.

Best Menu Muddling

Rival Chinese eateries on Main Street fought to a draw this year. On the one hand, "Human Beef" and "Human Chicken" from, we suspect, the Hunan province. On the other, we have "Deep Fried Bum". Still, nothing in recent years has surpassed the late, lamented Chow's giggle-inducing "Pork with Snow White".

Best Place for Spam

Ohana Hawaiian #1 BBQ
920 Kingsway

Spam sushi is hard to find. Now you don't have to buy a plane ticket to Oahu. This brand-new cheap Kings ­way eatery offers katsu, Mongolian barbecue, burgers, chili dogs, and Spam musubi. Spam quick-fried, sushi rice, and nori, together in Vancouver, perhaps for the first time. How have we survived so long without it?

Best Place to Line up For Breakfast

Café Zen
1631 Yew Street
604-731-4018

Turn down Arbutus toward the water. Pass all the chumps standing in the long line at Sophie's Cosmic Café. Sure, Sophie's is great, but it's for tourists and fresh transplants from Ontario. You're beyond that now. You are a West Coaster. You have stopped using an umbrella. You're one of us now. Stop lining up for breakfast like one of them. Head on down the street to Café Zen. Sure, there's a bit of a lineup there too, but it won't take long. Besides, the owner will entertain you during your wait better than any standup comedian ever could. And even though those inside are savouring the best eggs Benedict in town, they aren't gonna smugly sip yet another cup of coffee while you wait in line, famished. We West Coasters don't roll like that.

Best Place to Eat Like a High roller

Cru
1459 West Broadway
604-677-4111

Lumií¨re this. Bishop's that. Enough already. Don't let the Food Network dictate where you eat. Has television ever given you any good advice? No. So exercise some common sense instead and head on down to Cru. The food is the same as the fancy places, as is the service. The décor is, well, even better. And you know what? After you stuff your face you don't have to place a call to your accountant in order to shift some funds out of Krugerrands to cover the bill. Don't believe the hype. Great food isn't just for the rich or for the bridge-and-tunnel crowd celebrating an anniversary. Nowadays, anyone can play.

Best kitchen sink, open-faced

Terra Breads
2380 West 4th Avenue
604-736-1838

Granville Island Public Market
604-685-2102

What do you call these savoury-topped breads. Focaccias? Focacciae? Whatever, they remain addictive and there are various versions, not all of them available every day. The must-have is the one with roasted red-potato slices, red onions, organic mixed greens, capers and dill, white Cheddar, and rock salt. Have you read a better bit of poetry today? Get the ones that are "high baked"-a little darker, crispier, the cheese getting crusty and sharper. They're $3.50 apiece, and exquisite. There is also a sweet version-apple, rosemary, and brown sugar-which makes a fine dessert.

Best way to get a head cheese

Black Forest Deli
Park Royal South, West Vancouver
604-926-3462

In order to qualify as truly Best of Vancouver, it has to be something worth driving across town for-and frequently, as often as a couple of times a week. Ah, the weaknesses of the palate. Among the mind-bending selection of house-made charcuterie in this Park Royal deli, you'll find various versions of sulze, a German deli staple often called headcheese in some (English) quarters. Two kinds crown the list: Schinken sulze, with big chunks of ham in a vinegared jelly; and a turkey-vegetable model that adds chunks of carrots, broccoli, or whatever's in the garden in the same sturdy jelly and in big, round slices to fit sandwich bread. Sturdy is the operative word: it has to be industrial-wobble hard, not runny aspic puddling into sauce. Piquant, tart, crunchy, cool-try to get back over the bridge before half the package is gone. It's $1.79 per 100 grams for the ham, $1.99 per 100 grams for the turkey 'n' veg.

Happiest food combo of the year

Les Amis du Fromage
1752 West 2nd Avenue
604-732-4218

Cheese, crackers, and a spot of honey-get 'em all here. The cheese-a French sheep number called Brebiou-is creamy, rich, runny. Under it, one of the four flavours of croccantini from Seattle's La Panzanella Bakery. (Our favourite is the black pepper.) The honey Clear liquid acacia honey from Masi, the Veneto winemakers. After dessert, late at night, for breakfast-these come together into a wonderful solitary pleasure, or with friends. Cheese, $4.25 per 100 grams; crackers, $7.95 per package; honey, $13.95 the jar-the best $26 you've spent on your mouth in ages.

