Canada's insider blog

Vancouver has embraced the LA/Portland/New York love of street food, with its own take on sidewalk-side dining.

Thanks to a recent ruling from City Hall there are now 17 new spots to nosh while you stroll the city’s walkable downtown. I started with a yummy bowl of tortilla soup at Arturo’s Mexican to Go, just outside my hotel near the waterfront, but was soon lured to the nearby dim sum truck for some shrimp dumplings. You can have a big pulled pork sandwich from the shiny silver truck outside the Vancouver Art Gallery, get a Korean bulgogi and kimchi taco at Cartel or saunter down to the Financial District for fried rice balls and Asian Duck Confit Salad at the spiffy red Roaming Dragon, with a creative menu devised by local chef Don Letendre.

For hardcore locavores there’s Fresh Local Wild – a street cart that specializes in serving wild mushrooms, seaweed, salmon and other local stuff (some that Chef Josh Wolf even forages himself). Panda Fresh Bakery bakes a perfect croissant in a yellow school bus in Yaletown. Or just stop for the old standby, a gourmet tube steak at JapaDog, the granddaddy of Vancouver’s street food scene.

Check out the street food blog vancouverstreeteats.ca/ for maps and updates.