Thanks to all who entered.

I’d be interested to hear more of your Dine Out Vancouver experiences here–any surprises? disappointments? don’t-misses? Please share!

The Vancouver-based Lonely Planet author has just released Drinking Vancouver: 100+ Great Bars in the City and Beyond (Touchwood Editions; $19.95). Must have been hell to research.

Lee’s arch writing style is a good match for a book about booze pits–one gin joint resembles a  ”museum of mismatched melamine tables,” another is like “a grinning, functional alcoholic buddy curling his sticky arms…around you at a party.”

There’s no breathless PR bumpf in these pages: just great advice about where to get a drink to match you mood. My favourite section, “Ambience: Best bars for…”, is a handy cheat-sheet of the Top 3 Vancouver bars for night-owls, music lovers, ex-pats, and more.

With the Winter Olympics just around the corner, this is another one for the guest-room bedside table (I also recommend Lee’s new Walking Vancouver).

Win a copy of Drinking Vancouver

Leave a comment below about your favourite Canadian watering hole. I’ll do a random draw on Sunday, January 3 at 8 pm PST for a copy of the book. Tweet this contest for a second entry!

Update, Jan. 4/2010: This contest is now closed. Congrats to Surrey, BC resident Chris Poon, drawn at random! Check your email so I know where to send the book…

‘Tis the season for gift bottles and this should make your shopping easy: the Diva, a certified sommelier with a sense of humour to rival her other highly developed senses, has just posted her top 50 wine picks under $50 for 2009.

It’s a treat to see so many excellent Canadian wines on the list.

Perhaps because she’s Vancouver-based, the Diva has favoured labels from British Columbia’s Okanagan wineries–or maybe they’re just plain better than their cousins from Ontario’s Niagara region?

If you beg to differ with the Diva–or if you’d like to add a noteworthy Canadian wine or two to her shopping list–please leave a comment!

Now with all the pre-Olympic improvements to Highway 99 you get to Whistler so fast–just a little over an hour–that you don’t really need to stop. But you should, because the Galileo Coffee Company in Britannia Beach is too good to miss.

If you’re looking for a good cup of joe, don’t wait until the Starbucks in Squamish. They roast their own beans at the Galileo–just a 15-minute drive up the Sea-to-Sky beyond Horseshoe Bay–and the results warrant buying a bag to take home.

Opened about three years ago in a 1905 heritage home next door to the venerable “99er” restaurant (the kind of place where all the heads turned when a stranger walked in the front door), the friendly cafe offers great coffee, excellent sandwiches and a postcard-pretty view of Howe Sound.

I recently enjoyed a kick-ass Ruben and a limonata for $7. Good thing too, since I spent a little more than that on some earrings at the amber store across the road…

Those who, like me, fall into the latter category do not heed the siren call of those bags of little chocolate bars that seem to be everywhere at this time of year.

We are not tempted to tiptoe into our sleeping children’s rooms and steal from their trick-or-treat bags. Unless…unless there is a small bag of Hawkins Cheezies in there among all the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Glosette Raisins. Then the gloves are off.

Made in Belleville, Ontario, with “real Canadian cheddar cheese” and without preservatives, these venerable and delicious neon-orange sticks of crunchy corn meal bear all the hallmarks of genuine comfort food: carbs, crunch and calories.

In fact, they are so incredibly lacking in nutritional merit–a small 45-gram bag contains 25% of your daily fat allowance and 16% of your sodium allowance–that I’m a little surprised they are still so popular.

I eat them anyway and comfort myself that they are so filling I can’t eat too many.

So keep your mere candy. Give me food that schmecks and bring on the Canadian Cheezies.

Only in Canada, eh?

(Disclosure: Sadly, the Hawkins Cheezies people did not give me free Cheezies. But if they did, I’d take them and wouldn’t share.)

If you can’t make it to tonight’s viewing party in Whistler, here’s the perfect consolation prize: the brand-new Araxi cookbook–or one of the other two glossy beauties in the Top Table cookbook series, Blue Water Cafe Seafood or The West Cookbook.

Valued at $50 each, these are as much fun for your eyes as they are for your palate. If you know these best-in-class restaurants, you know the calibre of recipes we’re talking about here; and if you don’t–well, let’s just say it’s time you did.

Tell me why you simply must get your hands on one of these cookbooks and on Friday, Oct. 16 I’ll do a random draw at 8 pm.

First name I pull gets their first choice; second person, the choice of the two remaining books; and third person still gets a great prize.

Good luck!

When I was in Rupert a year or so ago on my way to Haida Gwaii for the opening of the new Haida Heritage Centre, I was lucky to get a last-minute reservation at the tiny, perfect Cow Bay Cafe just down the road from the cruise ship dock. A friendly local had urged me to call ahead, cautioning that while “the portions are a bit petite, the flavours are amazing. It’s hard to get in.”