Best Repurposing

Frenchies! Montreal Smoked Meat
1018 Commercial Drive
604-215-4520
751 Helmcken Street
604-688-4584
2546 East Hastings Street
604-253-4544

This Commercial Drive eatery owned by Michel Blais is the newest of the local Frenchies chain, installed at the former home of the notorious Da Kine coffee shop, site of last year's not-so-secret retail marijuana outlet. The decor has been changed to hypercharged diner style, but at least they're sticking with the smoked theme.

Best evidence that nobody works in the West End of Vancouver

Melriches Coffeehouse
1244 Davie Street
604-689-5282
1043 Mainland Street
604-689-5282

Arrange to meet a colleague in one of these funkiest of coffee houses at 2:30 on a Tuesday afternoon. Every chair and table is full. Walk east along Davie, passing no fewer than seven coffee bars, coffee shops, and coffeehouses between Jervis and Burrard. All full. End up having your meeting in Denny's. Denny's! But it's raining outside and there's nowhere else to go. Contemplate that others may wonder why you're sitting having coffee in the middle of a weekday afternoon. Don't you work either?

Best takeout hummus and baba ghanouj in the West End

European Delicatessen
1220 Davie Street
604-688-3442

Yes, there are lots of Greek restaurants on Davie, many of them offering takeout as well as dine-in service. But trust us, this little Persian (not European) deli produces the best chickpea and eggplant dips in the 'hood. Delicious with traditional Persian lavash bread. Our mouths are watering as we speak.

Oldest (And Best) Dairy

Avalon Dairy
5805 Wales Street
604-434-2434

The oldest dairy in B.C. still in operation. It was established in 1906 by Jeremiah Crowley, who came over from Newfoundland with his family and bought farmland midway between Vancouver and New Westminster. Starting out with six cows, Crowley quickly built up his business and his herd. The original farmhouse is still in use and Avalon remains a family concern. In addition to offering a range of excellent organic and nonorganic milk and cream products in glass bottles, the dairy also sells butter, cheese, yogurt, eggs, and ice cream.

Best Place to "Forget About It" All

Caffe Dall'Acqua
1602 Yew Street
604-730-8870

Pop down to Yew Street's Caffe Dall'Acqua for Euro-chic ambiance amid rows of rowdy Kits pubs. This second-floor candlelit patio is serene sophistication hidden between drinking games and pick-up joints, and it can feel, at times, like a breath of Mediterranean Sea air. Dall'Acqua's live music duo, Tea, plays Thursday evenings, is equal parts sultry and sexy, and goes perfectly with any one (or more) of the Italian-themed martinis: My Cousin Vinnie, Romeo, Juliet, or even Forget About It. This place, from its patio to its perishables, is sharp.

Best NonAlcoholic Happy Hour(s)

Soma Coffee House
2528 Main Street
604-873-1750

For trendy magazines, cheap lattes, and a seat in one of the best spots in town, check out Soma at Main and Broadway. With a recently adopted happy hour between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. (featuring toonie lattes), everyone can afford to hang out in close proximity to Main Street staples like Burcu's Angels and Planet Bingo. Soma's service has been known to be a tad slow, but specialties like organic tea make up for it, as do hearty Italian-style sandwiches that sate you for days. Plus, the entire place has wireless Internet, so you could pretend to be working there just as well as in your office.

Best bubble tea

Green Leaf Natural Food
5756 Fraser Street
604-327-8766

The name has a rather drab, earnest ring to it. One might expect to find organic, dry, crunchy items on its shelves. Instead, it is a bubble tea venue, with one of the finest and most extensive choices in town. This is a very difficult category to determine, and everyone is encouraged to do their own research, no matter how fattening and delicious it might be. But you would have to do a lot of work to find something better than the Green Leaf's insane "cappuccino ice cream" drink, which is the essence of coffee goodness in a frozen, creamy, luscious concoction infused with chewy things, served in a canister the size of your arm.

Best view of the working waterfront

The Cannery Seafood Restaurant
2205 Commissioner Street
604-254-9606

Going to the Cannery is not like it used to be before 9/11. Port of Vancouver security is such that Commissioner Street is cut off from casual driving. You have to buzz in at the gates before you are allowed to drive in for your meal. Then you will realize what you've missed because of the closure: those big orange cranes, like brachiosaurs, hovering over the massive stacks of elegantly weathered shipping containers, the formidable hulks of the grainery and fish processors. Then enjoy some superb fish; it's quite fun to be old-school and order the Salmon Wellington, a fussy concoction involving shrimp, herbs, and plenty of buttery pastry.

