Vancouver Has Canucks Fever!

People smiling, people cheering—Granville Street after the Canucks game last night was a big bubble of happiness. If you weren’t there in person, check out this 360°view from Chris W.

Vancouverites have obviously developed a taste for impromptu public gaiety since the Olympics. As the Canucks crawl closer to the Stanley Cup finals, Granville Street has turned into the unofficial post-game meeting place for fans across the city. Cars honk, people sing, strangers hug strangers, and high-fives echo through the crowd. The air is thick with the excitement of thousands of people joined together in a moment of bliss. Inside Vancouver Blog captured a bit of last night’s magic in this video clip:

With the Canucks in a very happy place in the playoffs after last night, a patio seat on Granville sounds like the ideal place to take in the action on screen and on the street next game. Join me for a drink won’t you?

Downtown Food Cart Series: La Brasserie Street

Over the next few weeks we have an exciting project on the go, a celebration of the explosion of food cart culture in Downtown Vancouver.  The Downtown Food Cart Series will focus in on a different food cart each week, taking a look at the scrumptious stuff they have to offer and the people behind them.  Today, we take a peek at La Brasserie Street:

La Brasserie Street

Meal:    Brass Sandwich, $7.00 with tax

Fans of La Brasserie’s Davie Street location are familiar with a menu filled with Franco-German comfort foods.  I always leave the intimate space of their restaurant yearning to taste more, but unable to squeeze one more bite of their fulfilling portions into my bursting stomach.  Seeing their little burgundy food cart on the corner of Granville and Georgia piqued my curiousity—how could they translate the La Brasserie restaurant experience onto a street corner?

The cart is named La Brasserie Street, and offers only one sandwich option plus, as their sign claims, "the best buttertarts in the world."  Repeatedly I’ve tried to get my hands on one of their sandwiches, only to find them sold out.  Finally this week, fate intervened to give me a tantalizing taste of the elusive Brass Sandwich.

It is certainly not the most attractive of sandwiches.  The colour scheme is monotone brown—brown bun, brown onions, brown gravy, brown chicken, and mustard to top.  Delving into that first bite, however, removed all doubts and concerns with aesthetics.  To summarize it in few words, it’s like a sandwich made from the Sunday dinner leftovers while they’re still fresh from the kitchen.  It’s a perfectly proportioned mess of flavours and textures: warm savory gravy, moist and tender beer-brined chicken meat, sweet crispy onions, and a floury buttermilk bun.  It’s exciting to see new food options on the streets of Vancouver, and La Brasserie Street is filling in a long neglected niche in the fast lunch food market.

After the pleasant though not entirely unexpected surprise of the Brass Sandwich, I’m tempted to run back there right now to get a taste of their buttertarts.

Would I recommend La Brasserie Street?  I’d rather not … it’s my little brown secret.