There are New York restaurants that would kill to have this little eatery’s 4.5-star rating at TripAdvisor–and its kick-ass waterfront location with fishboat-and-fauna views. On the late July evening I was there, people kept leaping from their tables to watch eagle fishing for salmon in the harbour.

The place is run by Adrienne Johnston, a former nurse who at age 11 announced to her mom that she would one day own a restaurant. As a teenager in India, she met Pierre Elliott Trudeau who told her, “You can do anything in Canada.” She eventually realized her dream in a down-on-its-luck resource-based town with a refreshing dearth of food snobs.

Best not to be fussy about what’s on the menu–it changes daily. But trust me, it’s all good and it’s all fresh.

Says Johnston: “People ask me, ‘So how far up the Skeena River was this salmon caught?’ Well, I can tell them it came from the first tidal basin–because I buy from the test fishery.

“And I can tell them the wheat berries on their plate came from Peace Country, too. I start  local and work out from there. But I tell you honestly, I could never do the 100-Mile-Diet thing. I love my tea.”

My friend Murray Atherton just got back from Rupert and e-mailed me–twice!–to say thanks for recommending Cow Bay Cafe. So it’s still there, still great–and definitely worth a visit before the Mouseketeers beat you to it…

Been there? Please share your review here!

So it’s a fine day for fish fiends when a resto like Coast decides to make a good thing even better. The popular Yaletown seafood restaurant recently relocated to swanky new downtown digs at 1054 Alberni, right between the new Shangri-La and the Hotel Vancouver.

Even before the move, the place had its foodie fans: Frommers said it was the place for “fresh fish…cooked to perfection” and Conde Nast Traveler gave it a spot on the Hot List. (And I’ll add my own props: if Coast’s crab cakes aren’t the best you’ve ever eaten, then you’ve never eaten a crab cake.)

Now, with more (and more beautiful) space, more kitchen-power, recession-friendly lunch and dinner menus and a chic new cocktail lounge attached at the hip,  I expect it’s only a matter of time before it becomes BC’s most-recommended seafood joint. Watch out Blue Water, there be sharks in your pool…

TheseBoots Recommends: Don’t miss Coast’s Fish & Chip Fridays–all fish & chips are just $12.

Leave a comment below with your favourite Canadian seafood restaurant and be entered to win a $50 gift certificate to Coast. Tweet this contest on Twitter (use @theseboots so I know you did) and get a second entry! Deadline to enter: 12 noon Sunday, July 26, 2009.

And the winner of the random draw is…Don Foran of Vancouver! Don entered a comment and tweeted the contest for a double entry. Congrats Don and enjoy your meal at Coast.

Turns out it can.

Finch’s Cafe has apparently been at 353 W. Pender (at Homer) for upwards of five years–the waitress I talked to wasn’t exactly sure–and judging by the lunchtime line-up still going strong at 2 p.m., they haven’t really suffered from the lack of my business.

This place is worth getting in line for. The room is shabby chic; the clientele is vintage-and-Fluevog with a little tech-nerd and corporate-creative thrown in for good measure. And the food is all Paris-worthy nosh: a brie-and-olive baguette, for example, or a pear-and-prosciutto salad with walnuts, blue-brie and white balsamic.

They’re open Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 and Saturday, 11 to 4. You probably won’t get a table at lunch; be prepared to share your space. But you can phone ahead (604-899-4040) so your take-out order will be ready when you are–a good plan since it can take up to half and hour to get your food during the lunch rush. (Plus it’s charming they way they wrap up your baguette in waxed brown paper tied with raffia.)

As one patient customer told me the other day: “This place can get a little hectic, but the food is always nice and slow.” Sure beats Subway.

Between 5 and 6 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights, all the delicious small plates are half-off.

The offerings change from week to week, but highlights from a recent menu included:

• Salt Spring Island lemon goat’s cheese crostini with Meyer lemon chutney : $6
• Dungeness Crab Spring Rolls with sweet chili sauce: $8
• Sesame seared Albacore tuna with local Asian greens: $9
• Red thai curry Salt Spring Island mussels: $8
• Truffle and parmesan fries with truffle mayonnaise: $5.5
• Pancetta-wrapped scallops with orange vinagrette: $9

Do the math: at 50% off, that’s just $22.75 for a full-on feast. (And adding on spirits won’t break the bank either: the simple, well-chosen wine list ranges from $28 to $50.)

The locals are already wise to this–the choice tables with a view of Howe Sound are gone by 5–but it’s a big place and there’s plenty of room indoors and out. So grab some friends, hop the Bowen Island Express from Granville Island or the Coastal Link Ferries from Coal Harbour, and live large on a small budget.