Best chocolate ice cream

Gelato Time
1110 Commercial Drive
604-251-4426

Chocolate is such a standard flavour that it can be used as a benchmark for evaluating the quality of an entire dessert venue. On the evidence of their product, this place clearly knows what it's doing. They serve the nicest dish (meaning in a dish-the cones aren't as nice, or varied, as at the Casa Gelato) of chocolate ice cream around, if you happen to believe that the taste should be intense, heady, rich, and, well, like eating a piece of chocolate.

Best Place to Find a Chocolate-Packed Collon

Fujiya
Various locations

You don't have to be addicted to engrish.com/ to realize the Japanese sometimes have a tenuous grasp on the English language. How much do you want to bet something got lost in translation when the Ezaki Glico Co.'s marketing department decided that Collon would be a great name for a snack that features poop-brown filling inside a round, flesh-coloured pastry casing? Although collon probably means something like "mega-tasty" in Tokyo-speak, it brings to mind something entirely different on these shores.

Still, if you're looking to impress a loved one with something exotic, and a box of Black Magic just won't do, head down to the Japanese specialty store Fujiya and pick up a package of the imported bonbons. Pop a couple in your mouth, look deep into the eyes of your significant other, and then mumble "Would you like some of my Collon? It's chock-full of chocolate." There's no need to be embarrassed. The name may be kind of icky, but as tasty treats go, Collon is truly the shit. And don't forget to wash it down with a nice cold Pocari Sweat!

Best wine and beer cooler to swing a cat in

Pacific Spirits Wine Cellar
4474 Dunbar Street
604-738-1299

This year-old wine and beer store stocks products that aren't found in most B.C. Liquor Stores, making for adventurous and rewarding shopping. A bonus is the huge refrigerated beer room that is big enough to swing a proverbial cat in when it's not filled to the rafters with chilled suds and Merridale Cider.

Best Garage Refit

The Brewery Creek
3045 Main Street
604-628-1938

It's the city's oddest beer and wine store. You travel down a long doorless corridor, pass the mysterious entrance to "Kiku's Massage", then enter a former alleyway station replete with repurposed garage bays. Markup on some items is a little steep, but the selection is very good, a rarity on the East Side.

Best quaff for stock ­brokers

Take your pick: the ticker-tape-wrapped Laughing Stock Vineyards Portfolio 2003 is a natural, especially as proprietors David and Cynthia Enns have parlayed long-term careers in the investment business into an established B.C. winery. Bullish on B.C.? Tinhorn Creek Merlot futures are always a sound investment, more so now that the entire production is screw-capped. Or go offshore and invest long-term in Marquis Wine Cellars Bordeaux futures.

Best place to bulk up

Weigh to Go Bulk Foods
3534 West 41st Avenue
604-266-6206

This is one of the few bulk foods places left that allows you to scoop, pour, or portion out everything from (powdered) soup to nuts and everything in between. You want two tea bags? Done. Powdered tomatoes? Yessiree, but the shop owner doesn't know what they're for. He merely filled a request from an elderly man whose wife had just died and was about to tackle cooking at this late stage in his life. Peanut butter, honey, molasses, olive oil, vinegars, flowers, spices and herbs, fruit, flours, grains, candy, and even Christmas baking supplies are available year-round. And the prices are far lower than you'd pay elsewhere.

Best Reason to Get in Your Car and Drive for 25 Minutes

Il Pappagallo Caffé cheesecake
6696 East Hastings, Burnaby
604-294-2766

It hails from a 35-year-old recipe and its fans are unwavering in their admiration. The cheesecake at Pappagallo way east on Hastings is worth the trip out to the burbs. Pat and Emira field calls from New York to Utah and back over to Quebec, but they don't deliver. Ask Pat about the man who heard about his cheesecake at a party in London and now returns with his family every year from England during his visits to Vancouver. Over the past 13-and-a-half years, Pat guesses that he's sold 230,000 of his creamy, delicately cheesy cakes. They go for $3.75 per enormous piece or $25 per cake, which serves 10 hefty pieces. Sold yet? It's only a 25-minute drive from city centre. Better than that poor sod from England's trek.

Best Independent Grocer

Donald's Market
2279 Commercial Drive
2342 East Hastings Street

Any number of places could win this title, but this one's expansionism gives it the edge this year. A fixture in Hastings-Sunrise, it's now expanded to the Drive, where its variety, value, and quality make it hard to beat. Sure, Drive Organics has great produce, but where's the red meat? Buying red meat on the Drive is a peculiar challenge, at least it was until Donald's arrived. It's almost as tough as finding decent fish. And the staff at Donald's are real staff, not dunderheaded hippie chicks in undershirts. Not that there's anything wrong with that, Moonbeam.