✳ FOOD M ATT E R S
by Julie Pegg
The Cooking Cure Winter comfort food simmering away in the kitchen is a fine antidote to those inevitable January blues once the festive season is over.
T
he post-holiday budget let you down about that Club Med escape? Your spirits lower than the bank balance? Cheer up and get cooking. It’s fun to stay in town. Vancouver’s bustling winter market, a couple of nifty new wine shops and a sunny new cookbook will supply enough stuff for homey evening dinners to warm you to your toes.
To Market, To Market Vancouver foodies are grabbing their toques, gloves, a fistful of dollars and an ecofriendly shopping bag and heading to the Wise Hall, 1882 Adanac (at Victoria Drive). Every second and fourth Saturday during the chilly season, this tiny hall, known more for its rootsy-type concerts than root veggies, packs the dance floor and stage with crusty homemade breads, buns and cheeses, squashes with hues as warm as toast, white beets, crisp heritage apples, crunchy chard, kale and winter salad greens. Hot apple cider’s cinnamon smells meld with that of homemade ginger cookies. A fellow sporting tatty tweed and felt fedora strums guitar and sings with more gravel than Tom Waits. Folks spill out onto the sidewalks where more vendors strut their stuff—free range eggs, flashfrozen seafood, more cheese, more produce. A harpist tosses beautiful strains into the street and fair trade caffeine sidles up to the cheese and greens whole-wheat crêpes. I’ve got a cuppa java gripped in one hand and in the other a bag full of purchases: white beets for a roasted sweet borscht (the vendor assures me it’s a spectacular twist on the classic); purple potatoes to turn into a Peruvian potato and chorizo salad; organic garlic for a pork pot roast; and sheep milk feta to crumble over a red onion and yellow and orange pepper salad. I’ve also bought cold-smoked salmon and thick organic yogurt (instead of cream cheese) for next morning’s brekkie bagel. My friend Nancy peers into her stash, then looks up and grins. “I had no idea what to do with the day. Now I just want to cook.” Vancouver Winter Market, second and fourth Saturdays, November to April, 10 a.m.2 p.m. Vendors may vary. Check out list of probable sellers at www.eatlocal.org.
Stores to Wine About It’s smack in the briny middle of oyster season. And what do we quaff with kushis and kumamotos? Crisp ales and steely white wines. And where do we buy them? Some brew lovers and oeno-geeks south of the bridges (Granville, Cambie and Burrard) find them at Firefly Fine Wines and Ales (Twelfth and Cambie). This stylish vino/brew boutique, opened since April, delivers both by the bucket—well, okay, bottle. Instead of
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EAT MAGAZINE JAN | FEBRUARY 2008
organizing by region or varietal-governing wine category, Firefly organizes its wines by style: plump, suave, sweet, spicy, subtle and, my fave, black teeth (teeth-staining intense reds, says manager John Hunt). Head for the Racy Wines with Refreshing Acidity section (that’s its name) for a mollusk-friendly wine. As for beer, chill out in the frosty room to discover a heady array of ales and lagers as well as some cool white wines and bubblies. A splendid stock of global brews includes our close-to-home microbrews as well as U.K.’s Fuller’s and my favourite ESB, San Francisco’s Samuel Adams. Firefly offers wine/beer and food tastings as well as other special events in tandem with adjacent Figmint Restaurant. (Check out the Bird-in-Hand Winemakers dinner February 27.) Tastings: Fridays 4 p.m.-7 p.m., Saturdays 2 p.m.-6 p.m. Hours of operation: 9 a.m.-11 p.m. every day. Cosmo Piccirilli, in suave Italianated English, kisses his fingers lightly and caresses a bottle of Solaia as if it were a beautiful woman. Italian-born and raised, Piccirilli, sporting tan dress slacks and smart jacket, perfectly suits his managerial post at Sutton Place Wine Merchant. Unable to attend the sophisticated wine shop’s opening fanfare, I did get to tour and talk wine and wine shop with the charming Piccirilli a week later. I asked who was behind the elegant design. It is Nigel Walker & Associates, and they did so with impeccably good taste. (I’m not surprised to find out the firm also designed the gorgeous La Terrazza restaurant in Yaletown.) Floor-to-ceiling wood and glass give a warm yet genteel air to the shop. Selection at the time of writing was fifty/fifty listed products (available at B.C. government shops) and speculative (not available at government shops). The urbane layout suggests pricing as high as the hotel roof, yet several smart little quaffers start at around $10. Of course, serious cellarings spiral upwards of a hundred dollars. Piccirilli’s mission is to source hard-to-get wines, and B.C. gets a super nod. I spotted a few offerings from Burrowing Owl, Poplar Grove, Le Vieux Pin and Blue Mountain wineries that always require some hunting to find. Piccirilli says that the wine club and public tastings should be starting “in the near future.” He shows me mobile shelves they can move to accommodate a crowd. As well, one wine-stocked wall opens to reveal a salon slated for larger special events. When I leave, the room is bustling. Hotel guests and locals who shop the IGA Marketplace across the street have popped in for a bottle or two. From where I stand, Sutton Place Wine Merchant’s future looks good. 855 Burrard St., 604-642-2947, adjacent to Sutton Place Hotel.